#i get such bad vibes from her and shes constantly trying to explain severe mental health issues w paranormal shit and its the only thing she

[lost-prince-x]

.

[floralovebot]

Helia and Tecna friendship headcanons? -lambofzenith

AHHHHHHHHHH okay so

helia is really bad at technology right? pretty much anything that isn't covered in red fountain lessons, he's a complete no-go at. tecna takes it upon herself to try and help him understand basic technology a bit more and it goes so wrong. helia is literally the mom that squints their eyes and holds their phone away from their face while using One pointer finger to type everything. tecna hates it so much.

helia naturally doesn't understand a single thing that comes out of her mouth when she's talking technology but he still supports her nonetheless

helia is surprisingly rational most of the time! he's a firm Push All My Emotions Down And Then One Day I'll Die kind of person so even during really stressful missions, he's good at keeping a level head about things. tecna really appreciates this and it's not rare to see her, helia, and timmy discussing mission-related strategies During The Middle Of A Fight

tecna has a tendency to talk while she works (only noticeable around people she's comfortable with though) but she gets a little self-conscious about it. she knows it's not Bad or anything, but it doesn't seem Right either so she tries to keep quiet most of the time. helia on the other hand is so used to working while it's noisy that he's totally chill with it. they've gotten used to just vibing in the same room, working on their own things, and not actually talking to each other during it. they're comfortable around each other :) helia doesn't mind when she rambles out loud and tecna doesn't mind him pacing around the room every five minutes. symbiotic relationship.

tecna doesn't like talking about what she went through in the omega dimension, even with timmy. however, she does occasionally draw things out when she really needs to vent and can't think of any other way how. she's always been good at sketching due to her background in designing gadgets so this wasn't a weird transition for her. helia told her about this anonymous place for artists to submit their art with absolutely no names attached and after checking to make sure it was legit and she was completely safe, she started to submit one or two a year. she doesn't like to do it often but it does help to sort of "get it out" without actually talking about it.

while helia is notoriously Bad at video games, he does actually like the more "physical reality" ones (think that virtual reality tecmy scene!) mainly because it feels close enough to real life that he doesn't need to rely on just technology to do it. tecna and helia often have very competitive gaming matches but specifically within those kinds of games otherwise, he's really bad at it and she gets annoyed that he can't remember any of the buttons.

speaking of competitions, helia has an inner bet going on of How Much Can I Pretend To Not Know Jackshit About A Specific Technological Topic Before Tecna Notices. what he doesn't know, is that tecna knows he does this and has her own inner bet of How Long Can I Explain This Specific Topic Before Helia Gets Bored And Moves On. so far, the score is mostly even, with helia only winning because timmy isn't aware of this mental battle and will often jump in to explain things too. helia is very smug about this and tecna can't say anything to timmy otherwise she loses the fight that no one actually set firm rules on.

timmy is just really happy that his two best friends are also friends and sometimes he tries to invite helia and flora on their dates. tecna is okay with this only because she thinks it's funny. florelia were also okay with it but started to not be because they realized that their version of a date and tecmy's version of a date was extremely different. they've started to come up with increasingly ridiculous excuses for why they can't go and so far timmy is the only one that hasn't noticed. poor timmy, he genuinely thinks flora's best friend cactus is sick and needs care 😔

when timmy isn't available, helia will call tecna for any technology related issues he's having. on one hand, she likes that he trusts her and can rely on her, on the other hand, she's told him ten separate times not to leave his computer running all the damn time. (tecna: please turn the computer off when you're not using it. this will immensely help solve all of the problems you've been having. helia: okay so i'm gonna leave it on all the time?). he's not trying to be difficult though. he just forgets everything and assumes it should work regardless (he a little stupit).

roxy gets so much gender envy from both of them and it confuses her all the time. they have no idea what a gender envy is though and they're mostly just wondering how they stop giving it to roxy since it seems like it agitates her??? help please???? researching the matter doesn't help and it ends up becoming a meme on winx stan twt because tecna made a very official and serious post asking about the severity of "gender envy" and needing to know how contagious it is. now whenever either of them posts, earth teens just comment gender envy at them. helia still doesn't know what it means.

they don't watch movies/tv together but they will binge-watch the same shows and then talk about them later on. tecna's formatting is still very formal and functional meanwhile helia bounces off multiple points and forgets to make a conclusion. he stresses her out so much.

