#and not the best odds for me given how long the graft was

[bulldog-butch]

y'all this is gonna be a long road of recovery 😓

[bioodorange]

||How I See The Pastas||

© @frozensriracha, for some help with visuals!!

This was originally supposed to be how they looked but I decided to go for mental aspect and explain why as well PLEASE like, reblog and share your thoughts on this in the comments or inbox

Below the desciptions are images i’ve compiled and some art (if you know the creator please tell me so i can credit them) for a visual

dont forget to like reblog and share your thoughts with me, I spent a few days on this so i’d appreciate this

Jeff the Killer

So lets start with the obvious- jeffs pasty white toothpaste lookin skin

But realistically he wouldn’t be completely covered in scars

It would be blotchy, with pink fleshy patches among the burns

He most likely has contracture scars, third degree burns that turn the skin a pale white and tighten the skin

This explains his gaunt features and skin color

Now we have to take into account the vodka that was splashed on him, he’d probably have worse burns there with exposed flesh and damaged nerves

This would result in gnarly exposed skin, a damaged scalp and maybe damage to his teeth and eyes

Realistically, Jeff wouldnt have burned off his eyelids that alone would have resulted in blindness and death

Than his smile, his signatuure mark would probably be more of a gangly bloody scar mess

Pastas heal faster and aren’t really human, he’d have to recut his smile pretty frequently making it pretty jacket up because ltes be honest hes far from clean

ANd than his hait being chard black is very unlikely because as nasty as he is he s h o w e r s

not very frequnetly given his living situation and untreated burns but people can figure out how to wash hait and not much else

also i think its funny he’d shower with a plastic bag on his face to avoid getting soap in his nasty infected scars-

His hair would probably be dry and cut unevenly, more of a dark brown color with blonde undertones

Not to mention his burned scalp, hair probably wouldn’t grow there so he’d have a cool unintentional side shave

Jeff would also be a tall individual, he cant really eat, snacking on things from his victims homes giving him a more skeletal build

His personality and mindest is about as pretty as his face- but he most likely has a very screwed up headspace

Lacking in self care, maturity and sanity its fair to say he’d be a brash and violent person

Fun Fact: While researching this I learned that some versions of the joker had facial scars in the shape of a smile

Ticci Toby

So tobys age, unlike a lot of pastas, is pretty well agreed on, 19

So unlike when he was first a proxy toby most likely has stronger facial features and facial hair

Because shaving and hygiene isn’t first priority for pastas (gross-)

He stands around 5′7 and has grayish skin

Toby i feel is picky about foods, not only is it hard for him to eat its hard for him to keep food down

He’s malnourished explaining his thin figure and grayish skin

His hait is dark brown and a curlish mess, unkempt but short so it doesn’t get in his way

I’ve always seen him with a small gap in his teeth, because I can

And since toby can’t feel shit I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to eat rocks simply because he fuckin could

So some chipped teeth that are a bit uneven

Along with his CIPA and not eating enough Toby would bruise easily and have lots of scars, from things like cutting his finger on accident or getting mauled by a racoon

I wouldn’t be surpised if some of his joints were a bit screwed up, because whenever theyd beak or fracture he wouldn’t notice, this would probably happen a lot causing them to not heal correctly

One of tobys habits is nailbiting but he cant te;; when too far is too far

His fingers may be abit odd looking, knobby and discolored nails because of how exetreme his habit is

Would most likely have bandages around his fingers frequently to prevent the habit

So theres a lot of debate about tobys cheek was it the CIPA or the car accident, I beileve the accident because his other cheek is completely fine, theres damage from the OUTSIDE to inside and considering his sister died in the accident its unlikely he survived unscathed

Fun Fact: only a small handful of people have ever been diagnosed with CIPA, less than 500 (documented) cases around the world

Bloody Painter

So Helen is often seen as quiet emo painter boy 

but uh no <3

Personaly i beileve he suffers from narcisistic personality disorder, exetreme importance and that he is always victorious and gets what he wants

This sporuts from the constant heavy invalidation from classmates, toxic friends and neglect from his parents

He doesn’t hang out with people because he doesn’’t lie them its because they never let him in the past and he beileves he’s better than them

But this also links to deep rooted insecurity and social anxiety/being inept completely

Him being nice is basically so you like him, he wants validation amd admiration not love

Unlike the other pastas he’d be a more clean well kept one a helthy figure and some tattoos bevause he can

I beileve he lives in socity, finding hus victims in girls and men alike who fall for his charm

he uses hhis skill and ordinary appearance to blend in on the streets

From his behavior helen most likely keeps his hair a bit shorter and clean

He always looks his best

Has chapped, and picked at lips because of his anxieties

Aswell as his breakdowns- his identity is completely in his head, he is very unsure of who he is and takes the delusions in his mind as reality

Unrelated but paino fingers-

And finally in order for his art to be as perfect and amazing as him, he has to be apart of it

Thus using his own blood in his pieces and the body parts of those he admires

Covers his scars with clean bandgaes

But his paintings turn brown and dry out, he’s always in need of a new medium

Is most likely anemic from all the blood he looses and has a paler skintone

Clockwork

ahh yes finally someone who knows what self care is-

helen, i love you buddy but you need to stop 

But anyway natalie has a stronger, athletic build

She often chases her victims and gets in altercations, relying on strength most  of the time

on that same note, this would defintelty cause many scars on natalie

Wether it was a bite mark or scars from a kitchen knife, shes got lots of scars

A few even on her face

Now, for the clock in her eye that thing is like holding her skull together at this point, realistically

She is probably delicate and cares for it becaise 1) it hurts 2) if it gets screwed up that could cause a lot of problems

natalie would be a smart person, I wouldn’t be surprused if she had a few other stray stitches or bandgaes wrapped around a fresh wound

For more visual-ish things uh m u l l e t (credit: @cum-looking-sock-mf in a chat like 4 months ago)

She has one, fight me on it

but also thick and curlish hair so I also riase you

Undershave

just y e s

I can also see her getting tattoos over certain scars on her arm, just to make them look not so ugly

I feel like clockwork wishes things worked out better

Wishes for another chance but knows she’ll never get one

Thus her taking goof care of herself

Natalie throws herseld into her “work”, keeping her body in shape and killing people

Its a way to avoid her life and that it is- a huge, sad mess

Shes an outgoing impulsive individual, confident but questions her actions

She’s also unstable- protective and loyal but explosive and strong 

Jane the Killer

Jane is the final one, im sorry I couldn’t do more theres a photo limit and I wanna bash my head into the wall

Now a main different between her and jeff is she had surgery and lie treatment

Janes skin is still greatly scarred but it is greatly healed

She takes care of it and had skin grafts

Her face is disfigured, a scarred smile and burns around

But unlike Jeff she doesn’t recarve the cut so its a cleaner line and a lot healthier

Janes hair took a rather long time to grow back, but it did! 

She has a slightly long pixie cut a bit choppy but she doesn’t mind

Her wife definetely cuts it for her and you can fight me over that

I can see Jane having a lot of facial trauma, scars around her nose and cheeks

She was young when she started killing and went for the over the person, pin them down kill which didn’t work out

She switched to a silenced pistol after awhile, you know like a smart person

Janes arms and legs are in alright condition where most of the burn trauma is on her back

She has a leaner but healthy figure but like boobs-

Like clockwork and Helen she takes care of herself

She doesn’t kill as frequently, going after a few of jeffs victims before him and is of course, actively hunting him down

Her eyes are a pale green and she wears makeip to fill in her eyebrows because those bitches take a long time to grow back

fun fact: jeff has no eyebrows, fight me

[maxwell-grant]

On Lord Hawthorne

A lot of what makes Lavender Jack special to me is the way it’s so masterfully able to create engaging, modern material out of it’s influences, and it’s creation of a genuinely timeless pulp icon that I think should serve as the ideal baseline for any and all creators who want to create stories based on pulp characters, old and new alike, in the future. 

As I make my way through Season 2 and eagerly await Season 3 I’d like to take the time to talk a little about the often overlooked half of the villain duo of Season 1, Lord Hawthorne, and what I think is interesting about him. Out of the many ways pulp heroes have been reimagined into villains over the decades, Lord Hawthorne stands out to me as easily one of the best ones, as a thoughtful take on the Tarzan character.

Spoilers before the cut

The first thing everyone immediately picks about Lord Hawthorne is that he’s Tarzan, with hardly any ifs or buts about it. He’s Tarzan, and we quickly learn that he’s the villain, part of a villain duo with Lady Hawthorne, the real mastermind and kingpin in pearls behind the story’s events. Having Tarzan as the villain n a story that draws from pulp and Edwardian fiction is already an interesting start, as three of the most popular molds from which are pulp heroes are based on, three of the most popular characters as icons, are Tarzan, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Sherlock Holmes, all three of which exist in some capacity in the world of Lavender Jack. The Gentleman Villain, The Great Detective, and The Wild Man.

Lavender Jack, as I’ve mentioned, is based on the Pimpernel, as well as other figures such as Spring-Heeled Jack and Bertie Wooster. Jack draws from icons that largely predate the pulp heroes because, in Schkade’s own reasoning, if you’re going to try and create an authentic pulp hero, it only makes sense to use as a base the characters that largely inspired them, and clearly that worked out very well. Jack is a Pimpernel remodeled and recontextualized into modern sensibilities, into an era of superheroes and webcomics.

In the Great Detective’s case, we have the figure of Madame Theresa Ferrier, who is called into the story by the Mayor to try and solve the mystery of Lavender Jack’s identity. Schkade describes Ferrier as a character that pulls from elements of detectives like Hercule Poirot and C.Auguste Dupin as well as Sherlock Holmes, in particular Jeremy Brett’s later year performances. As he describes:

In the series’ final years, Brett was getting older, sicker, hindered by bipolar medications that sapped his energy and caused him to gain weight, and he used it. His Holmes became a fading, melancholic shadow of his younger self, but with the spark of his brilliance showing through when it counted. I always found that so compelling

Ferrier is repeteadly described in-universe as “The Great Detective”, and she is both the oldest as well as the most brilliant character in the comic. Despite her age, despite her physical complications, and the tragedy that surrounds her love life, she is nonetheless incredibly skilled, strong and resourceful, able to unmask Jack and survive a confrontation with Lord Hawthorne and even nearly beat him. Ferrier draws from the Great Detectives of old, but this is a character that could never be mistaken for any of them. She’s not specifically based on any of them because, as Schkade puts it: “I wanted her to be someone I’d never get to draw in a leading role in most of my work-for-hire jobs”. 

Her role in the comic ends up being one of mentorship to Jack, and despite her age being emphasized as well as the idea of her belonging to an older generation of great heroes that now gives way to the younger and hot-blooded Jack as well as Ferrier’s new partner in Honoria Crabb, Ferrier is very much another great example of where the old meets the new in Lavender Jack. Pulling from the great old archetypes but very much recognizable as her own thing. 

Thing is, when it comes to Lord Hawthorne, we don’t really get that, because Lord Hawthorne isn��t really combining the idea of Tarzan with a splash of something new and outstanding and modern. He really is just Tarzan, and not a terribly layered character at that, for much of the story he’s largely just a voiceless bulldozer who exists to do the dirty work of Lady Hawthorne no matter how dirty. This isn’t at all a criticism, because I think Hawthorne being just Tarzan, with little to no bells and whistles and twists on it, is central to what makes him work not just as a great physical threat Jack must overcome (in a similar way to Bane as both a monstrous powerhouse and also having a strong connection to a powerful pulp hero), but also someone whose tragedy comes to light as we finally learn more about him. The fact that he is monosyllabic and largely devoid of any personal interests or life outside of being muscle for Lady Hawthorne is something deliberate, as outlined in a speech given by another character in Chapter 39

Her world's been changing for years, now. She's taking her place in a wider game. A more nuanced game. And you're still...Why, you're only good for one thing, aren't you? Well, maybe two, you old hound, you.

I know why you spend vast stretches of the year off in that jungle. It's not for sport, it's not to keep your edge...it's because when there's no need to fight, no struggle to win, no enemy...there's just...you.

And you know there's not really anything to you, underneath all those scars and muscles.

No dreams, no warmth, no depth. Nothing to love.

So you stay away...and that way, you can come when she calls you. You can sweep back to Gallery and show up all filthy and draw her into your powerful, savage embrace....and maintain your novelty.

All of this so you'll never have to endure a silent sunday afternoon where there's nothing to do, any no one to kill, and your lady simply...doesn't...need you.

You do know this word, don't you, Hawthorne, old fellow? "Novelty?"

And how does he respond?

Not with a denial, but an affirmation that this is ultimately all personhood amounts to, in his worldview. Just one more thing to be conquered and then used as a club to batter others with. 

The very act of a character questioning their own worth and depth of personality usually tends to be a telling sign that they, in fact, have those things even if they are out of touch with them, but Hawthorne doesn’t particularly rebuff anything Van Lund’s saying. He just reaffirms his title as Lord while threatening him with violence, because violence is all he knows. 

As we later learn, Lord Hawthorne isn’t, in fact, the real Lord Hawthorne, but instead he and his wife usurped the title from the real one as they escaped from the jungle, where he was only known as “the wild man”. A man who’s been forced his entire life to live in a kill-or-be-killed world, to live as an animal in constant conflict with humans, was then captured and then brutally tortured every day for over a month, and then found for the first time someone who treated him with something resembling affection, someone who ultimately turned him into a tool for her evil designs, and he readily accepts this because he has no life, no identity, outside of her. He doesn’t even know his own name.

In fact, for all we know, he might as well be John Clayton himself, except he was born in a world where being Tarzan is not the greatest thing ever and there was no Jane or ape mother to guide his malleable heart into something resembling good, and there was only Sarah to mold him into an instrument of murder at his lowest point.

I argue that Tarzan is a character that’s all about freedom and vitality, as a heroic take on an archetype that’s long been the missing link between superheroes and monsters, where the dual nature of mankind between person and ape acts not as a disorder or source of conflict but instead as the ultimate power fantasy in a character who gets the best of both with none of the downsides. Lord Hawthorne isn’t necessarily a return to form, because there is no dual nature to him. There is no gentleman, no Lord Greystoke descendant of nobility, romantic hero and great adventurer and leader of men and whatnot. There is only the ape, and what little façade has been grafted onto him by his master so he can pass off as a person, only long enough until he takes his shirt off and starts murdering people for her. While we get long extended close-ups of the icy cruelty in Lady Hawthorne’s eyes, there is none for Lord Hawthorne, because he is not cruel, he is an animal. He’s not a fighter, he’s a survivor. He lives to kill and serve the person who tells him who or what to kill. 

Lord Hawthorne is what happens when you strip the Tarzan legend of the romanticism of fiction and you look at it for what it would likely result in: the tragic story of a child forced to grow in the jungle, where the concept of personhood and human decency are utterly meaningless and there is only survival, where his existence is at odds with the worlds of man and animal alike, and what happens when that sort of being receives a first contact with something resembling decency and love. Even if said first contact wasn’t with someone as evil as Lady Hawthorne, there was little chance Lord Hawthorne’s life was ever going to be anything other than just an extension of his life in the jungle, or end in anything other than tragedy, and ultimately even the characters start to pity the wild man.

Jack: All that power and stamina and fighting acumen, but yet all you seem to get to use it for is...this. Another laborious climb to another locked-room murder.

Ferrier: You've long passed the point where human lives hold any meaning. You are detached from our species, a...a stranger, loose among us. I thought the sight of you would stir distain in me, or even fear...but as I look at you now...I feel for you only the strangest sort of pity.

What I like most about Lord Hawthorne as a take on Tarzan is that, far too often, we see intended “deconstructions” or reinterpretations of the classic pulp heroes, or even superheroes, that largely just make them villainous by extrapolating the worst possible interpretations of the character’s traits or real-life circumstances around them to villainize them, or outright invent faults and problems that weren’t there in the source material, usually to put one character over the other. The entirety of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is built on this, as is a lot of Superman parodies built on getting the most graphically shocking results possible. 

I'll admit it’s somewhat hypocritical of me to criticize this entirely, because it’s an impulse that I sadly admit I myself have fallen into in my own writings on characters not my own, as anyone who’s ever talked with me about Doc Savage, a character I do not like and cannot bring myself to like, can testify. I get why this happens, even if I understand why it’s shitty. Ultimately, the best “deconstructions” or reinterpretations will always come from people who are best familiar with the material they are using and know exactly the best ways to twist it, like with Mark Waid’s Irredeemable, an Evil Superman comic written by a huge Superman fan who knows exactly the absolute worst ways a Superman character can go sour, and was leagues ahead of works like The Boys and Brightburn who largely just take the “easy” pot shots. 

With Lord Hawthorne, we get a character who’s an evil take on Tarzan, but whose evilness isn’t made from exaggerating or adding faults to the source material character, which could very easily be done. I never got the sense that the author hates Tarzan and wants everyone to hate Tarzan and is willingly to sacrifice immersion just to get across how much he hates Tarzan (again, something LOEG does way too often), in fact it really doesn’t matter how the author feels about Tarzan, because those feelings are irrevelant to what’s on the page. 

Instead, Lord Hawthorne is an evil take on Tarzan whose characterization is largely based on just looking at the source material, the character’s origins, and extrapolating the circumstances in which that could go sour. What would a “wild man” forced to grow up and fight for survival every day in the jungle look like, what would that person look like when making it’s first contact with human affection, how could that person be twisted and manipulated into becoming a villain, what’s even left to that person outside of violent action scenes. How little it would take to twist a childhood hero into a brute that murders old women in their hospital beds, just by tweaking a few details about the context surrounding him. 

He is not a caricature of Tarzan, he’s not a parody, he is just Tarzan, but no longer the power fantasy. No longer the center of fantastical adventures. No longer getting the best of both worlds, but instead having to contend with the worst of them. Ultimately only finding some dignity in death, with his nemesis expressing hope that, maybe somewhere else, he’s going to have better luck than what this world afforded him.

[artyrogue]

Blind Date Gaming: The Addams Family

You all know PRANG, my Pseudorandom Number Generation matchmaker? Well, it recently gave me this weird questionnaire to try and set up a date more suited for my odd personality. I happily filled it out, hoping for a real connection to be made with my next game date. We fed it through the sketchy scantron machine attachment that somehow got grafted to PRANG's chassis and, after an ear-splitting buzzing that may have made me slightly deaf, the results were printed out. They dictated that I needed a real family game. I guess that triggered something special in PRANG, as it quickly flipped around and grabbed what I can assume totally wasn't the first title in its game list with the word 'Family' in it: The Addams Family!

Man, computers are too complicated for simpletons like me. Well, let's get datin' and see if this is a match! I started the game as what I can only imagine is a chubby, tiny clone of Gomez Addams. I mean, why else would all of the house decor be the size of 2.5 Gomezes? (Is that a unit of measurement? Well it is now)

He's small, but can jump like 3 Gomezes in the air! He's like the Jack Russel's of 90's characters

So you run around your house looking for sub-areas, throwing daggers that go about 2 Gomezes in front of you before disappearing. Enemies lurk at every step, and boy are they horrifying! Mostly in how crappily they are programmed and placed. Bats flap to your level and never deviate, pretty much ensuring you get hit. Ghosts constantly spawn and may be right on staircase tops, meaning you get hit as soon as a map loads. You can jump on some enemies to stun them but like you have no indicator what can and can't be given the ol' hop-treatment.

I'm not sure if this guy wants a hug or is holding a really heavy invisible box

None of this would be an issue if you didn't have limited ammo. From the get-go, your knives are all you have. In a boss fight and run out? Well, go commit suicide, because you can't do anything. Fun! The bosses are alright, though. Most are too easy, but they are definitely interesting. Like in one case, there's this bear that cannot attack you if you jump behind it. In another, the Grim Reaper's best weapon is spitballs? I feel like there's some lost lore here in the Addam's Family universe that needs fanfic-ing.

Still waiting for this model to be offered at Build-a-Bear Workshop

When you beat a boss, you rescue a family member and get a cool new item. Usually, they're weapons of some sort, but some instead help you to traverse the world. While this could have been a nice progression system, there's really only one place where this is required, and instead progress is tied to how many family members you have rescued. Only THEN do random doors in your own house become accessible. I think Gomez needs to install those doors with open-able locks that constantly prevent my toddler from dying alone from starvation in most rooms of my house because she doesn't know how to unlock locks she's already locked us out of.