helia notices when tecna has stayed up too long for too many nights and will occasionally send her a "please sleep" message when he knows timmy is already asleep and can't do it. she doesn't always listen but sometimes she will, but not before sending the same message back because why the fuck is he up at this hour huh dumbass?????

tecna has a pet bird and helia has multiple cats and they absolutely cannot be in the same room together. her bird is constantly trying to fight his cats and while they're usually well behaved, he's genuinely scared they're gonna try to eat it (tecna: stop calling my bird an "it"; helia: stop putting your bird near my cats 😐)

they actually don't like hanging out when one of them is upset. they both have a hard time talking about their emotions (for different reasons obviously) and they always end up feeling like they have to say something when they're together. they just really prefer hanging when they're both in a good mood or at least calm. whenever one of them gets upset, they stop hanging out together until that person feels better.

connected to the last point, you'd think that would mean they don't know a lot about each other, but they surprisingly do! they're both relatively observant people (tecna gets better every year) and they're actually really good at figuring out why the other is upset and what would help. they just don't talk about it.

although, on a similar note, the one time they did have an emotional talk, it was about timmy. tecna was feeling upset again and worrying over whether or not she's "too logical/not emotional enough" and it was the one time where she actually allowed herself to hang out with him while being upset. they had a genuine heart to heart about things and especially about how she's way too hard on herself. they thought it would be awkward since they actively avoided this kind of thing but it wasn't! it went very naturally and helia even teared up a bit. he's very proud of her and the effort she makes every day and since that talk has been much more vocal about it.

when they went to earth in s4, they both spent way too much time learning about Earth Things; tecna about earth media (canon), and helia about animals since that's what flora was talking about. he started calling tecna "chip" after that because chipmunks reminded him of her. she disagrees with this assessment and he refuses to admit he mixed up chipmunks and squirrels. he still calls her chip to this day, and fortunately, it's grown on her. unfortunately, he calls timmy "chip" too, and now it's a hassle to figure out who he's talking to.

helia is surprisingly interested in zenith technology despite not understanding it all! he enjoys walking through the streets of zenith with tecna while she proudly points things out so he can go "ooo aaa" at everything. sometimes she tries to explain how things work and his mind starts playing elevator music automatically. tecna has gotten really good at knowing when helia is just. brain empty no thoughts because she recognizes the Empty look in his eyes. she enjoys catching it live and trying to figure out why he's just. not thinking (usually it's because he either doesn't understand something or got bored) (this happens often when sky starts talking) (sorry sky)

tecna is one of the winx (besides flora of course) that helia trusts the most. not in an emotional or friend way, but in a physical, we're on a mission way. she has good control of her magic and knows how to use it. she's good at thinking of strategies and applying them properly to the situation. and after the omega dimension, he had a newfound respect for her previously unknown to him survival skills. if he were even in severe danger, she would be the first winx he'd call (depending on the situation, she is occasionally ahead of flora).

helia is really bad at sharing details. he tends to go straight to the conclusion but doesn't share how he got there (adhd king 😌) and tecna is the best person to call in when this happens. her logical questioning makes it seem so easy because she has the patience and knowledge to connect the dots and ask the right questions. when anyone else tries its more like (helia: i'm sitting in a pool of blood; person: uhm do you know where it's coming from?; helia: probably the stab wound; someone: did you get stabbed??; helia: oh yeah definitely.)

[supercharmed-forever-mine]

Today I will be addressing SuperCorp and some of the issues that have been floating around about fandom. And I will be saying some stuff that both is for it and could be used against it even though I am ultimately a super big supercorp fan. Like it says in the tags you're free to express your opinion but they will not be changing mine but I am always open-minded to opinions that can actually be explained and eloquently expressed (receipt's needed) and aren't just basic. Also just so what is noted I have been a part of this fandom since the first episode I have literally shipped Kara with everyone from Lucy to Cat even James.But Lena has just stuck out the most for me but I'm Equal opportunity.

Number #1, Lena's character in no way shape or form has ever been xenophobic she has never once shown any hate towards aliens her problem with Kara in season 5 Wasn't because she was an alien it was because she was a "Super" like Kara could have been a flying purple fucking octopus from the planet of shzjxfdf and Lena wouldn't have gave two fucks but no she was a "Super"but let's dig deeper on that point if we really look at why she was mad it wasn't even the whole alien aspect it was because she wasn't told and no I don't think she's entitled to it but I do think it played into the fact of a trust issue she has with the fact that people would think she would be just like Lex if she had been told Sooner. Which is disproved in 5x13 (also personal note: I also think she wouldn't have reacted half as bad if Kara had just told her that night at game night or the next day when she wanted to probably still would have been pissed but not to the same extent). But okay with that being said I do disagree with the kryptonite entrapment torture scene and basically half the s*** she did in season 5 it was shown that she truly can tap into her Luthor side and be dark when wanted but fortunately she does always return to the light and in all fairness it has been shown several times that Kara has a dark side of her own that could rival the luthors.

Number #2, I do disagree with the abuse of actresses and actors just because of a ship and or character they play don't blame them it's just a job they have I think Melissa and Katie do a beautiful job of bringing Kara and Lena's characters to life couldn't imagine anybody else playing them.

Number #3, I also will say about the reason bombarding of comments on Nicole's social media at least I saw the video via tiktok in that video was fucking hilarious I love Nia, Dreamer,and Nicole in general she's funny and beautiful and is an advocate for everything good in life and well it is normal to even ask other actors if they have the scoop on anything it does not mean we need to be bombarding them in videos on something relating to their character or their love of something a simple comment or so maybe but what I saw NO.

Number #4, The William of it all well I think though his character seems like a nice gentleman he also seems to be bland as hell also I did not know he was a POC to be honest I thought he was a tan white man and we'll be doing further research on people in the future as I can learn from my ignorance also but unrelated I did not know that the woman who played Maggie was apparently just a tan white woman I thought she was of some sort of Hispanic descent but apparently not according to various things I've read on here tonight... But anyways back to William I feel like a lot of people might have perceived him as a white man therefore that might play into the whole scenario of people hate that they just want two white woman together when it proves if she was a man they wouldn't give two f**** about it whether that's true or not I don't know but mine two cents.

Number #5, I will never bash someone for being for or against a certain ship and or character and well I am allowed to certainly disagree with their opinion all opinions are valid because we all see the world a different way some see it bright and shiny and others like I'll admit myself see it through the glasses of trauma. And I think that's why we all have the opinions we do most of the time when you like a shipper character it's because you relate to them somehow even if it's the most minor thing to someone else it might be huge for you. You never know what the person on the other side of the screen is going through in those characters or ship or fanfiction might have literally saved their lives.

Sidenote: Like okay personal story I was been both mentally and sexually abused as a child so I relate to both Kara and Lena respective childhood trauma so that draws me to them. And I kind of see them both as the opposite attract trope (two side of the same coin) because well we never fully get over trauma Kara had a great support system with the Danvers whereas Lena didn't get that with the luthors I mean sure she had Lex at first but even that was only to a certain extent because of his psychopathy that was starting to manifest he couldn't perceive human emotions the same as Lena who in my opinion is just a big mushy nerd who can be a badass when needed as evident by the season 6 episodes after she's quit L-Corp she's constantly trying to help out inventing new stuff and she's wondering how Nia's suit works and it just shows that she just has a curious mind and also she looks happier even with the guilt she feels over Kara's phantom zone incident when Nia called her a part of the family that smile could lit up a city all she's ever wanted is to belong and I can relate to that therefore to her.

Number #6, I feel like this should have been addressed in earlier number but as far as sexuality goes I would want to believe Kara is pansexual because of everything I've ever read and saw I don't believe she perceived sexuality like humans do because of her Kryptonian upbringing for the first good chunk of the life. Like even though she says she's not gay in the first episode, A. It was the first episode so they didn't even know where the story was going in future seasons if they got them also that means maybe she just didn't perceive herself as the Earth's definition of gay. B. Even in the first season she made a comment about how she bought Lucy was gorgeous and hell she would date her. C. She made some comments about Irma and other woman that don't sound totally heterosexual and don't get me wrong women can admire the beauty and intelligence of other women without it being sexual but as a bisexual woman it just struck a cord in me you can tell the difference when it's coming from a straight woman mouth. Now on the subject of her and Lena strictly I do think there are instances of "queerbaiting"because just because you perceive they haven't been promised to us doesn't mean that some of us haven't picked up on things or the fact that they're simply queerbating because somehow they do hype up Kara and Lena to keep a nice chunk of the audience who ships them mainly those of the gay variety interested in the show which is also considered queerbaiting. Also the fact that they've been called sisters or family or my personal favorite "that's what friends are for"doesn't mean crap because honestly at this point the overuse of friends just sounds more like they're trying to convince themselves than us.*** Also I don't know about you but even on the basic level of things they've done I've never shown half those feelings towards my friends and the ones I have it's because I started to think of them as more than friends.