Your gratitude is well-received, Lurch my man. But can we talk about what the heck some frozen water is going to do besides get my pockets wet in like 5 minutes?

There are also small potion powerup things that transform you into typical movie monsters, but none are really super-interesting. Regardless, I get through a bunch of ho-hum platforming levels, collect my fam, electrocute my brother some more (as is tradition), and make it to the final level! This level is akin to the final level in Super Mario Land 2 in that it is long, filled with neat traps, and pretty rough. I do like the decor, though, what with buzzsaws, unmarked falling spike chandelier things, and amazingly large guillotines.

I may be an Addams myself because these little death traps actually made me smile a bit. Very cute, level designers! I like your chops!

So after I boogie down his gauntlet of Super Meat Boy paraphernalia, I at last make it to the final boss's room. And he's...some...guy? This is probably a dude from the movie, but I haven't seen it in years, so I have no clue. But like legit all he does is stand, jump, and throw knives. Well, two can play that game! No really, I mean like, that's literally all I do, too. En guarde!

Oh hey, Troy McClure is in this game, too!

So we have the lamest version of the Dark Link fight from Zelda 2 ever and I end up on top. I save my wife from what appears to be some killer soup stock? Sorry honey, I won't get to experience your umami tonight, we gotta bury this businessman's corpse and stop Lurch from overheating the fridge's icemaker. Oh, but where are my manners, caramia? Let's catch that ending sequence first! What should we do with the rest of the Addams Family now that we have secured their freedom?

I like that, of all action verbs at their disposal, they chose 'throttle'.

Brilliant. Well, that was a quick jaunt. Not great, but also not horrible? I probably wouldn't try to date it again, but that's more because I feel I've experienced all it had to offer. Gomez should either find some super mushroom or hire a better home decorator who isn't a giant? But knowing the Addams Family, they probably know literal giants. Whatever, he probably need a stool to reach his toilet, but that is all his choice. As for you, your choice is whether or not to take this Sprite of Passage. (I'd say do it! You earned it!)

I feel like the manager made the enemy designer give him 2 pitchforks because he wanted the boss to at least appear SOMEwhat spoopy, but didn't have the heart to tell the designer to start over

BONUS: I feel like sharing this music track from the game because I think it's absolutely baller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlTNNOeX-E0&list=PL5YdbMaKCdoiF4XkX-ac-4M9QU1UPjlmq&index=5

Also, because I am amazed that it exists, someone's piano cover of it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5XODMmPGh4

[gt-fluffy-vore]

Mindtrapped Chapter five: White Pain

Sanders Sides fanfiction

Warnings: Open talk of blood, blood transfusions, severe pain, angst but when is there not, self harm technically?

3183

Virgil forced his eyes open and immediately re-shut them against the excruciating pain. The first type of pain he felt was the stabbing, then came the throbbing, then the white-hot pain sunk in, and he didn't even try to hold back a scream. He clutched at the source of the pain and cried, and then suddenly something was holding his hands down.

"You can not disrupt the process or it may not take correctly." He forced his eyes open and there stood Logan, who was holding his wrists down, and Patton standing behind him chewing on one thumb nail. On a table in the back corner, there was a wet cat Roman with a couple of red stains in his fur. Virgil groaned against the pain and kept crying, struggling weakly against Logan’s grasp.

“Hey, it’s alright. Slow down a bit there, kiddo. Logan’s got you. You’re alright. I know it hurts, but it’ll heal better if you don’t touch it. Alright? Can you hear me? AngelStorm?”

“I hear you.” His voice squeaked with tears. “Wh-What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“It is not uncommon to temporarily or even permanently lose memories of traumatic events. But to answer your question, Virgil, you mishandled a kitchen knife and severed your left pedipalp as well as cut your upper chest. You… are you aware of what the death curl is?”

“Like what spiders do when they’re super hurt? Yeah?”

“You had partaken such a position when I arrived. We performed a skin graft on the inflicted area, but the wound has yet to accept the new skin. Until it does the process must not be interrupted.” Virgil slowly lifted a hand to the severed pedipalp and froze. His face went pale.

“You’re not lookin’ too great. Ya alright there, AngelStorm?” Virgil glared at him through unceasing tears. “Oh, right, no nicknames. Sorry! But really, how are you feeling?”

“Like garbage. How do you think?”

He hung his head slightly and he slowly sat on a couch nearby. “What hurts the most? You look really tired.”

“Yeah, no shit I’m tired!”

“It is going to take a considerable amount of time for the exhaustion to fade. You lost the majority of the blood in your body. An estimate of seven and a half liters to be precise.”

Virgil winced. “How many liters am I supposed to have?”

“Given your size, I would estimate ten or eleven.”

“Great.” He sighed through gritted teeth and sobbed once against the pain. He almost couldn’t feel the entire left side of his head. Almost. And every time he moved his whole chest burned. After another excruciating shift in position, he let his frustration get the better of him and screamed. “Jeez, how bad did it get?!”

Logan took this as a serious question. “As I previously mentioned, we performed a skin graft on the severed pedipalp. We also stitched the wound on your chest and applied an I.V. for blood transfusion.”

He looked down at one arm, where an I.V. was inserted. “I didn’t even notice that before.” He gasped again as the movement sent a throb of white-hot pain through the left side of his face. “Ow! Damnit!”

“Can’t we give him something for that? Or, I don’t know, get an ice pack?”

Logan nodded, already leaving the room. “Yes, I shall see if we have any morphine.” He returned a moment later with a bag full of a clear fluid, which he began attaching to the  I.V. beside the blood bag. Fifteen minutes later Virgil was asleep.

“That’s good, right? That he fell asleep so fast?”

“Yes. Especially given how much trouble he’s had falling asleep easily in the past. It is best not to disturb him.”

Logan made to leave. “But wait! I can stay here with him, right? As long as I’m quiet?”

“If you wish. And you as well, Roman. I personally find it a rather pointless action, but if you so wish, I simply advise you do everything possible to stay silent and not disturb him. He needs rest if he’s going to recover from this.” With a simple nod, he left.

Roman meowed loudly and left his table to curl up on the couch beside Patton, laying his head on Patton’s leg. “I know. I’m worried too…”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Virgil forced a few eyes open and stared as the room slowly came into focus. He opened his other eyes and stared. A dull ache had overtaken half of his face and his chest. More than anything he was exhausted. Not tired. Not really. But exhausted. A kind of exhausted more sleep couldn’t help. He looked down at the incredibly oddly shaped medical bed he was on, at the I.V. in his arm, the two bags hanging beside his bed. One was mostly full of clear liquid, the other an empty blood bag. He groaned. His head was pounding and he felt so weak he could barely lift one arm. Then the hunger kicked in, and he realized that despite his many attempts he still hadn’t eaten once today. And of course, now that he had time and wasn’t almost being eaten or being dropped from mid-air or cutting himself open, now he was so weak he couldn’t even move to get himself anything. He moaned loudly and heard a shift beside him. He looked over and there was Patton, still in the same spot on the couch he’d sat down on earlier. Roman, still stuck as a cat apparently, was curled up in his lap asleep. He noticed Roman’s fur was still stained with blood. But more urgently he noticed Patton blinking awake. “Oh! You’re awake!” He was whispering.

Virgil tried to force a smile but decided it wasn’t working between those stupid fangs anyway and gave up. “Yeah. I just woke up. What time is it?”

“Uh…” He glanced around and found a clock in the corner of the room. “Ten forty-five. Oh no!” He had noticed the empty bag and rushed to his feet. He rushed over and grabbed the bag. The I.V. tube was still full, but the bag itself had barely a fourth of an ounce left. He sighed with relief. “Sorry I freaked out a bit. I thought it was empty-empty!” Smiling at Virgil, he stepped over to a cabinet of some kind and pulled out a new blood bag, then stumbled and caught himself against the wall before continuing. He disconnected the old bag and started attaching the new.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Hm?” Patton looked up from the successfully replaced bag, stared blankly for a few seconds, then shook his head and blinked a few times before finally focussing on Virgil. “Oh, nothing.” He grinned. “Just a bit… tired. Logan said we took more blood from each other than you’re supposed to, but…” He shrugged.

“Oh.” He looked over at the new bag, then noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and looked the other way to see Roman slinking around the doorframe.

Patton noticed too. “Roman, wait! He knows you would have helped too if you could! Please?” After a moment, Roman turned back and curled up in the doorway, hiding his face under a paw. “Logan wouldn’t let him give you any blood. He said it wouldn’t be safe and the amount he could give wouldn’t… make much of a difference.”

“He wanted to?”

“Yeah! We all did. You… you really scared us. We thought… since we can die like this… we thought we’d lost you for good…”

He hung his head. Wow. If that wasn’t comforting… “It was really that bad?”

Patton nodded, tears already threatening to spill over. “Logan was… really scared. He wasn’t acting like it, but I could tell. You scared him — scared all of us — when we found you like that…” He sniffed and wiped his face. “But anyway! Can I get you anything? A blanket? Is the pain back? I could get you an ice pack or something. Or are you hungry? We never finished that-”

Virgil interrupted. “Ugh, yes, I’m starving!”

Patton smiled. A genuine smile. “I’ll be back then. Can you watch him, Roman?” Roman walked over and hopped back up onto the couch. “Thanks, kiddo.” He smiled one last time and left. When he got to the kitchen, Logan was already there, sitting at the table scribbling something down in a notebook. “Oh, Logan! I was just about to go find you in a minute. Virgil’s awake. I just came to make him… something. Got any ideas? We were working on a smoothie when... “

“I had the impression he doesn’t care for sweet foods?”

“He doesn’t. We just couldn’t come up with anything else.”

“Did he express any particular distaste for vegetable juice?”

“Oh. No, we didn’t even think about that.” Logan nodded once and they dumped the blender, rinsed it out, and started gathering ingredients. Once they were satisfied they blended the mixture, poured it into a cup, and grabbed a straw before heading back to the medical room.

Virgil glanced down at Roman, who was staring at him intently. “What?” In answer, Roman hopped over to Virgil’s odd bed and got up on his back legs, balancing against Virgil’s human waist and pawing at him. “What? Do you want something?” Roman shook his head and pawed at the I.V. tubes gently. “What?” Finally, he yowled, bit his own paw, and dragged it across Virgil’s arm, leaving a tiny trail of blood. He pawed at the tubes again. “Oh! The blood thing cause Logan told you no.” Roman nodded. “Why does that matter? I mean, if both of them are… giving me blood, then I don’t need yours too.” Roman gave him no response and instead curled up and tucked his nose under Virgil’s hand. After a while, Roman’s ears perked up and he hopped off the bed as Logan and Patton came into the room.

“Hey, kiddo! Logan helped me make you something so it’s not sweet.”

They both stepped up beside the bed. “Yes, we made vegetable juice. We used apples, carrots, kale, and-” He looked down. Virgil had grabbed the edge of his shirt and was staring him dead on, his other hand lifted just barely, fist clenching and unclenching.

Virgil didn’t even care how humiliating it was that he couldn’t even hold his own cup, he latched onto the straw and didn’t take a second to actually decide if whatever he was drinking tasted good or not; he was so hungry he didn’t stop for air until the cup was empty. Finally gasping for air, he leaned back against part of the bed and closed his eyes. “You really were hungry. Do you want more?” He nodded.

Patton left the room. “Roman, would you mind accompanying Patton while I ask Virgil a few questions? I am… uncomfortable leaving him alone should anything happen.” Roman left. “Virgil, how is your pain at the moment? Is the morphine strong enough?”

He nodded and reopened his eyes. “Yeah, it’s fine. I mean, it still hurts, but barely.”

He nodded. “Ah, I see Patton has replaced the blood bag already.” He stepped over and glanced into the cabinet thing. “As I assumed, that leaves only one left. After the last one, we will have to disconnect the tube altogether and you should be able to replenish your own blood over time. And that brings me to ask, how is your mobility?”

“I can barely move.” He lifted one hand about six inches before dropping it back down weakly. “I mean, I can move my fingers and stuff, but I can’t handle the weight I guess.”

“That is completely normal. With your level of blood loss, I was afraid…” He cleared his throat. “Under normal circumstances that percentage of blood loss would be lethal. I expect you will be unable to move properly for at least a week, maybe longer.”

“A week?! And I’m just supposed to sit here until then?!”

“Yes. I am quite sure Patton would be willing to entertain you and you can be moved to a different room if you wish, to make it less unpleasant.”

Virgil groaned. He liked Patton, he really did, just… a week of nothing but him? Non-stop? And he wouldn’t be able to move right until then? Then, what? He had to ask someone to make him something every time he was hungry? And what would he do when he needed the bathroom if he couldn’t so much as lift an arm by himself?! He sighed and leaned his head back and just then Patton and Roman came back. Patton tried to hold up the cup for him again, but he spoke up. “Wait. Let me try.” He slowly lifted an arm, inching it higher as it shook. It got about halfway there when it fell back and he cursed. “Hey, it’s alright. It’ll get better.”

“No! No, it’s not! It’s not alright! You say it’ll get better and that’s all well and good but what about now?!”

“Well, now you just have to rest. That’s the only way it’ll get better…”

“Rest. I’ve-” He tried to stifle a yawn and failed miserably- “I’ve done that already.”

Logan raised a single eyebrow at him. “And you will do more if you wish to heal properly.”

He groaned in response and after a long moment Patton held the cup up for him. He gripped around the bottom edge with his remaining pedipalp and let Patton hold the top. Now that Virgil actually took the time to taste it, this juice thing actually… wasn’t that bad. When he was finished Patton set the empty cup on a table and flinched when he turned back. Virgil had moved a few of his tarantula legs, which felt impossibly heavy. He felt a pang of guilt at seeing Patton flinch like that. How had he already forgotten that? Patton’s scared of spiders. He knew he couldn’t control it, but he felt like it was his fault. He was the one who had asked Logan to spike his adrenaline in the first place. Actually, that got him thinking… “If I freaked you guys out as much as you said why haven’t you changed?”

Patton gave him an odd look. “I have. You didn’t notice?” He half-turned and wagged a long tail covered in light blue, short fur that was half curled and perked up. Then he sat down and took off his shoes to reveal feet covered in fur.

“As have I.” Logan sat down as well and removed both shoes. A set of talons replaced what used to be human feet.

“The only one who hasn’t changed is Roman…”

“If my hypothesis is correct, however, animal shifts are less likely to change.”

“That… actually makes sense now that I think about it. I mean, it doesn’t make sense, but I C-A-T the connection!”

Virgil put on a poorly-executed smirk and Logan held back a snort and quickly changed the subject. “Virgil, have you regained any memories of the incident that caused this?”

He shook his head. “I remember right before it, and I think I remember someone… Patton I think… someone running off super worked up? But that’s it. It’s nothing to be excited about.”

“Well, that’s plenty to be excited about! You’re starting to remember something! Even just a bit is good, right?”

“If he wishes to regain said memories, yes. Even the smallest amount of progress is progress. I would not suggest dwelling on the subject until you are in a better state of health, however.”

“That might be easier if someone wasn’t forcing me to sit here and watch the wall.”

“Well let’s get you distracted then! What could we do… Oh! Oh! I just got the best idea! We should have a movie night! We haven’t had one of those since we’ve been stuck here!”

“That… is a considerable idea.”

Virgil answered with a shrug. “Whatever, just not Frozen again.”

Roman jumped up enthusiastically and puffed out his chest with a yowl. “Well, it’s decided then! Me and Roman will go pick out snacks and choose a movie and you can wheel Virgil’s bed into the living room!” With a grin, he jumped up and left the room, Roman right behind him. Logan shook his head and strapped the I.V. pole to the side of the bed before stepping behind it and starting to wheel it into the hall.

“Alright, first we gotta pick a movie.” They stopped in front of the movie shelf. “Got any in mind?” Roman nodded and hopped onto a partially empty shelf to knock a case off. “Oh? I thought you didn’t like that one.” He hopped back down and hissed at the case to assure him that no, he did not like it. Then he hopped over and tucked his head under a blanket, then grabbed it with his claws and pulled it in tight, so it sat on his head like a hood. He put his ears flat and hissed, and hung his head low. Finally, Patton understood. “Oh! You wanna watch it for Virgil!” He nodded. “Aww! That’s so sweet!” Roman jumped out from under the blanket and hissed, pawing at him, then sat down and perked his ears and tail defiantly. “Alright, alright, fine.  It’s noble. Is that better?” Roman nodded once and pawed at the case again. “Alright, I’m goin’.” He turned on the TV and the disc player, then slid the disc in and closed the disc drive. “Now let’s go get the snacks while it loads!”

They returned a moment later, just after Logan had gotten Virgil’s bed situated beside the couch. “We’re… we’re watching The Nightmare Before Christmas?”

“I too am confused by this. Is this movie not one of your least favorites, Roman?”

Roman turned his head away and Patton giggled. “He chose it ‘cause he knows Virgil likes it.”

“You chose a movie… you don’t like… for me? Well, now I’ve seen it all.”

Roman hissed and turned away from him indignantly. “Aw, Roman, he didn’t mean it. He meant to say thank you, right Virgil?”

“Yeah, fine, okay. Thanks.”

“See? Now come on!” Patton moved over to the couch and sat on the side closest to Virgil’s bed, then dumped the mound of snacks he’d brought. “Oh, Virgil. I didn’t know what you’d want but since you liked the stuff me and Logan made earlier, I thought maybe…?” He held out a large bottle of some kind filled with something orange. It had a collapsible straw built into the lid. “It’s carrot juice! And I got you a cup with a lid so you can try to hold it yourself if you wanted.”

Virgil reached out a shaky hand and gripped the bottle tight. After setting it down in front of him, he turned to Patton and hoped that he could tell he was trying to smile. “Uh… thanks.”

“Is everyone settled?” At their nods, Logan picked up the remote and hit play.

[argylemnwrites]

Mortality Rate

Pairing: Bryce Lahela x MC (Cassie Vanderfield)

Book: Open Heart (sometime just after Chapter 10 of Book 1)

Word Count: ~2000

Rating: PG-13 (language)

Summary: Bryce finds an unexpected comfort in a friend after a very rough day.

Author’s Note: Written for Day 3 of the my Autumn writing prompt list (prompt - Falling Leaves) as requested by @andi-the-cat! This started off being inspired by the sight of fallen leaves on the sidewalk, but it kind of took on a life of its own somewhere along the way.

Trigger warning for mentions of blood and death.

Bryce sighed heavily, wrapping his jacket around him more tightly. He didn’t like that it was only October and he was contemplating pulling out his heaviest coat. It did not bode well for him tolerating winter in Boston, that was for sure.

Orange, yellow, and brown leaves coated the sidewalk and crunched beneath his feet as he made his way back to his apartment. Bryce could imagine that for people who grew up with Fall and changing leaves, this was just part of the season. That it seemed like a natural, normal event. But for him, all they did was remind him of death and decay, with their crumbling edges and black and brown rotten holes. The bare branches above him were a similar vision, empty and bleak. All in all, it served as a fitting representation of his day. 

It had been a bad case from the start. Ruptured aortic aneurysms carry about a 50% mortality rate… if they are lucky enough to make it to the OR. Bryce knew that as a fact when he scrubbed in. But this one felt different. The time from collapse to ED to OR was quick. They established vascular access quickly. He really thought Mr. Hendricks was gonna beat the odds.

But the stent occluded the renal arteries and Telana just couldn’t get it repositioned. So they’d had to open him up and recannulate the kidneys with bypass grafts, but his tissue just wouldn’t hold the stitches. It was a bloody mess, culminating in cardiac arrest. V. fib due to loss of blood volume. Bryce had done compressions for 16 minutes before Telana called it. His arms still were sore and burning. The pain made it hard to forget the sheer mess that was the case.