Now with Lena's sexuality no they have never shown her as anything besides straight canonically but don't get me wrong she totally sends off that college experimentation vibe especially with Andrea for some reason but that may just be me.

Number #7, my main point is let's just be kind to one another because guess what there is toxicity from every ship in a fandom there will always be shitty people on both sides and then there will be those of us who just want to see the characters together for one reason or another and yes I'm not afraid to admit that part of my reasons I want to see two gorgeous woman kiss sue me LOL.

Number #8, the conclusion of my rant is that how about we leave the hating to the ones who want to do that and the rest of us like adults or whatever your age is in the fandom that has any type of maturity behave because I truly do wish the best and in the end well I hope they end up together I'm realistic that they probably won't especially due to the CW Network motto of "homophobia and racism"because they've already broken up several good gay and interracial couples on that show. But at the end of the day my true wish is just that all of the characters end up happy and healthy.

Best of luck to all shippers out there anti and supercorp and or any other couple alike may we try to make it out of this with a modicum of sanity and even if they fail us we always have fanfiction thank you and good night.

[savannahsdrabbles]

Ocean Song - Part Two

rating: PG summary: Marine biology student April O’Neil makes a startling discovery.

notes: An AU originally based off of the 2012 TMNT universe, but can be compatible with most versions of the characters. <3 2.8k words. A03 link can be found here. Also special thanks to @cloakedrabbit and @starfiretheninja for beta-reading!

While he considered himself fairly levelheaded, there were a lot of things that ticked Casey Jones off: The referee calling foul play when an opponent obviously deserved to be body slammed, the cafeteria workers skimping on tater tots (in no universe was four enough), and people being jerks to those who couldn’t defend themselves.

The worst feeling of all, however, was when people intentionally kept secrets from him.

From the moment April O’Neil had walked into homeroom that Monday, he could tell that she had something heavy weighing on her mind. The redhead had avoided his attention-seeking gestures and whispers throughout class, seemingly intent on doodling in her notebook and not paying the slightest amount of attention to the lecture. She rested her chin in her palm, arm forming a barrier that blocked her page from anyone who walked past. Even when Casey flicked a pencil onto her desk, her only response was to absentmindedly return the utensil and continue scribbling.

By the time lunch rolled around, Casey was nearly shaking with curiosity and frustration over the unknown. With one hand firmly gripping his sack lunch, the eighteen-year-old searched the sea of dark hair on the patio and in the cafeteria, and then finally stuck his head into the library – a first for him. Sure enough, April was tucked away at a table in the far corner of the reference section with her nose to a computer monitor and the same expression of deep thought on her face. 

“Alright, Red. Spill.” April jolted when he dragged over a chair with a deafening screech and then flopped into it. Turning his lunch bag over on the table and scattering its contents, Casey shoved an apple towards the hand she was clutching the mouse with and then picked out a peanut butter granola bar to munch on. “I can tell you’re freaking out about something. Is it homework related, or what?”

“It’s nothing,” she muttered, quickly attempting to minimize the tabs she had open on the screen – though not before Casey caught a glance of the website.

“Mysteries of the Deep: Unexplained Open Ocean Phenomena,” Casey snorted, sending a spray of granola crumbs flying, and leaned over to elbow the girl playfully. “What, are you trying to find the loch ness monster or something? Cause I’m pretty sure that’s in Canada.”

To his surprise, April let out a hiss of pain and grabbed her ribs right where Casey had poked her. The smirk on his face instantly vanished, and Casey raised his hands in surrender. “Whoa – I didn’t mean to hit so hard – my bad! Are you okay?”

April’s face tightened for a moment as if she were going to argue, her brows arching into the sassy look that Casey was used to seeing whenever he whined about how useless math was, but then she heaved a sigh and dropped her hand from her side. The girl motioned for Casey to quiet down, and then stood up quickly to peer over the row of computers around them. Once she seemed satisfied that no one was nearby, the redhead relented. “I got attacked when I was diving last night.”

“Wait – what?!” Casey nearly inhaled his granola bar and had to pause for a moment to cough violently. “By what? A fish? Or one of the other divers?”

“Shhh!” the librarian hissed from across the room.

“Don’t freak out – I’m fine.” April waved a hand dismissively, and then launched into a whispered explanation of what had happened. Casey listened with a furrowed brow, constantly interjecting with questions and April constantly hissing at him to quiet down and listen so that they would not be overheard. “He’s at Hamato Labs right now – probably still on constant sedation watch until they decide what to do with him. Dad wanted me to just go back to school today like nothing had happened, but –”

“You keep calling it a ‘him’. Did you get a look at –”

“Ew – no, Casey! Gross!” April let out a muffled shriek of indignation and punched the boy in the shoulder, though her quivering lips betrayed the hint of a smirk that Casey instantly decided was worth the shoulder pain. “I could just TELL that it was a ‘he’. He gave off a ‘guy’ vibe, I don’t know. And maybe the other one, too – though I didn’t get as good of a look at him.”

Casey seemed to calm down at this, as he leaned back in his chair with a grin and kicked his legs up onto the table – which April quickly shoved off with a jerk of her head towards the librarian’s desk. “Alright, so what’s going to happen to ‘him’ now? Or wait – do you get to name him as a new species or something? Like the ‘genus turtle-us, April-us’, or whatever?”

April shrugged, her fingers tapping unconsciously on the notebook that Casey finally realized was in her lap. The spiral bound pages bore dozens of doodles from throughout the day, all bearing features of turtles with cartoonish expressions. Several words had been written and crossed out in the margins, which Casey read aloud.

“Raph-ale? Donatello?”

The girl snapped her notebook shut with a ‘PAP!’ seeming to just notice that he had been looking at it. “Art history homework – another college course. Anyway, I should probably get back to class now. Thanks for letting me ramble – it’s just a really weird situation and I’m actually kind of glad to talk about it with someone that isn’t another scientist.”

“Well, I am definitely not a scientist, so no problem,” Casey flashed a thumbs up as April began to gather her belongings. “So, when do I get to see him?”

April froze, her hands hovering over her backpack. “Excuse me?”

The boy lifted his head to double check that they were alone, and then leaned closer to April. “You tell me all about some bizarre-o turtle man that might end up being on National Geographic or something, and then you won’t let me see it? That’s pretty low, dude.”

“It’s not that I’m against you seeing him – it’s just that I’m more than likely not even supposed to be mentioning the fact of his existence to anyone outside of the research team. Any number of hippie organizations or other laboratories would spring at the chance to claim him. Besides – if we determine that whatever made him like this is the source of an imminent biological or ecological threat, the lab is going to want to keep it out of the public eye until they’ve discovered a solution.”

“C’mon!” Casey slung an arm over April’s shoulder to keep her from standing up and leaving the table. “I won’t tell anyone! I promise – I just want to get a quick peek! It’s not every day that a kaiju saves your girlfriend – ”

“I am in no way, shape or form your girlfriend, and if you ever say that again I will punch you in the throat.”

“- from a squid! Come on – please?” Casey clasped his hands in a praying position and stuck out his bottom lip. “Please please please please please – I won’t stop until you say yes – please?”

April observed him for a moment with an expression of disgust, and then let out a deep sigh, earning a whoop of approval and a loud ‘Shhhhh!’ from the direction of the librarian’s desk. “Fine. I’m heading back to the lab after school anyway. You drive, and I’ll get my dad to sign off on letting you in with me.”

“Alright, all aboard the Jonesmobile, woo woo – ow! Why did you hit me?!”

***

The rest of the day went off without a hitch – though April would be the first to admit that she was less than focused during class. All she could think about was her interaction with the turtle, and the bubbling feeling in her stomach that occurred when she considered the fact that she would get to see him again that afternoon. Casey showed signs of distraction as well – though that was fairly normal for him. April made a mental note to ensure that he was getting his homework done and turned in.

When the last bell finally rang, the two teenagers hurried out to Casey’s old Jeep and gunned it to Hamato Laboratories. A quick knock on Dr. O’Neil’s door with no response told them that he was tied up on the phone, so the two decided to head towards the labs anyway.

“I don’t think they’ll let you into the actual exam room without my dad present, but you’ll probably be able to at least look through the glass,” April explained as the two rode the elevator down to the lower floors. Several marine biologists and lab technicians passed them on their way down, each stopping to ensure that April was doing well after the incident the day before.