Bryce didn’t know why this one was affecting him so much. He’d had plenty of patients die on him. And it’s not like Mr. Hendricks was a particularly young man or that the outcome was unanticipated given his presentation. But this one stuck with him. Maybe it was the fact that he’d been scheduled for repair next week. Bryce remembered him from clinic, signing the consent forms, telling Bryce that he was looking forward to seeing his grandkids in their Halloween costumes prior to his surgery. He’d probably been walking around with this aneurysm for years, and his aorta couldn’t hold out for eight more days? What shitty luck.

He’d contemplated heading to Donahue’s, but he hadn’t really wanted to plaster on a happy face when he inevitably ran into some other residents. So he was headed home. Alone. Listening to the crunching sound of death and decay surrounding him every step of the way.

A new sound joined the crackle of the leaves beneath his feet as his phone vibrated twice in his pocket. He pulled it out, checking to see who was texting him. He sighed. It was Cassie.

Turns out the walls here are hella thin and sienna and wayne have decided to have a massive fight. 

You interested in some company tonight? 😉

Bryce shoved his phone back in his pocket. As much as he liked Cassie, he was definitely not feeling up for that tonight. But not two minutes later, he felt his phone start buzzing again.

Plz so desperate here.

I will make pancakes for bfast tomorrow for our day off.

They are so loud, just help a girl out.

Bryce sighed, digging in his other pocket for his keys, trying to think up an excuse for Cassie. After a few seconds of searching, not only in his jeans, but also in his jacket, he realized it was all a moot point. He must have left his keys in his locker. Hard to host when even he was locked out.

Pulling out his phone, he shot Cassie a quick reply. Sorry, real shit day and just realized my keys are in my locker. Rain check?

He had just taken a few steps back towards Edenbrook when his pocket buzzed again.

How shit are we talking? I got pimped in the OR and didn’t know the answer or I had to hide out in a supply closet?

Bryce paused and sighed. The latter. I’m just gonna head back to grab my keys then crash.

I’ll go grab em. Edenbrook is basically right in between our places.

Her response caught him off guard. His first instinct was to call her up, insist that he was alright and that she didn’t need to go get his keys, that he would be fine on his own. But he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to keep his voice calm enough to convince her he was okay. And now that she had this plan, a text from him was not going to be enough to stop her. That was something they had in common; they both preferred action over pacivity. If he were in her shoes, he would be the same way.

So instead, he sank down on the steps of his building, huddled in his jacket, thinking about Mr. Hendricks as he watched the leaves fall and swirl around on the sidewalk, some orange like the light on the bovie, some yellow like Telana’s mask, some red like the arterial blood spilling into the abdomen, all constant reminders that everything dies, and at the end of the day, the mortality rate is always 100%. 

He waited there, going over the case in his mind again and again. It could have been 10 minutes, it could have been 110 minutes, Bryce wasn’t really sure, but eventually he saw her pale skin and dark hair out of the corner of his eye, striding briskly down the sidewalk. She had a cardboard tray with to-go cups in phone hand, her other shoved in the pocket of her jacket.

“Hey, Cassie. You find my keys okay?” He called out, hoping his voice sounded lighter than he felt.

“Yeah, they were right there in your locker. Good thing I found them before some envious surgical resident,” she teased as she tossed him the keys. He plastered on a smile as he caught them, but it must have been a poor imitation, because Cassie stared at him deeply and frowned before joining him as he unlocked the front door. 

She stayed silent with him as they climbed the steps to his third floor apartment, and didn’t say anything at first when they entered. Instead, she placed the coffees on his table before she spoke again.

“Alright, another resident, attending, or patient? And do we need this?” she asked as she pulled a flask out of her bag.

“Patient and no,” Bryce replied, actually smiling slightly as she shrugged, shoving the flask back in her bag. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked as she handed him one of the coffees before taking hers and moving to his couch.

Bryce took a sip of the coffee, letting the warmth seep into him. He wasn’t sure whether talking about it would be helpful or not. But Cassie took his prolonged silence into her own hands.

“The fact that you are debating telling me what happened for this long probably means you need to talk about it.”

He nodded tentatively as he walked over and sat next to her on the couch. He allowed himself one more sip of his coffee before he purged his soul, telling her about Mr. Hendricks and the surgery. About meeting him in clinic. About how he was one week away from having the aneurysm electively repaired until fate got in the way today. About how he never would get to see his grandkids Halloween costumes. She didn’t say anything, just let him keep talking, but at some point she reached over and grabbed his hand, running her thumb over his knuckles as he poured his heart out. Eventually he reached the end, and simultaneously relieved and embarrassed. “So yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Bryce, you have nothing to be sorry about. This job can be hard. I would know.”

“Yeah, exactly. You have your own horror stories to deal with. You don’t need mine as well.”

Cassie just shook her head. “We gotta look out for each other, Bryce. Otherwise, we’re all gonna burn out.”

He sighed, contemplating her words. He knew there was wisdom to what she said, he understood that intellectually. Hell, he’d listened to other residents vent on numerous occasions, understanding the importance of talking about the disturbing shit they saw. It still just felt wrong to be the one unloading on someone else. “I just don’t know why this case is hitting me like this,” he said, pulling his hand free from hers and running it through his hair.

“Because you’re human.”

“But they don’t all affect me so much.”

Cassie ran her fingers along the lid of her coffee before she spoke. “In M1 anatomy lab, I was completely fine with our cadaver for weeks. Nothing about dissecting it affected me until we got to the leg. The toe nails were painted bright pink, and I don’t know, something about seeing that visual reminder of a choice that had been made, a mark of self-expression that was still there long after death, I don’t know. It just messed with me.

“It’s hard to know which patient or which event is going to resonate with you, but sometimes they do. And that’s okay, Bryce. It doesn’t mean you aren’t a good doctor.”

“That’s easy for you to say. It’s different when you’re in the OR. I have to maintain some sense of-”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Cassie said, her voice slightly firmer than it had been earlier. “First, we all have to be objective in the moment, so believe it or not, I do understand. Second, were you overcome by emotions in the OR, or were you able to compartmentalize in that moment?”

“I was just focused on what needed to happen; I was visualizing the next steps.”

“Then your emotional response was fine. You’re allowed to feel things after the fact. It doesn’t make you weak or anything.”

Bryce nodded. “I know. It just doesn’t make it easy.”

“If being a doctor were easy, everyone would do it. It’s the best job in the world.”

He looked her in the eye and gave her a smile. She was right. About all of it. But processing the shit they saw was something he was still working on, and quick frankly, he’d had enough of it for one night.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“What kind of liquor does Cassie Vanderfield carry around with her?”

If Cassie was thrown by his shift in conversation topics, she didn’t show it, instead smiling and shaking her head. “It’s not always in my bag,” she said with an eye roll. “I meant to bring whiskey for Irish coffees, but it turns out Jackie finished off our whiskey at our last party, so I had to substitute tequila.”

Bryce grimaced, “God, I’m glad I didn’t say yes to the booze. That sounds completely disgusting, Cassie!”

“I know, but it was either that or Sienna’s blue raspberry vodka, which I think we can agree sounds even worse,” she said with a chuckle, leaning her head to the side as she rubbed her face. A flash of red caught Bryce’s eye. There, caught in the side of her bun was a leaf. So, he reached over and grabbed it, showing it to Cassie before dropping it on the coffee table.

“Oh my God; that was stuck in my hair?”

Bryce grinned at her, then grabbed his coffee from right next to the leaf. The crumbling red and brown still reminded him of death, but somehow it didn’t feel as morbid as it did 30 minutes ago. Sitting there, with an actual friend, well it took the edge off in a way that whiskey, tequila, or blue raspberry vodka never could.

Tags: @mfackenthal @lilyofchoices @thequeenchoices @octobereighth @feartheendlesssummer @tallulahshh @fortunatelywaywardsandwich @dreaming-of-movies @choicesarehard @universallypizzataco @omgjasminesimone @srta-give-me-my-jax-rl

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #20-23 Thoughts

Previous thoughts here.

Well I’m almost a year late but I’m finally here, the end of Renew Your Vows.

So did it go out on a high note.

...um...no....no it did not.

 Having finally read the entirety of Houser’s RYV run (but not yet her Spider-Girls work which I am expecting to be a kind of epilogue) there are three perennial problems.

a)      The discarding of the established, yet short live, status quo of issue #1-12

b)      The post-time skip status quo evoking memories and idea from Spider-Girl due to featuring Spider-Man’s teenaged daughter

c)       An over focus upon Annie herself at the expense of Peter and MJ

I’m of the belief that the first point wasn’t Houser’s fault, that the second point was partially Houser’s fault and the final point is entirely Houser’s fault and indeed exacerbates the problem of the second point.

This arc could’ve course corrected some of those issues but it didn’t, indeed it added to them and created yet more problems.

Now this isn’t to say issues #20-23 were a shit show. Dan Slott and BND provided too many shit shows for me to have the heart of lumping this arc with that dreck.

But it is a story arc that doesn’t work much more than it does work.

Let’s talk positives though.

Houser continues to write Peter and MJ in character and believably for an adult couple with a kid. Peter having his share of Dad jokes is very nice in fact. The scene where MJ and Peter discuss the situation in bed was simply wonderfully executed, short, sweet and simple as it was. It was an example of how you can write these characters with maturity in a mature relationship whilst making it interesting. A small but very nice bit was when the couple exchange a knowing look of suspicion for a second before swinging off, you could tell they both knew their daughter was lying to them.

Annie is also believable as a teenager and distinguished in her personality from Mayday. Her exchange with her parents at the start of the arc rang very true. In it Peter and MJ are believably concerned for Annie and want to know what she was doing; if you lived in a world of super heroes you’d be suspicious in that context too. Annie also understandably for a teen gets pissed off. Another nice touch in connection to this was how there were consequences for Annie after her last arc, seeing as she is very much grounded but also in more contact with Normie than she was before.

However the two biggest triumphs for this arc were in how it brought up Clone Saga continuity.

I know a lot of people have Clone Saga sore spots, but this issue addressed the topic in way that bypassed even haters of the story.

Peter and MJ’s pain and anger over losing Ben and baby May is palpable and poignant, entirely earned by the situation. More than this it’s just a wonderful source for drama Houser was brave enough to mine when nobody else wanted to touch the topic for something like 20 odd years more or less. The graveyard scene especially is easily the highlight of the arc.

Peter and Wolverine’s exchange at the diner was also done very well. Wolverine’s advise struck true to who he is and their dynamic here is immensely preferable to Houser’s first issue where Peter was played as something of a beta to Logan. In this series they are both seasoned heroes and fathers with a long history so them talking candidly and personally as they did added up. Peter over dramatically breaking a glass and being indifferent to the shards cutting his hand open though...that was just stupid.

Also for what they were the action scenes were decent enough, the first battle between Annie and her ‘clone’ in particular was well done.

That...unfortunately...is where the positives end though.

The single biggest problems with this arc specifically are that it’s overly focussed upon Annie and features Mister Sinister as the villain.

Now you might argue that there is precedence for this in Houser’s earlier work.

However precedence alone is not necessarily justification.

Clearly building up Mister Sinister as the final boss does little in the way of justifying why, in the final arc of this series about Spider-Man and his family our final villain is...an X-Men character...who’s motivations indeed revolve  around the X-Men. The X-Men taking up page time from the Parker family has been a running issue in this series and I don’t get why, of all things, the post-time skip RYV stories chose that  to be consistent about.

Sinister isn’t even an X-Men villain who’s immediately familiar with general audiences. He’s a complicated and somewhat cryptic character whom, if memory serves, has never (or at least rarely) crossed paths with Spider-Man in any continuity. He’s not like Magneto or anything so throwing him into this series, then not really explaining what his powers even are or much of his background is taking the audience for granted. It’s expecting the audience of a Spider-Man comic to have X-Men knowledge (not even simple X-Men knowledge at that) or worse that they should go do their own homework t find out who he is, which is just objectively bad writing.

It just feels like what we’ve been building to for 10+ issues was essentially an X-Men story that happens to involve the Parker family and Normie Osborn. At least the final pre-time skip arc involved the X-Men in a secondary role to the Parker family, it still revolved around them.

The second biggest problem with this arc is with Annie.

Annie and her relationship with her parents doesn’t really grow or develop much in this arc. Now that could be forgiven because she got a fair bit of development in the last arc. But maybe giving her that development was a mistake as her development in this story, the final  outing for the series as a whole amounts to her coming clean about her Spider Sense visions.

That’d be minor development at best, but what makes this worse is...Annie already told her parents about those.

Now maybe I missed something because I took such big breaks between arcs, but Annie told her parents of her visions back in issue #5!

So it’s just a massive continuity flub for Annie to be acting like she’s been keeping it a secret for eight years.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a throwaway line but her concealment of this fact is the crux of her arc in this story and of her relationship with her parents, playing into the resolution of the story and even the very last page.

It just breaks the narrative.

Now in fairness if you ignored every story before Houser’s run, Houser does a good job of realistically justifying how and why Annie kept it a secret and her reveal of it is humerous. But nevertheless...it doesn’t make any sense.

It doesn’t help that between Spidey’s teenage daughter have spider sense future visions and the plot revolving around a possible clone of said teenage daughter created in secret Osborn labs and her wearing a mostly blue outfit this arc is seriously evoking Mayday Parker’s adventures.

Possibly this was intentional as we find up subverting the expectation of clones when we learn that in fact the ‘clones’ are just...genetically engineered beings grafted powers from Annie’s stolen DNA.

Whilst this provides something different it’s also in truth kind of...less dramatic than if they had in fact been clones. That way you could’ve even shallowly touched upon themes of identity and said something about who the Parker family is. Instead they’re about as poignant as Blood Spider.

The arc is further hurt by not really properly explaining how or why Annie was able to see the future/see through the eyes of the mutates with her powers. In fact it tries to claim that this only happens when her ‘clone’ is focussed upon her and yet the first vision she has is when her ‘clone’ attacks some tourists. How/why was she focussed upon Annie in that moment?

The arc’s final major failing is, as I mentioned, with focussing upon Annie at the expense of her parents.

I thought given how Houser’s opening arc was more evenly divided between thee leads and then we got an Annie centric arc and then a Peter/MJ centric issue that we’d wrap up with another arc given over to all of them. But it’s still more Annie’s show than anyone else’s.

Yes we get some inner thoughts from MJ in two issues and a bit more than that from Peter. But it’s mostly there to spice up the scenes they occur in. They offer little insight into the thoughts and feelings of the elder Parkers and they are totally drowned out in comparison to Annie’s inner thoughts.

This is sad because the book isn’t supposed to be about Annie but the family as a whole.

But Houser’s approach in this arc tries to strike this weird arrangement wherein the scheme at play is about the X-Men, but the plot is focussed upon Annie’s side role within that plot, but also tries to give time over to Peter and MJ as severely beta leads to Annie.

And it consequently renders the arc as neither an X-Men story, nor a Parker family story and a weaksauce Annie story.

It’s like this arc is ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ but if Rosencrantz got much more focus than Guildenstern....but then their story is a fleshed out side story in like Macbeth instead of Hamlet so they’ve got little reason to actually be involved in the central conflict but are anyway.

It’s such a weird creative choice.

Now I’ll still go to bat for Houser, and still argue she should do more Spider-Man work. Her problems on this book nevertheless show me she gets these characters. But I think now the series is wrapped up it’s fair to say she got the premise of Renew Your Vows but let her preference to write for Annie (the character who’s been around for less than 5 years and who as a teen is practically a blank slate) compromise the job she was assigned to do. Because as I said, it’s not like it’s just this arc. Annie got a lot of focus in every issue under Houser sans issue #19.

Other smaller problems with the arc include:

-          Annie’s dream might’ve been a something of a rip-off of ‘Fearful Symmetry’, an early episode of ‘Justice League Unlimited’ in which Supergirl witnesses the actions of her murderous clone during her dreams.

-          It’s made seriously unclear what Annie’s ‘clone’ did t the tourists she attacked or indeed why she attacked them at all

-          Annie’s ‘clone’ has an okay design but it becomes rather banal when you see it repeated with the other Parker ‘clones’

-          The names for the ‘clones’ are rather over complicated and dull. They do make a nice joke or two out of this though

-          There was little point in having Normie grow six arms beyond cheap tension and a dash of fanservice

-          The climax had some nice jokes about how Peter hated their family car, but it seemed out of place in context and also I find it hard to believe Peter would go quite as far as he did in wrecking the thing

-          The final moments of the arc and series as a whole feel very pat and uninspired. Like Houser had to wrap it up for the sake of wrapping it up because they needed to move onto the next thing

-          The art was a bit sketchy and felt unfinished

My kneejerk reaction was to give this a C- but looking back I gave the last major arc that too and that was definitely better than this.

So I guess...D+I hate sending this series off with that grade but it is what it is.

Hopefully Spider-Girls will be an improvement

P.S. I also just remembered Wolverine referenced Hank McCoy but...didn’t he die back in like issue #6 or 7? wtf

[luxlightly]

Grafted: A Stricklake Fanfic

So this is tiny and awful but I basically just wanted to share a headcanon. I just kind of threw out a random ending because it’s like 2am and I want it to be done.

MAJOR SEASON 3 SPOILERS BENEATH THE CUT. 

“Walter?” Barbara asked.

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.” Strickler replied.

“How do you fit your wings under that tiny cape?”

“Huh? Oh!” Strickler laughed. “I don’t.”

He pulled the side of his cape up to prove his point. No wings hid beneath it.

“I couldn’t possibly fit them beneath this tiny thing,” he chuckled.

“Wait, so…you don’t always have them?”

“Certainly not. Far too unwieldly to have around all the time.”

“But…then you just…grow them?”

“Ah, no,” Strickler said, pausing to think of how to best explain. “My troll form, and my wings along with it, are sort of…always, what I am. My human form is a sort of…glamour I suppose?”

“But, then shouldn’t I be able to feel your troll form when I touch you in human form, if it’s an illusion?” Barbara asked.

“Not quite an ‘illusion’, the normal sense of the word. More along the lines of…a slight…distortion of reality. I can control, to some extent, how much of a distortion it is. How much of the ‘real’ me I display to the world at any time.”

“What about your clothes, then? What happens to them when you change? Are they…real?”

“Real. Rest assured, my dear, I am quite clothed. They are simply…hm…stored? Stored is a good word I suppose. In a sort of extra dimensional place depending on which I choose to don. It doesn’t necessary have to do with my form itself. I could just as easily do this:” A flash of green light dimmed to show him, in troll form, in his human outfit. “As this:” Another flash and he was back in his normal cloak.”

“So, could you just store your whole wardrobe in there and change clothes at will?”

Strickler chuckled again.

“I’m afraid my control over that is limited to about the one outfit I wear in each form. Perhaps Otto could have accomplished something along those lines, but it’s beyond by ability.”

Barbara pondered everything she’d been told for a moment.

“But…if not to hide your wings, why wear a cloak at all?” she asked at last. “It’s not as though you’re shy about being shirtless.”

Strickler coughed, embarrassed.

“I’d just feel a bit naked without anything, I suppose. Besides I like the knives.” he said, smirking.

Then the smirk faded.

“That was a lie,” he said, seemingly less to Barbara and more to himself. “I lied to you just then. I do that a lot, I’ve noticed. It’s somewhat compulsive, I suppose. It’s never behooved me not to lie. It’s part of my nature…” he trailed off.

“I…don’t want to lie to you,” Strickler said, after a moment. “An odd feeling, for me. Even more so I feel as though I’d like…to be truthful with you. A terribly dangerous way to feel for a…being such as me. And yet…I mean, it wasn’t entirely a lie. It had its seeds in truth. All the best lies do, I suppose…”

Strickler couldn’t seem to help the words spilling out of his mouth. Everything he said was always planned, always calculated. Always formal and practiced and perfect. Yet, in speaking his actual feelings, and especially to Barbara, he found that words simply tumbled from him much without regard to the rigorous standard of articulation he usually held them to.

Thankfully, Barbara cut him off before he rambled anymore.

“What was the lie?” she asked.

“That that’s the reason I always wear a cloak,” Strickler said. “As I said, I suppose that is, in part the truth but truly I…don’t want anyone to see what’s beneath it.”

“But…you said your wings weren’t there unless you wanted them to be.”