“Didn’t you say he’d probably be unconscious or sedated or whatever?” Casey asked. He looked thoroughly out of place in the sleek laboratory building, all skinny jeans and beat up hoodie in contrast to the white lab coats and slacks worn by almost everyone they passed. Even April had grabbed her monogramed coat from the locker area before boarding the elevator and had thrown her hair up into a bun. Despite this, the eighteen-year-old still carried himself with an air of utter ease and confidence that April couldn’t help but respect. “Is that because he hurt you?”

April hesitated before answering. “Not specifically? It’s typically a standard procedure to sedate larger animals – particularly if they’re not reacting well to the lab environment. That way if they lash out, they’re less likely to hurt themselves or anyone else. But I could tell that he wasn’t trying to hurt me yesterday – it was just an accident.” She rubbed a hand on her side and grimaced slightly as her fingertips traced the tender bruises. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy explaining that to my dad. He still thinks that I was freaking out and imagined a lot of what I saw and felt.”

“How can you be sure that you didn’t?”

April’s eyes snapped to Casey’s as the elevator let out a ‘ping’ to alert them that they were nearing the correct floor. “Excuse me?”

Casey shrugged. “Nothing against you, but while this thing is cool and big and stuff, isn’t it possible that you kind of hallucinated him being… human-ish? I mean – maybe it didn’t really know that it was helping you?”

“No. He knew that he was helping me.” The words she spoke swelled with utter confidence that dimmed Casey’s doubts. “I just know it. You’ll see.”

Right as the words left her mouth, the elevator doors opened into a stark white hallway offset by the dark cement floor beneath it. Pipes and power lines ran the length of the ceiling in either direction, the whirring that they produced being the only sound in the otherwise quiet hallway. As the duo stepped out of the elevator, the motion activated lights immediately kicked on and flooded the halls with a dim light. A dozen heavy doors lined the walls, each accompanied by a keycard lock and a glass window to allow observation from outside. At the very end of the hallway, a large set of double doors beneath a glowing ‘Exit’ sign signaled the entrance to the garage through which creatures were delivered.

“Welp. I’m pretty sure we are going to get murdered in this hallway.”

April snorted and grabbed for Casey’s wrist, dragging him down the hallway towards Exam Room D. “C’mon, don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not. This… just looks like a hallway that someone in Saw would get murdered in.”

“Wuss.”

***

Despite her words of reassurance, April couldn’t help but feel on edge as well. She had grown up visiting labs with her dad and following him around as he worked. The smells of antiseptic and metallic surfaces were woven through her earliest memories, combined with days spent happily watching fish moving about in their tanks as her father helped to rehabilitate everything from enormous seals to tiny starfish. Such laboratories were what inspired her love of science and biology, and had always served as a safe place in her memories.

But even as she swiped her keycard and pushed open the door to the correct exam room, her recently donned lab coat rustling quietly around her, she could tell that something was very… off.

Casey stuck close behind, the warning of staying by the observation window clearly forgotten – or ignored - as the two walked hesitantly into the dimly lit room. April noticed that the main lights had been turned off – not unusual for when researchers dealt with deep sea or photosensitive creatures – and the only light being offered was from the panels that hung around the examination tables and over the door that led out to the loading dock. Filtered water gurgled in several tanks around the room, adding to the illusion that the room might have been located underwater or someplace hidden away from the rest of the world.

“Dude,” Casey murmured quietly. “I didn’t expect this place to be so creepy.”

“It’s not, usually,” April felt a palm along the white walls until she found the light dimmer and adjusted it just enough that they had a bit more light.

“Holy crap. You weren’t joking about how big he is.”

A large glass cage, usually reserved for seals, stood in one corner of the room. The bottom of the cage had been lined with a layer of sand, which had apparently been kicked up by the creature quietly whining and shifting inside of it.

The turtle within was currently laying on its side with his armored back to the two teenagers and one leg stretched at an uncomfortable angle as it seemed to be attempting to pull itself completely into the far corner of the container. A closer look told them that the turtle had been shackled, a large iron chain around its left leg prohibiting him from crawling into his shell.

“Yeah – he actually seems smaller than I remembered…” The red head hesitantly took a step forward, eyes watching as the turtle took a shuddering breath and twitched. He didn’t seem to have noticed their arrival yet – proving the recent sedative to be quite effective. “When he was moving around in the water I could have sworn he was taller than I was, but now he doesn’t even look five feet tall!”

“Tall or not, he looks kinda dead,” Casey suddenly strode forward to stand beside April and pressed one hand to the glass, tapping lightly with his knuckle. “Wake up, dude!”

“I doubt that will do anything, Casey – he’s really drugged up at the mo-”

As if on cue, the turtle jerked in its sleep and flailed momentarily in the sand, eliciting quiet shrieks of surprise from the two observers. They both leapt backwards as the turtle rolled itself onto all fours, limbs still trembling from sleep and head shaking this way and that as the creature attempted to orient itself. There was a moment of silence as he seemed to suddenly remember his predicament, and then the turtle caught sight of April and Casey.

Eyes shrinking to pinpricks, the turtle let out a squawk of terror and scrabbled backwards on his hands and rear end until the chain grew taut and he couldn’t retreat any further, chest heaving and eyes flicking in every direction as he searched for a way out. With a jolt, April watched as the turtle threw his body sideways against the glass and clawed at the walls. The laboratory room echoed with sounds of distress as the creature began to click and squawk frantically.

“Uh – do we need to go get somebody?” the dark-haired boy pressed both hands to his ears and furrowed his brow. “’Cause he doesn’t seem to be very happy about being in there!”

“We should probably get one of the lab technicians to administer another dose of sedative,” April nodded her head back towards the door, though her eyes remained on the turtle. The creature was still clicking loudly as it balled its hands into fists and beat them against the glass. “The walls should be strong enough to hold him, but he might hurt himself if he keeps freaking out!”

“Sounds good to me!”

The girl motioned for Casey to follow her, backing slowly away from the turtle and reaching out for the door handle. As they backed away, the noise seemed to falter and then suddenly -

“Help!”

April froze, her hand inches from the doorknob, and then turned to meet Casey’s round brown orbs. “Did you-?”

“Help!”

The two stared at each other silently for a heartbeat, and then slowly turned to face the panting terrapin. The creature’s amber eyes had tracked them across the room, and now locked onto April’s own eyes with an intensity she had never seen before.

“Crap,” Casey murmured under his breath. “What did you - ?”

“Tasukete kudasai!” The turtle pressed his trembling palms against the glass, eyes round and searching as they moved to meet Casey’s. “Help! Out!”

Next Chapter

[prorevenge]

Try to ruin my life? Say goodbye to your husband, your home, and your foot.

Now, to give some backstory to this, I will say things with her weren't always bad. When I was a small child she was the coolest mom in the world in my eyes. Looking back, she didn't make the smartest parental decisions doing “cool” things, but nonetheless there were good times I still remember fondly. As I got older, her manipulative ways and desperate need for everyone's attention at all times got unbearably worse. She also tried to make me into the same shitty person she was. She taught me how to make up elaborate lies and stories so my grandma wouldn't know where we went out (mom was a compulsive liar, so even though there was no reason for this, she did it anyway), constantly told me that school taught useless shit and I just needed to pass and get by and then would berate me for bad grades, she blew my friendships up by either manipulating my friends or their parents, taught me the first thing to do when my grandma died was to take all her money and grab her lock box (also had money, and yes she meant before calling 911), and honestly there's so many horrible things she told me was okay and did a lot of terrible shit to me, but there's just too many to list them all. There was also a decent heap of mental and emotional abuse that seemed to increase with my age, but y'all aren't here for my sob story.

The Breaking Point I was in college, she went full on helicopter parent during my first year, and she still managed to ruin with a few friendships because she's damn good at being a shitty person. Come my first summer vacation, it came time to get ready to go home. I wanted to go back to my grandma's house, where I grew up. She showed up moving day and took all my things to her and her new husband's house (he is NOT my stepfather, I never liked him). She demanded I get a job (she didn't have one) to pay for my food, but I also had to do ALL of the housework while she sat on her ass and watched TV and smoked weed. It took me less than a week to realize she wanted me there as her personal slave, but she didn't want to spend any more money that her husband made because of my being there. I texted a few friends out of desperation, and she took my phone in my sleep to read what I said. She then began her work to ruin my life. She messaged all of my friends slinging some bullshit about being a witness in court and said I told her a bunch of nasty shit about them I never said, and scared most of them off from ever talking to me. She called all of our family and told them I was an alcoholic and I was going to fail college (grades were decent, I had drank maybe 5 times ever at that point). My grandma came and got me after many tear-filled calls explaining what was going on. After I left, she refused to sign my FAFSA (there was absolutely no way I could afford school without financial aid), and tried to get me kicked out of my school, but the financial aid Dept at my school was awesome and helped me get around that so I could continue there. After that, she'd call the house and my job several times a day and leave harassing messages (luckily she kept up her nice act when she called work asking for me, they were unbelievably understanding at my job). My grandma and I ended up going to court to take out protection orders, she got hers with no contest, but my mother contested mine. At that point, my anxiety was so bad I became violently sick and missed my follow-up court date. After that she tried to have me arrested. When the cops showed up to my house explaining to my grandma what she told them, we explained everything going on and luckily they were also understanding (they got the crazy vibe from her on the phone). After that, I. Was. Done. I didn't just want her to rot in hell, I wanted the rest of her life to be hell.