Strickler smiled sadly.

“They are and they aren’t. It’s…nothing I’ve…ever discussed with anyone…”

“And you never have to,” Barbara said. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“But I…I want you to know,” Stickler said, amazed at his own words, and even more amazed that they were true. “I want you to see. I want you to…know me.”

He chuckled at the preposterousness of it.

“’Me’. What a ridiculous concept. And yet I find myself saying it with utter sincerity.”

He laced his fingers together, nervously.  Taking a steadying breath, he turned around. In another flash of green, his cloak disappeared, leaving his back bare.

He couldn’t see Barbara’s face, but he heard her gasp. He winced.

“Walter…what is this?” she asked, sounding horrified. And why wouldn’t she be, at seeing the extent of the aberration that was his existence?

“Stalklings,” Strickler said. “They’re a kind of winged troll. Vicious, powerful, and immune to sunlight to boot. Unfortunately, not all that good at stealth. But, when combined (quite literally, he added in his mind, darkly) with the shapeshifting abilities of a changeling…”

Strickler jumped suddenly when he felt a hand against his back. Running over the edges where one type of stone blended into the other.

“…how?”

“Grafting, they called it,” Strickler explained. “Breaking off the stone of one troll and implanting it into the still growing stone of a youngling.”

He felt Barbara’s hands continue to explore his back. He knew what she saw, though he actively avoided looking at it himself. Two, ragged, greyish black hunks of stone, forced into his stone skin on either side of his spine, and a jumbled smattering of fracture lines and creeping veins where the two ores had fought each other’s presence before finally admitting a truce.

“It was some of the Gumm Gumm’s earlier, more experimental work. Many young changelings either shattered during the grafting process itself or broke apart as the two types of stone rejected each other. I am one of the very few who survive to this day.”

“Walter…I…” Barbara began.

Strickler didn’t quite know why he was bracing himself. It’s not like, at this point, he was still hoping she wouldn’t find any part of him revolting. He’d long given up the hope anyone would.

“Walter I’m so sorry.”

Strickler blinked. He turned around to face her and was shocked to see tears in her eyes.

“Sorry?” Strickler parroted, dumbfounded. “Whatever for?”

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Barbara said. “Everything I’d heard about what they did to changelings is so awful and now this. I just…I feel so terrible for you.”

“For…me?”

“Of course, how could I not?”

That gave Strickler pause.

“You’re not…revolted?” he asked.

“Of course, I am!” Barbara said, then quickly corrected herself when she saw Strickler wince ever so slightly. “Not by you! By what you had to endure! By what was done to you. As beautiful as it looks now, it was wrong.”

Strickler seemed to forget how to breath for a moment.

“B-beautiful?” he choked. “You can’t be serious. This is…a deformity! A defect! An…impurity.”

“Sometimes things that are impure…are the most beautiful things of all. I mean…you…are anyway…” Barbara seemed to stumble. “Heh,” she laughed. “I’m not as good at this smooth-talking thing as you are.”

“And a blessing that is,” Strickler breathed.

Barbara gave him a questioning look.

“If it were any other case…I wouldn’t possibly be able to believe you.”

[christopher89]

To those who we use to be enlightened by that is like a soft burning feeling like a candle that is lite. It's like a sticky feeling that cannot be let go even if they still love you or not but what God has put in me to those who knew it not where it's from. We was build onto them who are not as tasteful, less attractive and can be very decent.

They are like a mire that has to be watered. So we feed them with my words, and gave them knowledge to keep. We gave them my truth that they ask for and they gave me their hearts to me.

Eventhough we may end up feeling picky about accepting the odds that seems to be the abnormal. It's a rocky road but willing to take the risk by making the difference that no one could do. It may not be all that desires but it's up to me to graft them in.

And no matter what the long run says. Because when that time comes, they either may or may not care about me no more. They may spit on it and tell you to leave me alone I have nothing to do with you anymore. We may feel broken and hurting by it and seems like my identity was taken. We get the feeling of being deceived, grieved, sick, and weak minded. I was like a broken vessel but for a long while it shall come to pass when it's healed and become stronger and the wisdom will increase. They might of took my advice and use it in some other way that doesn't always line out and probably wouldn't care if we gave them understanding. So they pass on and we hope for the best of them. We know that they are not our enemy for the best advice is the love them and do good hoping for nothing. Whether they are still living or not living but having forgiveness. Eventhough we still shine in them that God has given me that it cannot be taken away out of me. Because the good things were honored and not of evil. For this case we will pass it on to next for the better that it will caring on that is made manifest to another.

Eventhough we must let go of the past that hunts us, not looking back nor go back that you will make it more worse. Eventhough God had put that there for a purpose, to show me that example. Notice that He can make the impossible that we are picky about and while we were ignorant with our pride and while we stayed bounded with our strongholds. Whatever comes in our way to yield us we end up putting it in the back burners. He never gave up on us even if we tried to locomotive it out of the way like nothing. He can cast down something that is so mighty without a muscle. He can bring something out of nowhere that we don't have a clue of what we dont understand.

God is guiding my heart where I wouldn't care about any other that gets in the way. He is my shepherd that I wouldn't want any other because He is all I want. No matter how marvelous or precious or how beautiful it appears because there's no light in the candle. When you have the spirit of light that shines in you nothing can talk it away. And matter where the shinning light of that person is because it will stay in the heart forever. Eventhough we don't treat them like they are our god but we became admired by them. When God had brought this person, something was different about that person. And no matter how hard they fought to get your attention to them and neither care about what others say about them. And suddenly when you give up your pride and went and tried to give that person the opportunity. Eventhough first it may be uncomfortable but that person is very simple that you may have to get down towards their level for them to understand. Because enticing words and what you do may be to complicated for them too understand it. Your simple is different from their simple. Then later on down road when you both are getting too understand each other and a bit used to it. You may get the sense a light of a taste that you begin to be a little humbled for more and a little more, you might stumble across something that may not be as pleasant, but seem to be eager around it.

It makes you wanna found a different taste and when you end up wanna found another taste to leave the process going. You make the decision to go after something different for the while. But all in suddenly you start to realize that taste that you may miss that has gotten your attention. You get this slight mushy feeling and a bit tender. You remember your first love and promising to go back that if they will take you back because their taste couldn't compare to the first taste. And when yall are fully committed to each other and suddenly from their everything around you seems to be consumed one by one that you don't associate with any other thing longer no more.

No matter how long we move on for the best and to start afresh beginning. Because at first we get over it sooner that we don't get an feeling for it anymore. But when it comes back to you again and only just remember what still sparks in you, that is still shines in you. Not just remembering the dark past that is let go but what was kept for the promise that was for the good. Without God's light of vision that was put in us we would not see them in that way.

And make sure of this, that when it comes unexpected never let your guard down that which you built on. Because if we can't contain our foolish and been lead captured in the snare and yoy will end up falling away without being concerned.

So can you be illuminated by those who are very decent? Let's say this for an example if you go to prison, you can't pick and choose what you like be delighted too. They give you what you should be delighted to you whether you like it or not. And know we have the opportunity to whoever we should be the light whether they are decent, average, or popular in the same manner.

Being set free, the bondage is broken and our former lifestyle is crucified and we became a new creature. For all those are set far off from us that we are free indeed but the journey is only the beginning. For we are witnesses that we become a testimony to someone who can also be set free from their bondage.

[fantroll-purgatory]

Ok, ok. So this is my Highblooded fantroll, Dommih. If your still available, can you please help me out?

Thanks for your patience! As we clear the backlog, your troll caught my eye because of the interesting sprite.

Also, im sorry if its a bit weird, im on the mobile version of tumblr.

FIRST: Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU?

Alternia, my own session of sgrub

Aight, per the rules I gotta be stricter with my sprite edits! I know it’s frustrating but unless otherwise stated we do our best to remain a canon-compliant blog (though the current batch of trolls in the Troll Call have successfully invalidated a number of our former “rules”). In the end I *did* give you a bonus shirtless version since I felt there was detail that went unconveyed with his shirt on.

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why):

Dommih Presea

The first name i had used a generator. It was one of the only ones that really stood out for me! As for his last name, its was a play on ‘Pixies’ and fish puns, (sea being the pun). I had messed around with the first part for a bit until it started looking somewhat readable. This happened until it is what you see today!

Hmmm I can get down with the last name, but for the first how about Doflin, from the scientific name for the North Pacific giant octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini). It also helps that it kinda sounds like “dolphin,” if you wanna keep going with the nods to oceanic fauna.

Age: 6 sweeps

Strife Specibus: Bident-kind

Fetch Modus: Connect four

If we wanna strengthen the octopus theme, why don’t we go with a MASSIVE Connect Eight? It would be an exceptionally difficult modus from which to retrieve anything, which means Doflin needs to be very quick on his feet! Er, tentacles?

Blood color: Magenta (i would very much love to keep it as it is!)

I’m probably going to adjust it to Feferi’s color which is pretty close to what you already gave me tbh.

Symbol and meaning: his symbol, pictured above, was a twist on Feferi’s own symbol. I simply curved it abit, and added the swirls one end of each side, as you can see!

Honestly I think it fits! I went and resprited it using Feferi’s actual symbol as a base so it reads a little neater but it’s p good. I think you sent this in before the extended zodiac was released, so if you want him further adjusted to fit with the new canon I am more than happy to do so! I personally think Picorn works well because a) I classed him as a Rage player and b) it kinda looks like a tentacle’s sucker.

Lusus: Octopus

I believe all tyrianbloods have Gl’bgolyb as a lusus since there’s only ever supposed to be one at a time, which is just as well since she’s basically a massive octopus anyway. Male tyrianbloods are supposedly exceptionally rare, and trolls are often matched with a lusus of the same gender for whatever reason, so if you’re dead set on having an Octodad in true videogame fashion, it may help to come up with a reason why.

(For example, perhaps Gl’bgolyb gave birth to a horrifying troll-horrorterror hybrid, and Doflin is a test troll who has been given to this hybrid to test if it can be used as a backup parent for backup heirs? It would give Doflin a reason to play in his (presumably doomed) run of SGRUB if he doesn’t have much to do save wait for his antecedent to die, which is unlikely to happen in the near future, and it would also give you a convincing reason for his odd appearance; it doesn’t matter if he’s a mutant since he’s basically a test run who isn’t expected to succeed the Condesce)

Personality: He is a narcissistic troll, who takes pleasure in hurting other trolls and seeing others suffer. He wouldnt care if you were to break your arm, there would be no sympathy. He lies, cheats sometimes, and finally, has stolen from others. However, he only sees it as fun, and doesn’t want to change for anything.

I think the fundamental problem here is that you are describing someone who fits perfectly with Alternian ideals and nothing else. This would be like giving me a bio for a human that said “they like to hang out sometimes!” What does that mean? This doesn’t mean that a character cannot have that trait, but that there needs to be specificity. For example, a character who likes to hang out might do so at a mall, at their friends’ parties, or just invite a person or two to come home and play video games. Each of those details gives a clearer picture of the kind of person it is.

So, give me more details to flesh him out! Does he go wandering around populated areas looking for a fight, or is he the type to meticulously plan a one-man heist? Is this attitude the reason he’s so scarred all over? What’s the story behind that? Answering these questions will help you in the future when you try to stay consistent with his characterization.

Title: Kaiser of Life (i would also love to keep this)

I just looked this up and it looks like, as a fan class, it’s basically Prince of Life but with a higher ranking? It’s my personal bias that most fan classes are easily subsumed by a sufficiently well-explained canon title, but I guess I don’t object to just the cosmetic change. However, the character you’ve described doesn’t seem to be a Life player at all (even one from a destructive class!), especially since your bio doesn’t really specify that he’s a cold-blooded murderer so much as that he’s just…apathetic? I would say he seems more like a Rage player, especially since he’s set in his ways and furthermore narrows others’ options through injury. Personally, I feel he’d make a good Thief of Rage, especially since “high class thief” is a fun trope to play with.

Land: Land of Precipice and Silence

I kinda like Land of Onslaught and Outbursts, an underwater land with active volcanoes that must explode to create a land path to the denizen atop a high mountain. Unfortunately, doing so endangers the aquatic life! It’s a perfect parallel to both his status as a seadweller highblood and is a means of harnessing his own violent outbursts to a greater end.

Dream Planet: Derse (same here!)

I’m always okay with tyrianbloods on Derse, especially since Gl’bgolyb is herself a minor horrorterror.

On to the redesign!

Your sprite was saved a JPEG and much larger than a standard sprite, so I sized it down for comparison and basically made a new one while copying over elements of the original.

Horns - based on your description of his symbol, I figured you were going for horns similar to Feferi’s with minor alterations. So I literally just took Feferi’s horns and added a hook to the end of one of them. I also liked the kind of curly ones you added to the bottom, so I have a miniature version nestled in all that hair.

Hair - I started with a bun base from naphal’s sprite sheet, then merged with with the hair you already gave him, then futzed with it for a long, long time.There’s a new instagram trend called an “octopus bun,” which is basically just a fancy term for the messy bun that we’ve all done if we’ve had long hair that we needed out of the way, but it gave me a good starting point. If you count the tendrils of hair coming off his head, you’ll find that there are eight, and it really does look like there’s an octopus sitting on his head!

Eyes/Scars - I actually just used your existing unscarred eye to create a template for the cleaner ones. The other eye is a little scrunched up due to the scar tissue over it, which I grabbed from this template by fryingpanismyweapon on deviantArt. This is the case for all of the additional scars you see on him.

Freckles - I wasn’t sure if there were freckles on your original troll or just noise from saving it as a JPEG, but between that and the fact that you used a grey tinged with his blood color, I liked the idea of some grey and blood colored freckles on him. I used this template from x_pandatastic_x to get the effect, then messed with the existing ones to get his other freckles. You can see in the shirtless version that I provided that the freckles cover his entire body.

Ears - he’s a seadweller so unless you have a reason he’s gotta have the fin ears.

Mouth - once again, I just took the one you made and cleaned it up a bit! I feel like it has a lot more personality than any sprite sheet template I could conjure up.

Shirt - like I said, if this is an Alternian he still (usually) needs a black something with his symbol on it (though as I mentioned before, recent Troll Call reveals have indicated that it doesn’t need to be as strict as we previously thought). I used naphal’s sprite sheet to give me a base, then messed with it until I got something that resembled a swim shirt. That said, I still gave him a shirtless sprite to show that I kept the chest scars under all that

Fins - I will honestly admit that this is just a spriting limitation for me. I could not for the life of me figure out how to make the fins work on the torso without looking atrocious. I still liked the element, though, so I grafted them onto the backs of his feet with some scar tissue and ripping to boot.

Shorts - I noticed that you did pants for your original sprite, but given his whole concept it really felt like he was more of a swim shorts guy. Once again, I used naphal’s sprite sheet for a base, then added details like the drawstring to try and fit with what you were originally going for. The teal color you used for the majority of the shorts in your sprite didn’t really track for me without a solid reason, so I tried to devise my own color scheme. I came up with the purple pockets to reference Gamzee, the best-known canon rage player, and the blue underlining as a reference to Vriska, the thief. This is much in line with Feferi’s coloring which takes from Jade, the Beta Kids’ Witch, and Jane, the Alpha Kids’ Life player. As a bonus, it looks like that really specific color combo that all those soccer moms wore on their windbreakers in the late 90s/early 00s? I don’t know if you want to go that tacky, but I had a lot of fun doing so, and feel that there’s canon support given that every tyrianblood we’ve seen so far has been notoriously tacky with their fashion choices.

Feet - The barefoot one is from tajazzled/fan-troll’s now-ubiquitous sprite sheet. You used some fairly standard shoes for him, which worked just fine, but after I made the foot fins I wanted to give him footwear that made sense to me. Since one of them is ripped, I figured some scuba flippers would be a good way for him to get around underwater. This one is modified from fantrollartroom’s templates.

Aaaaand that’s it! I really liked your character a lot, and I hope you like the changes I made!

-TR

[captainmvf]

The Golden Days Are Over- Part II (Chapter 2)

Part II Summary: The story of Carta Faber starts with the story of Ti Gold and how she perished in the early eighties with her partner, Ob Gold. But why is there a shroud of darkness over the fifteen robots and why did the actions of one purple gal trigger all of this bloodshed?

Chapter 2 Summary:

Ti Gold learns a few new feelings and separates from Ob Gold. Soon, it's the best day of their life. 

It's finally here! I've been busy with schoolwork and have been working on this chapter little by little but haven't found anything in my brain to write. I'll make sure the next chapter is written fast but hopefully I'll be working on my final.

Read it on AO3--> (x)

Ti Gold learned what hate was.

When a young child accidently dropped their vanilla ice cream on her midnight satin pants she was slightly annoyed but laughed it off as a childish antic. As the manager to the restaurant complained about her and Ob Gold in front of the duo she grew to dislike him greatly for his negative attitude and ugly appearance. But when Delilah ever walked into her view, heavily violet colored form smirking at her or someone else from afar, the air in the room grew heavy and thick with discomfort.

Ob Gold would either give her partner a disapproving look or a sharp cough whenever she saw Ti Gold stare hard at the security guard. She couldn’t see anything wrong at all from her viewpoint but there was always something or other that made her partner freeze up and emit a rumbling within their chest.

It soon became apparent to Ti Gold that Ob Gold had a flawed processor and that there was a growing rift between the two. After each performance on stage she found that Ob Gold didn’t want to bring up an actual topic of discussion.

The taller robot would look at Ob Gold, “Today was a great performance.”

Ob Gold would nod before looking away, “It was.”

“Let’s have a blast tomorrow.”

They would then not talk to each other for at least twelve hours.

Soon the staff then noticed more disturbances offstage whenever closing hours were in effect. Pots and pans would be spread in odd places in the kitchen, supplies would be jumbled together in the Janitor’s closet, stage lights and props would be pushed towards the middle of the stage almost like a dividing line, and more children’s drawings would appear on the wall albeit a bit darker or heavier than the other pieces. This was first pushed aside as just a weird coincidence by the staff but as this continued over the weeks they then decided that this could no longer stay unsolved.

A team was decided to deal with this one Thursday night as they were told to hide out around in staff-only chambers until they felt a disturbance after hours. On this such team was one of the previous mechanics that had helped set up the two golden animatronics, a begrudging Christian, and the manager himself.

They had to wait two whole hours after closing until Christian saw the tall figure of Ti Gold walk past.

He dared to not move as the tall robot sauntered past the boiler closet. Ti Gold’s eyes were lowered to a dim setting that made the lights on her face appear as pinpricks. Her front was shaded and hard to make out with the drowsy lighting. She moved slowly as she made her way towards the back of the restaurant.

Christian peered slightly out of the door and watched as Ti Gold’s large form faded into the darkness.

On the other side of the restaurant, the manager was hidden in a corner that was hardly accessible to the daytime patrons. He watched as Ob Gold walked calmly from the stage area and towards the kitchen. The lights in her eyes were off and she had the appearance of a ghost in the pale lighting.

An idea came to him as soon as she disappeared from sight behind the pane glass windows that were grafted onto the kitchen doors.

Friday morning, he stormed into the dinner with a mechanic that was new to both robots. He found both ready to start the day on stage, each with a dark expression on their fake faces.

“There will be no more nightly wanderings from the two of you,” he announced. “Following Amelia’s shock I should have impounded the two of you back onto your places but no, I was too lenient.”

Ti Gold squinted in his direction.

“Allow me to introduce your new babysitter, the night guard, Ethan,” he then gestured to the man that came in with him. Ethan gave a little wave.

Ob Gold looked at Ethan and gave him a warm smile, “Hello.”

Ti Gold turned her back out of spite but wished she wouldn’t appear so mean in front of someone new.

“You are to remain on stage for the rest of the night or you will be revoked your daytime privileges for the following day. Are we understood?”

Ob Gold nodded but it took Ti Gold a few moments to struggle out a ‘yes sir’ before going back to adjusting her microphone.

Ethan followed the manager out.

Once the doors slammed shut behind them, the long-haired robot turned angrily to her partner, “This is all your fault.”

“Me?” Ti Gold barked out a snobbish laugh that she had learned from Delilah. “I only went out to check security but I somehow managed to scare one of the guards! How did I cause this?”

“If you hadn’t been so obsessed with Delilah then you wouldn’t have gone off the deep end!”

Ti Gold swiftly turned to face her partner, “Oh so we’re back to discussing about how I’m crazy and Delilah is a saint? I know what I saw! I had security programming running in my systems when I gazed at her!”

“Bullshit!” Ob Gold emitted a swear and growled like Christian would when his engineering work went wrong. “I have seen her do nothing but good and yet you let some software that may be on the fritz judge your surroundings for you?”

“It’s working fine! I even saw a guy outside with long pants that was painted purple as well!”

“That proves nothing. We have a job to entertain the children during the day and nothing else. It’s time you got your head out of the crowd and back into the stage lights.”

The two didn’t speak for a full week.

Ethan did come in for his shift every night at twelve, just a few minutes after the rest of the staff left. He would sit in the office and watch the security feed every five-to-ten minutes to check for any movement.

The two instead who only ‘deactivate’ after each performance and only move and speak during performances. This was a childish display of playing dead to the manager but thankfully he would only nod in confirmation and mutter ‘just as machines are supposed to act’ before walking away.

Ethan grew lax as he saw that Ti and Ob Gold had given up on moving after hours and had quit trying to kill time for themselves. He started to barely even check the cameras, only the stage. A few times he would swear that he saw one flinch or look his way but the feed would go out and return before everything appeared normal.

Ti Gold hated being a statue. Ob Gold only put up with it because she was loyal to a fault.

Then one night, a most curious incident occurred.

It happened while Ethan was sound asleep in the office, snoring away in the faux leather chair. Both of the robots heard a tapping noise at the front entrance and a faint ‘tick’ before a rock smashed through the glass window.

Both jumped in alarm at the noise but Ethan only snoozed away as he laid at the other side of the building. A black-clad figure eased their way between the shards of glass before stepping onto the tiled floor, mindful of the smashed glass. Another figure, almost identical to the first, stepped through the smashed entry way and gestured to the security camera that was currently facing away from them.

The two then stealthily stuck close to the walls and hung in the darkened areas of the establishment.

They passed the curtained stage and one pointed to the other-

“Hey, Earl.”

“Shh!”

“Wanna try behind those curtains? It’s dark enough that even a regular camera won’t even take notice of us.”

“You forgot the term probably.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“…if this fails, you’ll be the one paying bail this time.”

With a final nod to each other, the two made their way behind the curtains just as the camera’s view swiped over where they had entered from.

Both stood up from their spots on the polished wood and looked up in awe at the two unmoving robots. They knew that there would be performing machines but they wouldn’t have thought that the two would be so tall…or so unguarded.

The burglar known as ‘Earl’ quietly spoke, “How much money do you think we can pawn off for at least one of these?”

“They’re new,” Earl’s partner replied. “Also they’re on different technology as the others in that location down south.”

“Ohio?”

“No, that one’s just…different.”

“Supposing that they run on batteries or need charging, do you think we’d also need to steal their equipment?”

“Not really, with all the tech junkies around they’ll probably find some way to make it work for them.”

“We could get delicious money off of them, but we don’t have enough muscle power to take them both or just one of them.”

“You’re right, we came for the money and we’re going to leave with this branch’s savings. Let’s go.”

The two looked around before exiting backstage.

Once out of earshot, both Ti Gold and Ob Gold slowly turned their heads in the direction of where the suspicious two went off.

Ti Gold was the first to speak up, “We have to stop them.”

Ob Gold responded, “Yes, but let’s be rational. If Foreman finds out-“

“I don’t care about what the manager has to say,” Ti Gold glared. “He can go stick a couple of breadsticks up his ass.”

Her partner put her hands over her ears at the sharp language. Ob Gold had recently found out about the impact of saying ‘nasty’ words with Ti Gold but only the longer haired of the two decided to follow up with clean words.

She sent her partner a very unappetizing look before removing her hands from her ears, “We can’t let Ethan see us move around or we’ll get reported and reformatted.”

The word ‘reformatted’ was tossed at them a few days ago as a warning. Both robots then learned what a racing feeling in their air tubes and the combined power of their processors stalling was called.

Fear.

To put a robot under such a horrific experience was a sentence worse than death. It held the same meaning as brainwashing but with more lobotomizing towards the body, forcing the given robot to have a changed state of mind and to remove the basic functions that gave them personality. If each robot were given the same basic design, then each robot would be given the name of ‘Drone’ with a serial number that provided no expectations of what they were built for.

It meant that if the golden show business duo didn’t follow the man-versus-machine rules, then they would be put under the mechanic’s watchful gaze and sent out to look like a chipmunk and chop wood- forgotten forever.

…well, figuraly speaking.

Ti Gold clenched and unclenched their fists. She looked Ob Gold in the eye, “Fine, give me a plan.”

Ob Gold gave her a sly smile.

Down the hall the two burglars went as they easily made their way towards the back of the building to where Ethan was snoozing away the early hours, dreaming of the precious money his daddy will bestow upon him after completing yet another easy shift. Just two…or three more…hours left…

It was then that Earl had the terrible sensation of being watched. He looked up at the security camera closet to him as it stayed in place, never once blinking red to signal that the security guard was looking through it. The blonde shrugged it off and lead his cohort further towards the desk in the back.

“Hey, do you hear that?” the other burglar shook him out of his focus.

“It’s just the AC Tim, sometimes it whistles depending on the temperature,” Earl spat back.

“No dude, listen.”

The two stopped and Earl brushed the hair away from his right ear in order to pay close attention to whatever sounds were emanating within the building. It sounded like what you would expect from within the walls of a wood and cement one-story building built in the early eighties. There was the classic AC keeping the machinery cool and the humming of vents and fridges, the whirring of security cameras and the snores and sniffles of a tired guard, the dripping of a leaky pipe outside of the building and the howling winds of a hot summer night silently caressing the windows and bricks that decorated the outside.

Then there it was.

Softly, almost blending in with the background, were slow music notes. They weaved and danced around all the other noises and flowed as if it belonged there, a part of the melody that was Fazbear’s Diner. It was nearly unrecognizable without it.

The melody had a marching tune to it. Bearing the fact that the tune was being played by a music box made the song much more melodic, sad even. It was probably tear-jerking to some emotional moms or patriotic Europeans, but it didn’t have much of an impact on the two.

There was only that creepy feeling that music was not supposed to be playing after hours.

All other sounds were tuned out as a sinking feeling fell flat in the two’s stomachs, as if each had a depressed man rope their ankles together to a cinderblock and drowned themselves in the thieves’ stomach acids. There was the calming voice in the back of their heads telling them that someone might have accidently left one of the switches for the stage on before they left for the day.

“Let’s keep going,” Earl insisted and they turned towards the hallway, away from the cafeteria.

Both stopped dead in their tracks when they saw a neat, perfect, straight out of the plastic packaging party hat in the middle of the hall. The green, pink, and yellow stripes didn’t appear fun anymore but sicklier, disgusting, as if those colors should not be allowed to clash together.

Under the party hat’s view were words written in black paint.

‘ENGAGE THE PARTY HAT MOTHERFUCKER’

They each took a step back and looked at each other, not saying a word. The two had barely noticed that the music had stopped playing.

“Dude,” Tim spoke softly.

Earl shook his head at him, “Don’t. Say. It.”

“This is some Scooby Doo bullshit right here-“

“WHAT the fuck man!”

Despite the outburst from Earl’s end, Ethan didn’t not stir from his slumber. At this point, not even a large meteor from space breaking through the Earth’s atmosphere could wake up this young man.

They quickly turned back around, not willing to engage in any activity. The situation had taken a sour turn.

After reentering the cafeteria, the two were met with pitch blackness that made their eyes go blind. This was abnormal since the shutters on the windows let in just enough light from moonlight and the streetlamps to filter in but now it looked like someone had shut them, obscuring anyone from looking in or for light to be given to those who work afterhours.

Earl opened and closed his mouth but no sound came out.

They didn’t notice the two specks of white light peering out of the darkness right behind them.

Their attention instead was drawn to the backstage door as it slammed shut and proceeded to reopen very slowly. Both adults crept nearer to one another to make sure that this was really happening.

Another tune began to play, but this one was more sorrowful than the last. It swayed and waltzed across the two as the other noises in the building halted all actions to let it play. This was no march or fanfare but a slow and mysterious question like tune that made the hairs on the back of their necks stand up.

“All I ask of you…”

“What the hell? WHAT THE HELL?” Earl grabbed Tim and took a step back.

The two glowing specks towered above their shoulders and shone brighter, illuminating their backs. Time turned around and paled at the sight.

“Uhh…Earl?”

“WHAT?!”

Earl turned to look in Tim’s line of sight and saw the two glowing orbs.

Then at least ten more white lights appeared in two straight rows under the original two and slowly distanced themselves. Just like teeth.

The creature before them groaned and a high pitched noise escaped from its dark throat, making the two’s hair go white with fright. It leaned over them and the pitch increased as the music had gotten faster. Just as it was an inch away from their faces, it spoke.

“Run.”

That was when Earl and Tim booked it for the exit, screaming incoherently. Instead of exiting through the entrance that they made they accidently rushed into a funny mirror that was near the entry way. Earl’s nose started bleeding profusely as Tim actually managed to jump over the shattered glass and out into the parking lot but tripped on the landing. A minute later police cars rolled into the lot and trained their lights on the pitiful scene.

As soon as the two had started screaming, Ethan had been woken up momentarily and had hit the emergency call switch within the office to signal the authorities before drifting back to sleep. Good thing the nearest police station was just a few blocks away. By the way, this all was only an accident.

The crooks were detained and put into each a separate car as Ethan groggily made his way to the front of the building to check what all the hubbub was all about.

“What the…?” he rubbed one eye and yawned as an officer approached him.

“Son, can you tell me-“

“THAT PLACE IS HAUNTED!” Earl screamed, making the officer and Ethan turn to look at him. Earl had half-white half-blonde hair that was frayed and his eyes were wide and crazy, the blood kept on dripping from his left nostril.

As another officer put him into the squad car he fought to look at Ethan and screamed, “Get out while you can! There are demons that lurk in that building! I tell you!”

With one final push he was shoved and locked into the car. He banged on the window and shouted some more before the car rolled away, out of sight.

Ethan looked back at the deputy as he was about to spoke as another car rolled up.

“Ethan!” the booming voice of the manager made him flinch. “What in blazes is going on around here?!”

The guard raised his hands, “Well, sir-“

“Are you the owner of this establishment?” the deputy put himself in front of Ethan.

The manager blinked and looked up at the officer with his small eyes, “No, I’m the manager.”

The deputy tipped his hat, “Well, you see, your employee here raised the alarm and we were able to come just in the nick of time to arrest the two deviants who had trashed the entrance and were out to rob the place. You’ll have to fix your window but everything else seems to be in order.”

Ethan’s boss split into a wide, toothy smile and exclaimed, “Well then! Guess I gotta get the insurance company on the line and make sure the janitor shows up in the next hour so we can open tomorrow! Thank you, sherriff.”

“Deputy.”

“Whatever.” and the officer went back towards his car to where a quite Tim was holding his arm and staring at the floor of the car. He started up the car and pulled out of the lot.

The manager looked at Ethan, “My boy, looks like you have done splendidly tonight!”

“I have?” Ethan rubbed the back of his neck and blinked before coming to an understanding. “I have!”

“Yes sir-ee,” he grabbed Ethan’s back and led him inside. “I bet I can get you a promotion to head security guard, which means that, not only do you get a raise, shorter hours once we get someone else to fill in to be your fellow coworker.”

“Oh boy!” the two continued to chat towards the office before a faint scream could be heard.

“YOU WROTE THIS?”

Seconds later a party hat was thrown into the trash and burned along with its previous contents.

Meanwhile, behind the golden curtains of the stage, Ob and Ti Gold stood perfectly still as they heard what went on.

“Do you think I spelled ‘Motherfucker’ correctly?” Ti Gold whispered to her partner.

“Judging by our manager’s reaction I think you did a spot on job.” Ob Gold smiled.

The two then made snickering noises and bobbed their shoulders to make it look like they were laughing. Once the air was cleared of laughter the two looked at one another before looking away shamefully.

“They didn’t give us any credit,” Ob Gold stated sadly.

“They didn’t see us.”

“I was kind of hoping you would mess up and let them see your face.”

“That’s kind of hard,” Ti Gold turned to let Ob Gold see her face and she let the springlocks on her face unscrew to reveal her endoskeleton’s head. Her eyes were built a full inch away from the metal head and only the front was uncovered to allow light to travel away from her head.

“Now if I had lit my lights while my face was whole, then those two would have been able to know who was tormenting them.”

“What about the teeth trick? How did you cover your mouth when-“

Ti Gold redid the springlocks for the bottom part of her face to cover up her endoskeleton’s mouth.

“Oh.”

Ob Gold turned away as her partner redid the rest of the locks. There was silence between the two for a while.

Ti Gold finally spoke, “I think you’re right.”

The shorter one turned to her, “About what?”

Ti Gold turned away, “I am obsessive. I try to keep things in order and push you too far. Sometimes I’m able to take a step back and view what I’m doing but most of the time I’m just surging forward and just trying to prove to you that I’m right.”

She chanced a peek at Ob Gold and continued, “I’ve been hooked on Delilah. I know she’s not what she appears to be and that won’t stop me from trying to prove it. For the now, I’ve seen what we can accomplish together as a team. Being separate has turned us apart and made us get a babysitter to make sure we were behaving. I can’t stand it anymore.”

The taller turned fully to Ob Gold, “Can’t we be friends again?”

Ob Gold’s face was blank. A moment passed between them that felt all too long to Ti Gold.

Finally, Ob Gold took a step towards her, then another, and another, before throwing herself onto the taller to hug them.

Ti Gold was surprised but returned the hug steadily.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that,” Ob Gold said with a smile in her voice.

Ti Gold also gave a smile, feeling something tug at her music box strings. The feeling was something new but almost familiar. She had seen parents kiss each other and teenagers in the crowd sit very close to one another to hold their hands in each other’s grasp. Kids didn’t really act the same way and nor did babies. A mother in the crowd would often kiss their crying child and hold them close or a father would help their offspring succeed at a hard videogame and help them carry their large prize back to the car.

Love.

She clung on tighter to Ob Gold, accepting the fact that she was growing up.

The next day they had decided to pull out the table from the backstage area that the employees use while working stage shifts onto the middle of the stage and were each sitting in a chair. Ob Gold had scourged up some papers and crayons while Ti Gold was reading an early edition newspaper that had been thrown through the open door as the insurance woman had walked in (the paper then proceed to hit Ethan squarely in the face).

The front cover read ‘Fazbear’s Diner Scoundrels!’ and featured both Earl and Tim as they told about their experience and the newspaper portrayed them as shady drug dealers and Ethan as he told a wildly unconvincing story of what he did to scare off the crooks.

“Garbage,” Ti Gold sneered as she turned the page to look at menswear. She whistled at the striped tuxes and orange pants.

Upon turning to the funnies she looked to her left at the third chair that they had moved. What sat in it was a large five-foot plushie of a sock monkey-esque figure with a black body and white rings around its arms and legs. There were five rings around the arms and nine for the legs. Its head was ovular and had profound red cheeks. Only the front half of the head was white as the rest of it was black like its body. The face had a wide black smile with red lip stains and happy squinted black eyes that had purple tear stains that poured out of the bottom and ended at the top of the mouth.

Ti Gold chuckled and patted the arm of it, “Cute.”

It belonged to the prize corner and was a very hard to win prize. Only kids with at least seven thousand tickets could pull off winning such a prize. Due to the complexity of the prize, only five were in stock and quickly gathering dust. Apparently it was a character from another location and wasn’t popular at Ti and Ob Gold’s home.

Ob Gold sat in the chair across from the newspaper reading robot and hummed as she drew a picture of Ethan in his office, sleeping, “I wonder why nobody would take such an adorable thing home.”

“Maybe the kids today might want to have a crack at it. I hear there’s going to be a birthday party soon.”

“Hopefully a few kids that bring lots of money will try to aim high. It would be sad to watch some gorgeous things continue to be locked away.”

A new window was installed in place of the smashed one from the previous night’s events with a grumbling manager who thought that the insurance woman was certainly scamming him. Ethan was given a new coworker named Eric who had recently applied to college and wanted a summer job before heading off for school.

Speaking of Ethan, now he told the same story he had sold to the local newspaper to all of the other employees, but now with more exaggerated actions.

Right at the moment there was a cluster of Stephan, Christian, Amelia, Delilah, Eric, two waiters, and someone from the kitchen. Amelia hung on to every word as if it were true as Delilah smiled and nodded along, believing only half of what was said. Stephan had a stony face and Christian was rolling his eyes in a good nature. Eric looked at his new boss questioningly as if trying to figure out Ethan’s IQ with just spending a few minutes with him as the rest of the staff tried to dodge all of the improve actions the guard threw at them.

“The blonde guy was all like ‘I’m going to shoot this guy with five lead bullets and make him drink his own piss’ but then I swung out and HOO! HAH! Right in the kisser! I make sure he goes right through that old window!”

“I thought the other guy was the one who went through the window?” Christian muttered to his fellow coworkers.

Thankfully the manager rounded the corner just in time to lecture them, “What are you doing? Ethan! Eric! Go home! Get some rest! Your job is over! The rest of you- get back to work!”

Very soon the day went back to normal. The birthday party posse wasn’t scheduled to arrive until five or six at night and would probably last until closing. Amelia had to fill in as a waitress for half the time due to the overcrowdness that was a Friday afternoon as Delilah went on extra rounds to circle around the cafeteria and the arcade as Stephan patrolled the halls to keep an eye on the staff and any wandering guests.

Ti Gold was busy sticking to routine but would always give a little extra when she had to reply or turn to Ob Gold. She couldn’t help but have a dreamier air when spouting song lyrics while looking at Ob Gold’s optics.

The shorter of the two would respond with equal enthusiasm and give a longer draw of breath while blinking towards the audience. Ti Gold assumed that this was because Ob Gold was glad to be with her again.

“Heartaches/”

“Ba ba boom/”

“Hear-ar-arta-aches/”

“Da va bum/”

“It doesn’t matter how my heart breaks/”

“Yea da vum/”

“’Cause my art aches for/”

Everything was going perfectly.

Ti Gold had never had a better day in her life. Ob Gold was beautiful, the music was fantastic, pizza was certainly delicious, and the building was overflowing with excited kids. If there was one thing missing then it would be the fact that Ti Gold would have wanted their long hair back, but that was not important.

Soon the birthday bash arrived and the two were busy prepping themselves for the special performance and for when they’d travel offstage to help the special kid with their cake and presents.

Once seated into their bright primary colored throne the birthday girl was given a cardboard crown that was painted yellow with golden hues with plastic gems that had been hotglued on. They clapped their hands in glee as the pizza arrived.

The lights in the cafeteria dimmed as the stage lights focused on the golden curtains.

“And now! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages! We like to introduce to you a special song from our golden duo!”

Gold curtains parted and there stood Ti Gold and Ob Gold with their signature mic and guitar. The shorter of the two slightly strummed their guitar and hummed a high note as Ti Gold stepped into the spot light.

“We gather here today to play a special tune for our birthday champ. Casey, please stand up!”

Casey giggled, clapped her hands again and stood up just in time for a stage light to fall on her so everyone in the crowd could see the birthday girl.

Ti Gold began to sway from side to side, “You’re turning another year old/”

Ob Gold came in as backup, “Another year has gone by/”

“Just in time for a new year/”

“For a new you/”

“Do you know what this means?/”

“We get to put a new candle on your cake/”

“We want you all to gather ‘round/”

“And sing away the sadness/”

“You don’t know what the new you has planned/”

“It’s best to wish you on your way/”

“As we get to see you grow~”

Five staff members from the kitchen rolled out a birthday cake from the freezer with seven candles already standing up straight and erect, ready for lit matches to light them up. Once the cake was put onto the table a larger candle was placed in the center of the handsome cake.

The staff lit the first seven before slowly lighting the large one, only for sparks to ignite from its tip and for the audience to gasp in amazement.

Colored lights appeared and swirled around the stage as everyone got ready to sing along to one of the most famous songs throughout the known universe.

Ti and Ob Gold were illuminated together as they sang in unison with the crowd.

“Happy birthday to you/ Happy birthday to you/ Happy birthday dear Casey/ Happy birthday to you~”

There were many applauses from the audience and from the party group itself as a few of Casey’s friends cheered for her and sang their own corny versions of the happy birthday song. Casey thought up of a wish before blowing out her candles as many family members around her took pictures of her with the flash on.

It was a controlled fireworks blitz in its own right.

Ti Gold and Ob Gold each took their bows as rehearsed as a few of the children shouted their stage names in approval.

“Titan! Obelisk! Titan! Obelisk!”

Just as the curtain closed over Ti Gold, she saw Casey smile up at her.

Ob Gold clapped her on the shoulder and smiled, “I think you did rather well.”

If Ti Gold could blush then her face would be beet red by now, “You think?”

Her partner nodded.

Stephan breathlessly walked up the backstage steps and took a minute to catch his breath and pant, “Al-alright. You guys need to get over th-there and w-wish that girl a happy birthday.”

The two took their leave, Ti Gold allowing Ob Gold to go ahead of her. Just as Ti Gold finished descending the staircase, she heard Stephan breathe, “Funny…I couldn’t find Delilah anywhere…”

She halted in place as her eyes widened in disbelief. Delilah was supposed to be the one to look over their performance and send for them today.

During the performance she was too caught up in the beauty of her partner and the joy that was Casey’s birthday bash. She didn’t see a flash of smooth black hair or dull purple while looking out across the crowd.

Maybe since the building was so packed she had been caught up in the arcade? There could have been a nasty fight that had broken out of one of the machines had been broken by a rowdy child- those could be excellent excuses. Perhaps she had to help Amelia with something?

No. Amelia was at the hostess desk and seemed to be fine. If her friend was in any trouble then Delilah would have stormed over and helped her, right?

That left one conclusion, and it made Ti Gold’s processor stall in fright.

“Ti?” Ob Gold’s worried tone sucked the top hated robot back to the present.

“Yes?” she looked down at her partner.

Ob Gold tilted her head, “We need to get out and visit the birthday girl, Casey.”

“Err- right!” Ti Gold tried to shrug it off and approached Ob Gold.

“Is everything all right?”

No.

Ti Gold tried to laugh it off, “Of course! I think I have a bug in my system though.”

That only caused her partner to worry more, “Oh no! Do we need to make our visit short or should Stephan take a look at you?”

Ti Gold put her hands up, “I’m fine, honest. Just need to check something out in the halls.”

That made Ob Gold’s concerned look turn into one of frustration.

“Tell me what’s wrong!”

The two stood there for a moment before Ti Gold spoke, “Trust me, let me go check in the hallways for a moment and I’ll meet you at Casey’s side.”

An air bubble gathered in one of Ob Gold’s tubes, “Go.”

She turned away and headed for the cafeteria, “Just go.”

Ti Gold waited until Ob Gold was out of earshot before scampering for the back halls.

The back halls were a place only for employees. There were rooms for lockers where the employees could stash their belongings for the day and even a few storage rooms where trusted employees put old props or equipment into hiding for a later use. Employees were trusted to keep their breaks secluded in the halls and thus one of the rooms had been put aside as a breakroom with tables, chairs, a television set, and a ‘borrowed’ coffeemaker. Someone with a sense of humor had put a pair of googly eyes on the coffeemaker and given it popsicle stick arms and legs.

The tall robot herself had been to the mysterious back ways during her night time wanderings. She did stop going to Parts and Services after the night she had accidently spooked Amelia. That night had not only warned her of Delilah but it also made her not want to scare any other human beings. Despite the escapades of earlier that week, she had taken an oath.

Today, everyone’s attention was on the amazing birthday party. No one had any doubts that the day was going to go sour or that anything was going to go wrong. Everyone would have a wonderful time. No one was going to cry. No one was going to get hurt. Any security guard would instantly rush to the trouble but Ti Gold was going straight for it before it would dare make a move.

After all, the safety of the children was their number one priority.

No human being could stand in the way of an angry Fazbear Entertainment robot.

She had just finished crossing the entrance hall when she came to a fork in the road. Ti Gold shut her optics to focus her attention of the sounds of the building. There was the great party happening only twenty feet away, where Ti Gold could easily rush too in three great strides if need be. Then there were the vents, pouring out bucket loads of fresh, cool air. The rush of pipes for cold and hot hot water for both the kitchen and the restrooms.

There!

Her optics snapped open at the sound of heavy feet rushing through the halls. She turned towards the left and followed the sound.

Only one kind of person made such careless step- a playful child!

“Hello?” Ti Gold called out. “Don’t be afraid, you’re not in trouble. I can take you back to the cafeteria.”

The kid only scampered further away.

Ti Gold rounded the corner and peeked out in time to see white legs with slip on shoes go out of sight. She frowned.

“Are you okay? It’s not safe to be back here.”

She decided to take a more cautious approach towards the little girl.

“Listen, there’s a birthday party going on and I’m performing. Would you like to come out and see it? There’s cake, a nice birthday girl who would love to meet you, and my good friend who’s also performing.”

The girl only scampered to Ti Gold’s left.

“Please don’t be afraid. My name is Titan, I’m one of the singers on stage, my good friend is Obelisk, she’s the other singer. We’re harmless.”

The steps disappeared.

Ti Gold also stopped to looked around, “Where did you go?”

The girl’s steps escaped behind her.

She instantly turned around in shock and exclaimed, “Wait! Are you sure you know where you are going?”

They only grew further and further away.

Ti Gold raced after them, “It’s okay! Look, you can call me Ti Gold. That’s my name backstage. Obelisk’s name is actually Ob Gold. We don’t mind getting to meet new children. You can come out and we can show you around.”

The girl escaped to Ti Gold’s left and headed further away from the cafeteria.

“You’re going the wrong way! If you want to get to the cafeteria and stage area then you should have made a right, I have to get back out there soon and introduce myself to the birthday girl.”

Soon she was by the back exit, a place for Ti Gold had never ventured out as far. The tall robot stopped and rubbed her wrists- a nervous habit she had picked up from Amelia.

“Listen, I haven’t gone this far in the building. Can we please head towards the front? I’m…”

Scared.

At this point in the building there were no sounds, no whirring of the security cameras, only a dull hum of what was going on near the front and a faint whoosh of the AC system as air gathered around her ankles. It gave Ti Gold the feeling of abandonment, of lonlieness.

She spoke out in a low voice, “Where did you go?”

There were faint steps behind her but she thought of it as only an employee. The steps then rushed at her at the same density as before and Ti Gold slowly turned around to meet the child she had been chasing.

WHAM

A massive force hit her face and she went toppling over on the floor. Ti Gold had never actually felt pain before, but as bit and pieces of her face flung off of her she gave a not-so subtle shriek that sounded like a fox getting its tail ripped off.

A few ends from her fingers also took a trip to the floor as they clinked against the shiny tiles and her ankles twisted, the wiring inside of them popping lose and rendering her feet useless. The right part of her jaw was unhinged and her nose was crooked, her whole face feeling like it was on fire.

“Well, well, well,” a sickly sweet voice was all that Ti Gold could make out as her optics stared up, trying to will the ceiling to stop spinning.

She blinked once before training her eyes in the direction of the voice.

“Christian’s drugged, he won’t be waking up anytime soon,” there was a grinding noise, as if something was being dragged against the polished floor.

A pointed face leered into Ti Gold’s view, “Looks like it’s just going to be us two for a while.”

Her optics adjusted and instantly she recognized Delilah’s gnarly face before her vision adjusted her image to be doused in purple. Was it just her or were Delilah’s teeth more yellow than before?

Delilah began gathering the bits of Ti Gold from the floor and put them into her front pocket before slinging a sledgehammer over her shoulder. She smirked, “This is going to be so much fun!”

Ti Gold began resetting her vocalizer since it had been jimmied from its place due to the crash. Her voice box could only produce static as it searched for a source to unscramble the signals from her processor.

The evil guard only laughed, “Trying to cry out for your girlfriend? Don’t worry, she’s just on the other side of the building.”

She stepped to the side and gestured for Ti Gold to stand up, “Well go on, she’s probably getting worried thinking about where you might be right now.”

Ti Gold couldn’t get up; her processor was scrambling for the commands for her legs to move or to just get out of there!

Delilah leaned back up against Ti Gold’s face, “Don’t wanna? Rather stay with me? That’s fine.”

She stood back up and went around to Ti Gold’s nonmoving legs to use her free hand in order to lift one of them and begin to drag her towards another section of the building.

“I have plans,” began Delilah. “You’re an essential part to them. I can’t afford for you to go heading off now before my plans can be complete.”

At this point, Ti Gold decided to squint one eye in Delilah’s direction and shrill louder than she had ever done before.

It wasn’t long before they made it to the Parts and Services room as Ti Gold’s leg was dropped and Delilah made to shut the doors.

Ti Gold was wracking her processor for a way out of this situation when Delilah peered at her face again, “Let’s get started, shall we?”

That was when her image flickered in and out of existence before reappearing as a deep purple monster with a sickening grin, black and purple eyes, sharp claws, and four extra appendages on her back.

This was the worst day of Ti Gold’s life.

[number06fan]

Touching Shrimp Causes Man to Fight for His Life from Vibrio

Succulent shrimp is a taste that sends the taste buds into overdrive. This delicious delicacy is a staple of the American diet and is a must for any visit to the beach. Scenes from Forrest Gump and his best friend Bubba’s love of shrimp come to mind when picturing shrimp. For if it’s good enough for Forrest Gump, it is good enough for me! As wisely told in the movie “shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich“. Unfortunately, as we enter the winter months those summer days at the beach feasting on shrimp are a distant dream. As a seafood, shrimp are not without their own danger. They can pose a huge food safety risk. The latest case happened in Raleigh, North Carolina with devastating impact, where shrimp and vibrio caused a man illness.

A man recently fell victim to deadly food poisoning after contracting a bacterial infection from shrimp. He was put at risk due to the recent Hurricane Florence which ravaged the East coast in September with 50 people dying in the Carolinas. This disaster hit North Carolina hard, being over 350 miles wide when it hit. Hurricane Florence knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of homes and downed trees. Life-threatening storm surges led to winds of up to 70 miles per hour and evacuation warnings for 1.7 million people in the area. Hurricane Florence is yet another example of how deadly mother nature can be. Global warming is leading to more devastating disasters such as this with hurricanes becoming stronger and more frequent.

There are strange circumstances regarding the infection of this man. First, he was infected by a shrimp that was given to him by a friend a whole three weeks after Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina. Second, he didn’t eat the shrimp, but rather transfer it into a smaller bag for freezing. His wife explained how “he took them out of the 10-pound bags and put them in smaller bags, and he put them in the freezer. That’s it.” As more information is becoming known to authorities, it is becoming clearer that he suffered from extreme bad luck. The situation turnt nasty and deadly extremely quickly and the medical community is still perplexed. After a few hours of his wife discovering that something was wrong, her husband was shaking and slurring his words. This tragic turn of events happened at a breathtaking pace.

Two days after the first discovery that something was wrong, the man was left fighting for his life and put on life support and into an induced coma at WakeMed in Raleigh, North Carolina. He had more than 11 bags of medically needed “stuff” dripping into a port within a port in his neck. He had been fighting against the odds and in the first two days, doctors said he had less than one percent chance to live. After intensive investigation from the doctors at WakeMed, a diagnosis of Vibrio vulnificus was given. This harmful bacteria lives in coastal waters and is more prevalent when the water is warmer. Clinton explains how “it entered his body and got in the bloodstream. It affected his organs – his heart, his liver, his kidneys.” His heart went from 40 percent function down to 25 percent. The bacteria ate up his lower left leg and right foot to the point that they might have to be amputated.

All from touching shrimp.

Vibrio

Vibriosis is a relatively unknown, but can be a very serious, disease that causes an estimated 80,000 illnesses and 100 deaths in the U.S. every year. The bacteria can cause a skin infection or get into the bloodstream and cause more serious problems – one in seven people who contract an infection die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People with vibriosis become infected by consuming raw or undercooked seafood or exposing a wound to seawater. Most infections occur from May through October when water temperatures are warmer.

When ingested, Vibrio bacteria can cause watery diarrhea, often accompanied by abdominal cramping, nausea, vomiting, fever, and chills. Usually these symptoms occur within 24 hours and most people with a mild case of vibriosis recover after about 3 days with no lasting effects. However, people with a Vibrio vulnificus infection can get seriously ill and this typically occurs in people with a weakened immune system. Severe illness is rare needs intensive care or limb amputation. About 1 in 4 people with this type of infection die, sometimes within a day or two of becoming ill. To reduce the chance of getting vibriosis, the CDC recommends not eating raw or undercooked shellfish, such as oysters. If you have a wound (including cuts and scrapes), avoid contact with brackish or salt water. Brackish water is a mixture of fresh and sea water. It is often found where rivers meet the sea. Further, cover the wound with a waterproof bandage if there’s a possibility it could come into contact with brackish or salt water, raw seafood, or raw seafood juices.

The Real Deal

There is a real urgency from doctors to deal with the rapidly spreading bacteria ravaging through the man’s body. He had surgery on his legs where the bacteria had eaten away. The surgery was to remove more dead skin and clean the area, and put artificial skin on until they could graft skin there. It was worse than they thought. Given that he only had a one percent chance of survival, doctors tell his wife that he’s lucky to be alive. She doesn’t know how much longer he will be in the hospital, but she’s raising money to help cover the cost of his treatment. A crowdfunding campaign set up by his wife has so far raised $12,780 of the $50,000 goal. This has been achieved by donations of 330 people in 15 days. The description on the Crowdfunding explains how “what a horrific journey so far! But he IS alive! It will be a long journey to recovery!”

We wish this man a speedy recovery and send our thoughts and prayers to his family.

By: Billy Rayfield, Contributing Writer (Non-Lawyer)

The post Touching Shrimp Causes Man to Fight for His Life from Vibrio appeared first on Lange Law.

[ionecoffman]

Why It's So Hard to Treat Compulsive Hair Pulling

Christina Pearson was 14 years old when she started pulling out her hair, creating bald patches on her head. She was taken to a psychiatrist, but in 1970 there was no name for her disorder, and certainly no treatment.

The doctor issued a psychiatric discharge that removed Pearson from high school. In that moment, she felt relief. Going to high school meant that somebody might pull off her hat and reveal that her head was mostly bare—a possibility she found “so frightening that anything was better than that.”

In the ensuing months, Pearson holed up at home, pulling out her hair and feeling, she says, like a monster. Scared and searching for relief, she eventually decided to leave. “I hitchhiked across Mexico at 14 and was doing peyote out in the desert, all kinds of things,” she says. “I really lived a very fringe life.” At 15, she started picking her skin, her body frequently covered with open sores. By 20, she was addicted to drugs and alcohol.

At the age of 30, Pearson “finally got sober.” She had started a small telecommunications business with a friend in Santa Cruz, California. In 1989, she received a phone call from her mother, who had just listened to a story on the radio about a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “There’s a name for what you used to do,” Pearson’s mother told her, not knowing that Pearson still pulled her hair. The news that there was a name, trichotillomania, “rocked my world,” she says.

After decades of feeling shame and isolation, she began to feel hope: There were others out there living with the same condition. Pearson started a support group. A Seattle news network invited Pearson to appear on air, where she spoke about her life and provided a number for a trichotillomania hotline that she planned to operate herself.

She returned home to over 600 messages.

“People were crying and sobbing and begging for help,” says Pearson, who spent a week calling each person back. “It was the best therapy I ever had, because I heard my life coming out of other people’s mouths.”

One night in bed she had what she calls a peak experience, or spiritual vision. Pearson decided to walk away from her business and devote her life to improving public awareness of trichotillomania. “I was scared shitless. Me: I’m a drug addict, I’m a small-business person, I’m in sobriety, I have an eighth-grade education, and I’m going to get out there and change the world and some weird pathological disorder?” says Pearson. “I just was terrified.”

But then she adds: “When we receive that kind of inspiration, what I’ll say is this: We are called all the time. Rarely do we choose to respond.”

Step into any classroom or coffee shop and, the odds are, at least one person in the room has a body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB), such as trichotillomania or skin-picking disorder.

People with BFRBs perform repetitive self-grooming activities such as picking, pulling, or biting. These can cause emotional distress and damage to the body, but the people performing the behaviors can’t stop. At their most extreme, these conditions are life-threatening.

A significant minority of people with trichotillomania (commonly called “trich”) ingest their pulled hairs. Over time, the hair can block the intestine and require surgical removal. Skin picking can lead to infections that require intravenous antibiotics and skin grafting.

More commonly, BFRBs take an emotional and social toll. They often begin in late childhood or early adolescence, making kids vulnerable to bullies. Echoing the experiences of many, a man in his late 20s described middle school as “absolute hell” because kids perceived him as “the weird kid with missing eyelashes.” Another woman, now 30, recalled watching her classmates play keep-away with the wig they had snatched off her head. Furthermore, BFRBs are often a source of conflict between child and parent, which can heighten a child’s feelings of shame and isolation. Meanwhile, in adults, the condition can lead to fear of intimacy, missed job interviews, and hours lost each day to picking and pulling.

Individuals living with BFRBs often keep their condition a secret, hiding the physical effects with make-up, wigs, and layers of clothing.

As a result, many are surprised to learn just how common these disorders are. Some experts estimate that 2 to 5 percent of people have trich and roughly 5 percent of people have skin-picking disorder, also referred to as “ dermatillomania” or “excoriation disorder.” Precise numbers are not available, however, because there has been no large-scale global study of BFRBs.

Although trich has appeared in the medical literature for over a century, it was not officially included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1987—a full 17 years after Pearson made her first visit to a psychiatrist, and six years after I entered the first grade and started pulling my hair too.

My mother took me to a dermatologist, who didn’t offer any advice. As it turned out, I was part of a subset of kids—including toddlers and even babies—whose symptoms simply go away without any kind of treatment. By the end of the school year, my hair pulling had stopped. For most individuals, BFRBs are chronic, lasting years, even decades.

Skin-picking disorder was added to the DSM in 2013. “We were over-the-moon ecstatic when it was given its own diagnostic label,” says Nancy Keuthen, the director of the Trichotillomania Clinic and Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. A diagnostic label validates people’s experiences and encourages them to seek treatment, she says. In the absence of a name, the tendency had been to think, “I don’t know anybody else who has this, I must be really weird,” explains Keuthen.

Now, both disorders are included in the chapter on obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. On the surface, OCD and BFRBs share similar characteristics: Both involve strong urges to perform repetitive behaviors. But unlike OCD compulsions, BFRBs are soothing, even pleasurable. And the behaviors are rarely the result of the specific obsessions that characterize OCD.

This distinction matters because the conditions benefit from different kinds of behavioral therapies; and whereas medication is a first-line treatment for OCD in the United States, for example, there currently is no Food and Drug Administration–approved medication to treat BFRBs.

In fact, compared with better-known psychiatric conditions such as OCD, BFRBs remain markedly under-researched. “Historically, there has been almost no funding for these disorders,” says Keuthen. Funding usually goes to conditions that are seen as significantly affecting quality of life or that make it difficult to function in the workplace.

BFRBs can do both, but, says Keuthen, they have been misunderstood as “bad habits that lazy people have.” This obscures the critical distinction between ordinary self-grooming (who doesn’t occasionally pick a scab or pluck a hair?) and the clinical case where the behavior goes on and on, causing significant distress or impairment, while the person feels wholly unable to stop.

Christina Pearson founded the Trichotillomania Learning Center (since renamed the TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors) in 1991. Her goal was to help people, especially kids, avoid the fear and secrecy she had lived with for so long.

She wanted to offer authoritative information that could help people. There was just one problem: That information didn’t exist.

There was also an incredible amount of stigma. At least some of this can be traced back to the medical literature of the 1950s and ’60s, which tended to blame the parents, particularly mothers, of individuals who pulled their hair.

One report from that period examined 11 children with trich. The authors, professionals at the U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health, concluded that the children’s behavior stemmed from intense conflict “between the child and the original love object, the mother.” The children, they wrote, pulled their hair “with large amounts of libido” and used hair pulling as a substitute for an emotionally unavailable mother.

About the fathers, they wrote: “[They] can best be described as passive-aggressive individuals, mostly of a passive type who were persistently controlled by their spouses.”

Perhaps this is why when Pearson was taken for treatment, the psychiatrist asked her mother, “What are you doing to [your daughter]?” The question caused her mother to cry. “It was not good. It was very shaming,” says Pearson.

This judgment and blame continued even after trichotillomania was added to the DSM. Pearson began renting booths at professional conferences. In the early years, psychologists would walk by and actually make fun of her, pulling their own hair. Pearson says that one dermatologist warned her that people who pick their skin and pull their hair are “often psychotic.”

She recalls one young man who had been told by a mental-health professional that pulling out his hair was like public masturbation and he needed to stop. In another conversation, a Swedish doctor insisted that Swedes don’t get trich. Pearson suspects that some of the stigma stems from the fact that grooming is associated with other animals—cats, dogs, mice—and people don’t want to acknowledge humans’ connection to the animal kingdom.

Something else that contributed to the misunderstanding was that trich was considered an exceedingly rare disorder. The first prevalence study wasn’t published until 1991, and at the time, the DSM criteria for trich were more stringent than they are today. In addition to having a strong impulse to pull hair, resulting in hair loss, individuals needed to experience tension prior to pulling and “gratification or relief” while pulling.

Consequently, researchers found that 0.6 percent of the general U.S. college population had met the DSM criteria at some point in their lives, but noted that among this group pulling leading to visible hair loss was reported by 1.5 percent of men and 3.5 percent of women.

In 1990, Pearson attended one of the first-ever professional talks about trichotillomania, given by a psychologist called Charles Mansueto. There, she met a number of interested clinicians, including Carol Novak, a psychiatrist from Minnesota, who had written a pamphlet about trich.

“Back in those days, we had no internet. Nobody knew the word trichotillomania,” says Novak, who went on to become the founding director of the TLC Foundation’s scientific advisory board. Around that time, Novak, Mansueto, and Richard O’Sullivan, a psychiatrist who currently practices in Madison, Connecticut, attended a retreat that Pearson had organized for people with trich. Novak remembers the participants expressing frustration and anger with the mental-health field “because they had been so mistreated by professionals.” Soon thereafter, more professionals agreed to join the board and conduct research in the field.

The causes of BFRBs are still poorly understood, though individuals’ responses to different medications may provide clues to BFRBs’ biological underpinnings. For example, medications such as Prozac, which target the neurotransmitter serotonin, have not proven effective in reducing BFRBs for most people—though experts note that some individuals may benefit.

Two small randomized controlled trials testing N-acetylcysteine (NAC), an amino acid that can be purchased in health-food stores, resulted in marked reductions in both hair pulling and skin picking for roughly half of study participants (though some receiving placebo also showed improvements—16 percent demonstrating reduced hair pulling, 19 percent reduced skin picking). NAC influences glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in reward pathways. A small neuroimaging study also showed impairment of reward pathways in people with trich, but larger studies are needed to confirm these findings.

One such study currently underway is the BFRB Precision Medicine Initiative, which has been funded by TLC donors. It’s taking place at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, the University of Chicago Medicine, and Massachusetts General Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. The goal is to test up to 300 participants using a variety of methods, including interviews, imaging, and bloodwork.

Nancy Keuthen is the principal investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital. She notes that up until now, researchers have tended to study BFRBs in narrow slices. For example, a research team might run a small brain-imaging study. While this approach could uncover an interesting abnormality, it isn’t especially helpful without a broader network of data to illuminate the abnormality’s cause and effects. Additionally, larger sample sizes are needed to ensure that study results are generalizable to a wider population.

Liz Atkin, a British artist with skin-picking disorder, is at the front of the room, setting hand wipes on tables. She wears a red cardigan over a T-shirt sporting splotches of orange, yellow, green. “We’re going to get messy!” she says to four girls sitting in the front row. Her enthusiasm seems entirely genuine yet impossible for 8:30 a.m.

It’s a Saturday in April, and I’m attending the 25th annual TLC conference for BFRBs. This year, it’s in San Francisco. The conference is just one of the ways that TLC aims to help people directly. I’m here with nearly 500 others, including individuals with BFRBs, their families, clinicians, and researchers. This session is an art class for kids aged 11 and under.

“What we’re going to do is make our marks,” says Atkin after roughly a dozen kids have taken seats and introduced themselves. She holds up a stick of charcoal and explains it’s a piece of wood that’s been burned. “I have compulsive skin picking, and charcoal really helps me.”

Atkin distributes the charcoal and paper and asks the kids to make a dot.

“Paul Klee said ‘A line is a dot taking a walk,’” she says, holding up her own sheet of paper and making a black spot. From there, she demonstrates various rubbing and smudging techniques, before bringing out pastels so the kids can add color.

“I think my drawing’s going to end up looking like my cat,” says the girl sitting next to me, wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs sweatshirt. Her picture does indeed resemble a calico cat with patches of black and orange.

Atkin asks if anyone wants music, and someone requests Prince.

Above the music, Atkin asks, “Is drawing a nice thing to do? Why do we like drawing?”

The group offers varying responses: Drawing calms your mind. You can express yourself. There’s no wrong way to do it.

“Why are we working with stuff that’s messy? Why is that useful? We’re using materials that have a texture to them.” Later, she’ll explain to me that for many, BFRBs are texture-based disorders. Art engages the body and mind, giving the person a focus other than the BFRB.

I’m sitting in a row with a boy and a girl. I overhear the boy ask, “What’s your thing? Mine’s skin picking.” The girl says matter-of-factly, “Mine’s trichotillomania.”

They fall back into silence, drawing on the black paper.

It’s taken science some time to catch up with what people with BFRBs have known for years: For many, there’s a strong sensory component to the disorder.

A pair of studies published in 2017 and 2018 were the first to report that individuals with BFRBs have higher rates of sensory over-responsivity to external sensations than the general population. In other words, they respond intensely to things like sounds and textures. The phenomenon—also sometimes referred to as “sensory-integration dysfunction” or “sensory-processing disorder”—was first described in the 1970s by the occupational therapist Jean Ayres. Since then, sensory over-responsivity has been most frequently studied in association with autism, and more recently in OCD.

In one of the studies, people with trich were twice as likely to have severe to extreme sensory over-responsivity to touch and sound. One study participant described her struggle with clothing: “My tactile discomfort lies in how I feel in clothes. They always feel too tight and uncomfortable as soon as I step out of the house. For this reason, I only go out when absolutely necessary—school or work.”

Later that day, it occurred to me that I have had my own experiences with sensory over-responsivity. As a child, I found almost any type of clothing itchy: tights, cardigans, sweaters, sleeves that tapered into elasticated cuffs (as seemingly all kids’ clothes did in the late ’70s). I have a vague memory of being left standing in a department store after my mother had walked away, exasperated with trying to find me a winter coat.

Others at the conference share similar experiences: “I used to throw things at my brother, who was just regularly playing. I’d throw books at him because noises were too much,” says one woman who still struggles with high-pitched sounds. Like many others with trich, when she pulls her hair, she’s looking for a certain type.

“I’m looking for coarseness in those hairs ... I’m looking for hairs that aren’t straight, hairs that are curly, hairs that don’t feel right—that are too long or too short. For me, it’s a very tactile disorder,” she says.

When researchers talk about BFRBs, they often speak of “subtypes” to acknowledge, among other things, that people with BFRBs may pick and pull for very different reasons.

One person might pull her hair at night as a way of winding down for sleep. Another might pick his skin out of boredom. Another might pull out his eyelashes under stress. For some people, all these things and more might be triggers. Why? No one can say for sure, but many of my conversations with affected individuals included mention of the work of a psychologist named Fred Penzel.

In the early 2000s, Penzel introduced the stimulus-regulation model of trichotillomania, based on his work with patients.

“It would appear that pulling might, therefore, be an external attempt on the part of a genetically prone individual to regulate an internal state of sensory imbalance,” he writes.

According to this model, a person with a BFRB is exposed to the same levels of environmental stimulation as others, but their nervous system is unable to easily manage it. “It is as if the person is standing in the center of a seesaw, or on a high-wire, with overstimulation on one side, and understimulation on the other, and must lean in either direction (by pulling) at different times, to remain balanced,” he writes.

“Picking or pulling adds or subtracts stimulation,” says Karen Pickett, an Ohio-based therapist. “I have yet to find someone that this [model] doesn’t apply to, to some degree.” Why does this matter? Because the picking and pulling actually serve a purpose. This is why the behaviors can be so difficult to stop.

A number of studies have found that some individuals with BFRBs have difficulty regulating their emotions. A 2013 review notes that as a group, people with BFRBs have higher rates of psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety than the general population. In addition, many report that their BFRBs provide relief from negative emotions, including boredom, tension, anxiety, and frustration.

Several of the people I interviewed told me their BFRBs started during a period of negative emotion. Aneela Idnani started pulling her eyebrows and eyelashes as an adolescent, after moving to a new town where she felt like an outsider and was bullied at school. For her, pulling served as a coping mechanism.

A couple of years later, Idnani’s father died of cancer. “I didn’t know how to deal with it,” she says. “[As a society] we don’t talk about uncomfortable things, and so we have to find ways to deal with them.” She hid her condition into adulthood. Three years ago, she started seeing a psychologist, who helped her unpack some of her emotions.

Haley O’Sullivan started picking her skin at the age of 20, a year after a traumatic sexual experience. “It started with two hours in the mirror picking at ingrown hairs like on my armpits or my bikini line,” she recalls. “It was also picking at zits on my face and other places on my body.” For several years, O’Sullivan led a support group in Boston, and she’s working on starting a group in New Hampshire, where she lives now. She is careful to point out that not everyone with a BFRB has experienced trauma. In her case, however, skin picking is “my body’s way of trying to say, ‘Hey, I’m not okay.’” Skin picking creates a positive sensation for her, at least in the short term: “Obviously it doesn’t feel good emotionally afterward when you’re like, ‘Oh man, look at this damage I caused.’”

O’Sullivan has seen several therapists and has been successfully treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. But she says she feels a little stuck in her BFRB recovery. She has done a lot of research, but lacks access to a specialized clinician. There simply aren’t enough therapists with expertise, she says. And even once you find someone, the clinician may have a long waiting list and insurance might only cover a handful of sessions. “It’s not really conducive to a full recovery,” she says.

In many countries, including high-income places, there are treatment gaps for mental health.

I spoke with a graduate student from Scotland, Marta Isibor, who sought help for her own skin-picking disorder in her late 20s. Isibor was offered conventional cognitive behavioral therapy, which helped her understand why she picks, but she wasn’t offered treatments that place more emphasis on minimizing the repetitive behaviors—such as habit-reversal training, or the Comprehensive Model for Behavioral Treatment, a specific intervention created to treat BFRBs.

The U.K. lacks specialist clinics and expert BFRB researchers, says Isibor. In fact, after publishing a study on skin-picking disorder as a mature bachelor’s student, Isibor traveled the U.K. presenting posters at conferences run by the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh and the British Psychological Society, among others. Most of those present had never even heard of BFRBs, she says.

She had to explain the basics: symptoms, where BFRBs sit in the DSM, the difference between ordinary and clinical self-grooming. She says that people are often surprised to learn how common BFRBs are, and that people hide their condition due to shame. This may be especially true of people with skin-picking disorder, she speculates, because of its association with blood, scabs, germs, and infections.

O’Sullivan says: “You come to a place like this [the conference], and you’re finally with people who understand. But you still can’t escape the fact that once you leave here, people don’t know what it is you have.”

Currently, the treatment for BFRBs with the most empirical support is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy called habit-reversal training, developed in the 1970s as a treatment for tics. During this therapy, a person learns to recognize the context in which pulling or picking is most likely to occur. With this awareness, people can then plan to substitute a competing response. For example, when faced with an urge to pick, someone might instead make a fist, or play with a fidget toy. In some studies, more than half of adults with trich achieve short-term improvement. However, some find it difficult to maintain the results over time.

The psychologist Omar Rahman recently conducted a promising study of habit-reversal training in kids with trich. He says that the goal of the therapy is to give the brain an opportunity to become habituated to the urge, meaning you can ignore it or respond with a substitute behavior.

Over the years, Rahman has come to believe that there’s really no real way around this if you can’t learn to manage the urge, which may explain why habit-reversal training doesn’t help everyone, or why improvement doesn’t always last.

For this reason, researchers and clinicians have increasingly sought to augment habit-reversal training with other means of helping people with their urges. For example, mindfulness-based strategies can help a person observe and accept negative emotions, sensations and urges without needing to act on them by pulling or picking.

Christina Pearson stumbled into mindfulness in the early 1990s after a series of therapists and medications were unable to help her. “Nobody knew what to do,” she says. So she started paying attention, observing her thoughts, feelings, and muscle movements. “I’d been always seeking higher awareness,” she says, “but now I wanted to identify the roadmap that would free me from a behavioral prison.”

She notes that the kids who get BFRBs are sensitive and smart. “Do you want to drug that away? No. What you want to do is say, ‘Hey, how do I create the psychological trellis for this being to evolve and be of service to the world?’”

Around this time, the psychologist Charles Mansueto had been seeing BFRB clients and developed the Comprehensive Model for Behavioral Treatment (ComB). This model recognizes that a variety of triggers may cause someone to want to pick or pull: thoughts, emotions, sensory experiences, specific body movements (such as stroking one’s hair), and environment. Today, Mansueto and his colleagues are in the process of running a randomized controlled trial to test the approach.

“We may seem like we have it together now, but we haven’t always,” says Bridget Perez. She and her 19-year-old daughter Gessie are leading a conference session titled “Parent/Child Journey: Building a Relationship and Finding Acceptance.” They’re both wearing T-shirts that Gessie designed that say trichster on the front. The room is packed.

Bridget recalls one morning when Gessie was 14 and sitting at the table eating breakfast. “I’m standing over her, and I go, ‘Oh my God!’, because there was a huge bald spot in the back of her head.” Gessie had always had very long curly hair. But over the ensuing years, she went from a “gorgeous long-curly-haired girl to having bald spots, to hiding the bald spots, to the hair thinning out and just kind of hanging.”

“I screamed, I cried. I yelled. I mourned the loss of her hair,” says Bridget. Like many parents, her first response was to want to fix the problem.

Unlike an earlier generation of parents, Bridget knew the word trichotillomania and was able to use the internet to find out information. They attended their first TLC conference several years ago, says Bridget. She realized: “It’s not about the hair. It’s about being there for your children. Supporting them, loving them, no matter what they look like.”

Gessie agrees the first conference was life-changing. Living with trich had been hard. Even today, she has no eyebrows and keeps her hair short, but she considers herself in recovery “because trich doesn’t control my life anymore.” The pulling comes and goes, but she doesn’t focus on stopping.

“For me, cutting my hair, shaving my head, realizing that I’m not defined by my appearance was ... ”

“Was pivotal,” offers her mother.

They both agree that trich has made them stronger, individually and together.

Gessie says that after the first conference, she used social media to share her story. People from all over the world have reached out to ask her questions and offer their support.

“I can honestly say that I am thankful for this journey,” she says. “These friends are so much better than having hair.”

For all the obvious good that the TLC conference does, it’s important to note that it isn’t necessarily easy to attend, especially for first-timers. One mother I spoke with described her first conference as overwhelming. “I cried a lot,” she says. “You think you’re going to come and fix it, and then you realize that you’re in it for the long haul.”

And that long haul is not clearly mapped. After all, when children are sick, you take them to a doctor. But when your child is performing an unusual yet soothing behavior that lacks a simple cure, the choice of how to move forward is not clear-cut. Parents may feel torn about how much financial and emotional energy to invest in treatment compared to accepting the condition and supporting their child in other ways.

These tensions can play out in adults, too.

For example, many people with BFRBs say that complete abstinence from picking or pulling is an unhelpful goal that may magnify self-criticism and frustration. Yet, one woman spoke positively about her experiences in Hair-Pullers Anonymous, based on Alcoholics Anonymous. “We celebrate abstinence. Just think of any AA program,” she says. They use the same literature and spiritual tools. She joined the support group in January and says in the three months since that, “My hair pulling is down so much—you wouldn’t even believe it.” She has a sponsor she can call if she feels like she wants to pull her hair. And she’s also working on self-care, a big emphasis of TLC. “Maybe that’s why I’m having success,” she speculates, “because I’m hitting all these things.”

At the conference, the last session I go to is “Standing Tall in Our Awesomeness.” It’s led by Christina Pearson, who left TLC in 2013 and founded the Heart and Soul Academy in 2014. Roughly 20 kids are sitting in chairs in a horseshoe shape. I take a seat next to the girl with the Maple Leafs sweatshirt. She’s here, along with the rest of the kids from the charcoal drawing session as well as others up to the age of 14.

Pearson comes in with a pink fascinator atop her head, holding feathery string puppets. “I’m the lady who grew up just like you, and I started TLC,” she says. She greets each child individually.

Then she asks each kid what they liked most about the conference. Among the most common answers: making friends, everything, all of it. To one girl, whom Pearson seems to have spoken with before, she says, “You have a huge heart and a sensitive nervous system.” The girl appears to be holding back tears.

Next, Pearson pulls out a ribbon, gives the end to a child at the front of the horseshoe, then asks her to hold it and pass the rest around.

“Feel the ribbon in your hands. It is connected to each one of you.” I close my eyes. The ribbon is smooth. I’m thinking of the girl in the Maple Leafs sweatshirt, just a bit older than I was when I started pulling. Unexpectedly, I find myself holding back tears.

Pearson leads us up out of our chairs, towards the door: “This is your world,” she says, as we leave the conference room. I’m walking, holding onto the ribbon, surrounded on either side by kids who are three-quarters my height. Surrounded by kids in hats, with bald heads, kids who pick their skin. We walk out through the hotel lobby, past the people dining and reading. And outside the hotel, to a startling view of the San Francisco Bay.

Pearson turns her back to the water to face us. The sun is slowly climbing. Planes are taking off from the nearby airport. She asks us to stand on the Earth. Then she asks us to wiggle our bodies. “Close your eyes. What do you smell?” Then we do a wiggle again: “What do you hear?” We can do this any time, she tells us. Baby steps toward mindfulness.

Once we’re back in the room, Pearson asks the kids to write something that they like about themselves on a triangle of felt. Each goes around and says something.

One says, “Compassion.”

Pearson: “We develop incredibly deep compassion. Why? Because we know what it’s like to suffer. We know what it’s like to be different. And we can see that in other people.”

They start gluing sequins, puffy hearts, strips of ribbon onto their pennants.

Persistent. Wild. Compassionate. Brave.

“Here’s the thing about bravery,” says Pearson. “It doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you do something anyway.”

This post appears courtesy of  Mosaic.

Article source here:The Atlantic

[gretagerwigarchive]

Greta Gerwig on Cinema

Interview by Rebecca Conroy

source: http://www.crash.fr/greta-gerwig-on-cinema/

I have so many questions. I love the fact that you’re a female in NY not falling into some kind of comedic trap in a SNL way

Oh, Thanks!

That you’re kind of forging some sort of your own stamp on things. I notice in your films that there’s a character quest. Tell me about that. Tell me about your… the characters that you write and that you play they’re not quite sure of themselves…

In the films I’ve written- like Francis and Mistress America, I’m interested in kind of very date-old story structures that have to do with grace and epiphany, and those story structures are generally reserved for male characters. For me- this sounds crazy- it has to resonate with some more archetypical story, and then the specificity of it makes it sing. It’s something that emerges to me about the form of the story that feels as if it fits into something that’s bigger. In Francis Ha, the last place she is before the end of the movie is she goes back to the college she went to for the summer, and it opens with her in the woods. To me, that’s connected with being cast out into the wilderness and to all the stories of when people hit their low point they’re cast out into the wilderness. I like it when you can take real things from life, and give them a kind of mythic quality. People are largely unconscious of it, but it’s operating underneath the story and I always have to find how it grafts onto something like that.

When you used the term “low point,” people love to watch characters going through some situation that’s not perfect. As a character, as a writer, you are probably looking for something inspirational to pull you out of the low point or A person, a friendship, or a job… something that is an inspiration… but often with those inspirational things you almost have to kill them once you are accepted by them so do you find that you have a certain something that really inspires you as a writer or for your characters when you act. What’s that idea for you? I do notice that often your characters have to ruin what inspires them. What’s that all about?

I am very interested in the moments when people are still pursuing the thing they’ve actually moved past. In Mistress, that Brook can’t see that she’s moved past this moment, but she’s still going for it and that she genuinely thinks it will provide salvation in an economic way and she has a place in the world that makes sense. I think with Francis, she wants Sophie to live with her for the rest of her life and she wants to be a modern dancer. For both of them, they’re beating back against a current, and I find it heartbreaking and very true. In a way, in Mistress I feel that the epiphany happens less for Brook and more for Lola’s character of Tracey. She wants to be a writer, but I think this is the first time she’s really hurt an adult. That’s such a vivid moment, when you’re around that age and you realize, “I can hurt people, I’m not a child any longer, my power to injure another exists, and that writing isn’t just a frivolous activity.” One of the things I love about that movie is that it’s not OK between them. She says, “I know you came to apologize,” and Lola says, “No I’m really not that sorry,” and she says, “Oh well, fuck this then…” and then they kind of move on, and it’s like nobody was forgiven, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t get absolved for your sins, but that’s OK. And I think I’m interested in how that transforms. To be it’s all very mysterious, and I kind of stumble towards it, and then it becomes clear to me and then I go back and try to make it clear to the audience, but I never want the audience to feel like they can totally articulate it. I want it to be existing a little under the surface. So that it creates less of a thesis, and more of a feeling.

Sometimes when you’re writing you can get an idea of little vignettes and sometimes you get a whole story arch. I know you’re interersted in playwrighting. How do your stories come to you? Do they come in little more architypical storyline first?

My experience of it is that it comes in almost a collection of scenes and moments, and I’ll start building a world. I don’t know how other people do it, but I always need to generate almost too much material, and then it’s almost like a magic eye picture where you look at it, and it seems as a mess, and then all of a sudden the picture comes out at you.

Do you tape stuff to the wall or write in a notebook, or how do you siphon out the useless scenes?

I do a combination. I write in a notebook and also on a computer. I tend to print everything out and lay it all on the ground, at some point. Once I have enough material and pieces, and the story comes out, I start arranging and culling and putting things together. It’s a very odd process of faith. Underneath the spark of my idea, the character has a story, and that story will be made clear to me if I just follow the breadcrumbs. Your unconscious does a lot of the work for you; you leave a lot of clues for yourself about what the thing is. An then it’s almost as if you’re dechipering the clues you’ve layed for yourself. I overwrite in general, because it’s almost like I don’t know where the story will be, so if I have a character in a certain set of circumstances or in a certain world, I’ll write every scene because maybe she’ll be in a location or something will happen where there’s a secret story door that I didn’t open, and that’s where I’ll find it, but I can’t know until I put them through all of it.

Do you stay alone during your writing, and how long does it take for your bigger projects?

Those take a while. It’s not one straight line of writing. It’s like, you sort of pick it up and put it down, and then there’ll be a period of intensity where I’m really with it and I’m shaping it and major choices are being made, and then I put it down for a little bit and then I look at it again. Those take a very long time from the very first time I started writing them, until the time that they’re done? Two or three years.

How many projects can you have going at one time, mentally, writing-wise?

Writing wise? Well, I’m sort of testing that right now. Whenever I’m engaged in writing it, I can really only be engaged with one. But in terms of having irons in the fire, I can have different things in different stages and then go back to them and play them off each other a little bit, like I’ll work on one, put it down then work on another and procrastinate each one with each other, but I can’t spend half my day writing one thing then half my day writing the other. That doesn’t work.

This is the eternal question for an artist: the schedule and the confidence to stick to the schedule. How you have the confidence to revisit a story and really stick with a story and keep going?

I’m always tinkering with my system and trying to figure out the best way to do it. I spend a lot of my time deeply freaked out by writing, and by the faith required to do it, and I would spend so much time feeling bad about myself and sort of paying penance in an odd way, as if I had to go through these rituals in order to write which is that, “you must spend an hour feeling bad about yourself,” and that “you must spend an hour thinking that what you’ve already written is stupid,” and then at some point I was like “This is taking too much energy,” so I think there’s been a lot of trying to short-circuit that. And I’ve gotten so much better at it. And I’ve been given the confidence, and it does help.

With your success there must come some sort of huge self doubt that didn’t exist before…

That’s true. It sounds totally bonkers, but I do think so much of it comes down to having some amount of crazy faith that the thing will show up for you if you show up to it. And I think it really is faith in that way. I was watching this interview with Mike Nichols last night and he was talking about his background and improv, he said that the whole power of improv is that you come in at zero, and you just trust that it will come and he said the same skill is there as a director. You can have this faith that whatever your unconscious is doing will take care of it. And that’s a very tricky thing, and do I think you have to really build it like a muscle and take care of it. And the schedule is hard. What I do well with is, if I have something pulling on my day. If I have endless time it’s a death trap. If I have limited time, I can do it. Endless time is really hard. Some people work well that way. I feel lonely, and scared and lost, and like the day is stretching before me with no endpoint, just a horizon. And that’s really difficult but luckily I have enough pulling in other directions, that it gains a shape.

You live in New York and not LA. Is there a personal reason why?

I don’t like LA. I don’t like driving. I like walking. And you don’t walk in LA. It really is just a lifestyle thing. I like public transportation and public spaces and being around people. I don’t like the feeling of being in a pod, and I get very depressed in LA because I feel like you go from your house pod, to your car pod, to your office pod, back to your house pod and it’s a hermeticlaly sealed life. There’s no accidents, there’s no happenstance….

And so much of your wirting is about happenstance…

Yes, and I just feel so closed off from what I find nourishing there. There’s amazing things there. So I don’t mean to undercut LA there’s wonderful museums, there’s great arthouse cinemas, there’s great restaurants, there’s the beach. I completely understand why people say they like LA. I just personally feel like I start losing the plot in a pretty major way when I’m there. It makes sense to me. If I did drugs seriously I would love it, it would be a great place. You could be in your house doing drugs. But I don’t. So I feel horrible there.

Do you drink a lot of coffee? What do you do while you write?

I drink a tremendous amount of coffee. I drink too much coffee. I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes. I don’t any longer because I don’t want to die of lung cancer. But now, I still consume nicotene. I think I will wear a nicotene patch for the rest of my life. I didn’t wear it today, because I knew that I couldn’t wear it to a photo shoot …

Does it leave a mark on your skin?

Yes. I went to a psychiatrist who was asking me about my work habits once, because I was trying to quit smoking, and he asked, “How do you work?” And I was like, “So much coffee, so much nicotene…” and he was asking about other things and he was like, “yeah, you have undiagnosed ADHD.” I said “Really?” and he said “Definitely, you’ve been self medicating for your whole life,” and then I was on a drug which was to help me quit smoking, and it was an antidepressant as well, and I felt like it was carpet bombing my brain, and then I talked to a doctor and said, “Listen, I think I just need nicotene. What bad happens to me if I put a patch on for my whole life?” And they were like, “It’s weird, but you can totally do it.” But then I watched the Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock, and Sherlock in that version wears patches- nicotene patches- was like just nicotene patches and I’m like him. It’s just for me, I don’t really know what it does to my brain that makes me normal, and not fall into depression and not lose my bearings so it sounds crazy though. I’ve had doctors tell me that nicotene in and of itself it does the same amount to your brain as caffeine and they were like it’s OK.”

What are the seminal books or plays that you have always loved? The ones that helped you become a writer? And then what are your recent favorites?

I loved Woody Allen and Monty Python and comedians in that way, and then movie musicals like, “American in Paris,” “Singing in the Rain,” “Oklahoma” and the great Agnes de Mille choreography, were really big for me. And then it wasn’t until I got to college that started getting into cinema proper as an art form. I’ve always been a reader, and I think for me that my jam, as it were, were those 19th century novels were really big for me. The Austin, the Brontes, Dickens, Herman Melville, and the Russians. Anna Karinina was a huge one. There’s a section in “Anna Karinina” where he goes into the dog’s mind, it’s so perfect, and I couldn’t believe it. In any case, those were really big for me. And then, because of theater, Shakespeare was everything. We would go to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival every year, and I’d see two plays a day for a couple of weeks and that was very formative.

How old were you then?

From about the ages of about seven or eight to eighteen. It was an incredible way to experience theater. In high school, it was all Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard. A Tom Stoppard quote from “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” was my senior quote, which is incredibly nerdy. Albee had a kind of rhythm that I instantly connected to. It’s just awful and funny and wicked, and similarly, Tom Stoppard was just so frothy. For a high school student, it felt like you were part of the insider baseball with him, because he was always with the references, and then you’d go look up the reference, and you’d learn another thing which is the same way I felt about Woody Allen, because he’d always reference movies and books and then I’d go find them. When I got into college, I worked at a theater company downtown- I did lights and sound at Richard Foreman’s theater, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater Company- and through that group (nobody knew who I was, I was just a chubby eighteen year old who was good at lights) but that opened me up to different theater downtown, and Will Eno was a big playwright for me. I was finding my people, and what I was interested in and so those were all very formative. I read Milton, and it killed me- I couldn’t believe it. The idea that even poetry is a state of sin because it’s fallen, because it’s metaphor? I felt like I had to stay inside for the weekend when I read it.

What would you say right now would be your favorite authors?

I’ve really gotten much more interested in female writers and artists, and playwrights, and filmmakers -and I don’t think this is unusual- but I think I had sort of unconsciously internalized that the the way I think of when someone says, “Do you want wine?” I automatically think “they meant red wine. If they meant white wine they would have said white wine. Wine is red wine, is that artists are men. If it’s a woman artist, they’ll tell you it’s a woman artist.” I haven’t even totally started dismantling it until really recently. There’s the biggies of course – Austin, the Brontes, Virginia Wolf, but I really didn’t have a sense of who the women were who were my heroes and I think now, I have had the privilege to work with some of these people… the French filmmaker Claire Denis and Agnes Varda, and now Mia Hansen-Love, she’s amazing, and I recently those Ferrante books holy shit… those Ferrante books destroyed me. As a poet, Eileen Myles and Kay Ryan and for fiction Renada Adler, I felt like there was a whole world that I was stepping into. My then favorite playwright right now is Annie Baker. I felt like when I saw her play for the first time in like 2007, “Circle Mirror,” I had that feeling that was “This is not the best play by a woman, this is the best play… she is the best writer. It’s not a B-side. It’s she is better. She is better than them” I felt this surge of pride and jealousy. I’m almost, at this point, excluseively interested in what women are doing, and I’m sure that it will change in a way and of course I love male writers. I mean I think, I feel very lucky to be at the time I’m in. Living through what’s happening. I still can’t believe how unequal it is.

What’s your opinion about men everywhere in film, on film sets, etc? When you first started, were you intimidated? I don’t mind talking about it. It’s a boys’ club. And I think that part of it is that boys are given- not to be too sociological- but I feel like boys are given machines to play with. Girls are not given machines. Boys are given computers and cameras and tools, and I think there’s an immediate intimidation factor with girls with the tools that they don’t… But I’ll tell you… I know a lot of male filmmakers and most of them don’t know anything about those tools, they just feel confident about it, but they don’t know more about lenses than you do. They don’t know. I mean, the DP knows about lenses. But a lot of them don’t know what they’re what they’re talking about- not really. And it’s a really, I mean its an invisible thing.

Do you construct your crews, now that you have some say in the matter, around picking really nice people, or talented, or…

I always want the best people to be the people. The reason that I am attracted to both film and theater and dance for that matter, and music, is that they’re so incredibly collaborative, and that they are always made by groups. You’re never just executing something, you’re bringing your whole self to it, and I want people who bring their whole selves, and feel ownership over it. I still hate, I shouldn’t say it because maybe I’ll eventially take one, but I’m not crazy about the “film by” credit. I think you directed it, and you wrote it, but the film is not by you. It’s not. That’s an absurd statement to make. It’s by the people that made it. And I think what I look for is people that have a little spark of the commune in them because for me that’s what I’m drawn to. People tend to construct film sets as if they’re military operations with a pyramid power structure with the director at the top and then you go on down. I’m much more interested in “everybody owns the factory.”

So as a pretty blonde, you could go down the road if you were offered. I’m sure you are offered the opportunity to work with those male directors.  Have you ever kind of decided, “Eh, I don’t think so,” or do you do it just for the experience? What s your thought on going down those roads, but also maintaining your identity?

When I started beginning to make my living as an actor and I was in Greenberg, and things started presenting themselves to me, I did not go for a certain aspect of it. I stepped away. Part of me thought, “why can’t you go for this? Why can’t you go for this? What’s wrong with you? Are you self-sabotaging?” I gained a solid twenty pounds. Because there was something in me that felt very much like, if I somehow tried to be identified with my looks and my youth, what the fuck are my forties gonna be like? And I think for me, it was a false binary, and it is a false binary. At that moment when I was twenty six through twenty seven, I just couldn’t do that. And I think that it felt very lonely and strange. To be honest, you can do all of it. You don’t have to make that choice. But for me, it was something I just couldn’t totally do.

I know that so many people fell in love with you in Greenberg. What do you think the qualities of your character had in that movie that were breakthrough? Nobody really saw that before. There was something…

I don’t know. I was completely unaware of what it was. I just knew that I knew who Florence was and I knew how to… I was so sure that this sounds completely arrogant but I was so sure that I was the only person who could do it justice in the way that I felt her. And I mean it’s one of those things, I just felt like I owned it very quickly. When I read it, it was a feeling of, “I didn’t write this but I’m so angry that I didn’t write this because I couldn’t write this,” and that’s a good feeling to get. I just had an instant ownership of it. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I’m very glad that it was true.

Do you do yoga, or anything spiritual like that? Oh, Yeah. I’m a ‘theist.’ So, I’m a major I mean I’m not…I get uncomfortable around “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior stuff,” I find that creepy, but I go to church every Sunday. I had a weird method for a while where I was going to the Quaker meeting at 9am and sit silently for an hour, and then go to a Protestant church where I liked the choir, and then at noon there was a Jesuit service I liked, and then I was like “You’re going to church for five hours on Sunday. This is weird” ..but I went to catholic school when I was in high school. I wasn’t raised Catholic. My main attraction to Catholicism is I love the Jesuits, I love the rigor, I love the mystery, I love the ceremony and I love that as a religion and as a sect of Christianity the emphasis on worshipping the Virgin Mary – it’s a woman and I know it’s complicated, because I don’t like the position of women in the Catholic church but also, they pray to the Virgin Mary. That’s not something Protestants do, and it feels like this ‘God the Father’ thing is a bit alienating for me, but to engage with the idea of a woman of the mother, it seems like it’s connected to a more pagan type of religion and also the multiplicity of saints in Catholicism feels very old to me. It doesn’t feel quite monotheistic it is from a tradition of more that theres all different sides. So yeah.

Do you still go to Church?

Oh yeah. I think it’s largely based on Catholicism rather than Christianity because that was the education I was raised in, and I feel that Buddhism is beautiful, Judaism is beautiful, and Islam. But that wasn’t the tradition I came up through, so I think I heard the Dalai Lama say, “You don’t need to become a Buddhist. Be what you are. Just be kind,” and I thought, “Oh that’s right.” It always felt like a bit of an act to me, to take on a religion. I think whatever works for people then good.

What kind of dance do you do?

I take a lot of hip hop, Jamaican dance hall, and house dancing and it’s really hard and I’m not good at it. I’m just the awkward tall blonde girl standing in the back, but it’s good for the soul. It’s hard for me to exercise just for the purpose of exercising, I’m like, “what are we doing?” It always felt like doing math to me like the way it’s taught like, “I can solve this equation for you but why? What are we doing? I’m just moving these numbers around, this is dumb. There’s no higher purpose.”

What do you see for yourself in your future?

I think in the short term, I’m directing a movie I’ve written this summer.

What’s that about?

It’s sort of a Mother-daughter movie, and it’s about an eighteen year-old, and her last year living at home before she goes to college, and her mother and their family and their town and it’s starring sioirse tonana and she’s great, and she’ll be great. I direct that in August and September, and I think what I’ve been doing and what I’ll continue to do is that I want to write and direct films about women. That’s what I want to do. I’ve been writing them, and acting in them and producing them, but think it’s sort of the next step and I’d like to make a bunch of them. I really think that the last ten years, about 2006 around when I graduated from college until now, I apprenticed in film and I feel like it’s time. I’m ready.

[dupuytrens-org]

New Post has been published on https://dupuytrens.org/better-lucky-smart/

Better to be lucky than smart?

Thirteen years ago, a doctor had bad Dupuytren contractures.

He had been told that he needed surgery if he wanted to straighten his fingers. He didn’t want to take time off his practice for what might be a lengthy recovery after traditional surgery. He found a hand surgeon who was doing needle aponeurotomy – which had a shorter average recovery. He traveled cross-country to see him.

I was the surgeon he saw. His contractures were so severe that I was pessimistic that the procedure I was doing would work, and even more pessimistic that it would last very long. Severe contractures may mean severe disease biology. Severe biology means that procedures don’t last long before recontracture. His left hand was so bad that I thought it would do best with a big operation and a skin graft. I explained that he was very possibly wasting his time with a minimally invasive procedure. He still wanted to give it a try. His right hand did well. These are before and immediately after treatment:

His left hand was not as successful. These are before and immediately after treatment. I’m trying to straighten his fingers, pulling so hard my fingertips are white:

He went back home and was lost to follow-up.

Earlier this year, a friend asked me over for dinner, saying “My cousin is visiting from out of state. You treated his hands years ago and he wants to see you!”. I thought “Great!”. I got his name. I looked up his old pictures – and it is this guy. I thought “Oh, no! He’s probably had a couple of operations on each hand since I saw him. He probably wants to show me how terrible he is now.” I thought of the old surgical saying: Nothing ruins a good result like a long-term follow-up.

I met my friend and her cousin for dinner at her apartment. My first thought was “I must have mixed things up. It’s not the same guy. His hands look too good.”

But it was the same guy. He didn’t have any scars on his hands, and so I asked if he had been treated with Xiaflex. No, he said. He wore splints for a while but had no other procedures. None. One minimally invasive treatment on each hand thirteen years ago.

What’s the moral of this story? Does this prove that minimally invasive procedures are the best treatment for Dupuytren contracture? Absolutely not. Does this mean that I am an exceptional surgeon? Again, no, but it does show two things very clearly.

Contracture severity is not the same as biologic severity. Even though his fingers were very bent, he has mild biology. His fingers kept stretching out after his procedure and he did not have a recurrence within the first few years after treatment clearly. He beat the odds because he has mild biology – something apparent only in retrospect. He was lucky.

We need a test of biologic severity to choose the best treatment for each person. Right now, doctors decide on treatment based on the person’s story and the surgeon’s personal experience. What we have is treatment based on gut feeling.  What we need instead is individualized treatment based on real data. We need to fit the treatment to the disease for each person.

If doctors overestimate and recommend an aggressive operation for someone with mild biology, that person is overtreated. They have all the extra risk of big surgery with none of the benefits because they didn’t need big surgery in the first place.

If doctors underestimate and recommend a minimal procedure for someone with an aggressive biology, that person is undertreated. They are being given false hope and ineffective treatment. They may put off appropriate treatment so long that they miss the window of opportunity to have a great result.

These scenarios play out every day because we lack a test of Dupuytren biology. That’s why the goal of the Dupuytren Research Group International Dupuytren Data Bank http://DupStudy.com is to develop a Dupuytren test: a Dupuytren biomarker. Until a biomarker exists, treatment outcomes will continue to depend more on luck than smarts.