The Revenge For a while, I didn't really tell many people what was going on as I'm the type of person that doesn't want to be a burden to their loved ones at any cost. But after going to therapy at my college, I got a lot of my shit worked out and was able to come to terms with a lot of the shit that happened. So then I began my work. I told EVERYONE she knew. Most of them she had gotten to first, but they changed alliances very quickly after my talks with them. I made sure to turn up the waterworks HARD when I retold my story every time. Even threw in the occasional "I just don't understand why she hates me so much," and "I only ever wanted my mom to love me." In reality, I knew she was just a compulsive liar and a narcissist and was only flipping out because I wouldn't succumb to her will anymore I told my family everything including the mental and emotional abuse from my teens and up. Needless to say, they were horrified.

I wound up getting a new number and blocking her email so she couldn't harass me anymore, but she would call my grandma's house and leave messages every once in a while to try and slither her way back into my life. Nope. She even tried to "kill herself" with TYLENOL to try and get sympathy. After I contacted everyone and told them what happened, no one gave a shit about her "issues." Eventually, she and dipshit husband wound up losing their house due to money with her not working. They bought a truck and a shitty trailer to hitch to it and called it home. She even had the nerve to call us when a hurricane was coming (yup, I'm from Florida) and asked if they could seek shelter with us. We deleted the message. Now for the most satisfying part. A few weeks ago, after quite a long time from her last message, she calls. Apparently, as it turns out, her unmanaged diabetes caught up to her. She was in a hospital in North Carolina about to have a foot amputated. Dipshit husband apparently decided he was done, so he ran away with his crackhead cousin (he was a recovering crackhead), took their truck/trailer, and left her with nothing and nowhere to go. My grandma was literally her last possible saving grace. Everyone else turned her away, and she was going to be discharged in 3 days. With nowhere to go. She was begging my grandma to take her in, even having the gall to say "how could you turn me away at a time like this."

Message deleted.

Now I'm doing much better with a job I love, kickass roommates, the best friends I could ask for, and a boyfriend who is so incredibly loving and understanding of all my issues. I couldn't be happier. And she couldn't be more miserable. I'm a Hufflepuff at heart, but push me too hard and I can show you just how much of a Slytherin I can be.

TL;DR: Mom spends years psychologically abusing me, tries to blow my life up. I make sure everyone hates her, then she loses her husband, her home, and her foot.

(source) story by (/u/st0nermermaid)

[ardenttheories]

Weird notes and thoughts on Pesterquest: Volume 6, under the cut because this shit got long.

GAMZEE

Gamzee calls the Reader “sister”? Several times, in fact.

The Rage symbol is hidden in Gamzee’s pie.

Gamzee “moves on marianette strings” and his eyes flash as he stands up, which indicates that the movement is controlled by someone else (additionally that refusing to eat pie immediately loses him his free will?)

Either Gamzee is being funded by someone/something, or we’re literally just seeing troll Amazon in action.

The reader is a colossal dumbass for leaving a raging highblood to see “what would happen” in the future (although maybe if they’d stuck around they would’ve seen much sooner what was going to happen)

Gamzee, when raging, doesn’t want to see himself; he goes out of his way to destroy every reflective surface

When raging, Gamzee always scars his face. He does it here, too - which seems odd. Either he did it himself, or Kanaya did it - either way, it must be symbolic.

(Amended to the above, maybe the slash represents the Bardic Split - which we see fully when half of Gamzee is sucked up into Lil Cal. Slashed face = full Rage Bard)

The Reader mentions that they feel like they’ve seen everything as if someone else did it, so we’ve got that same odd instance of Reader remembering other timelines - which means there isn’t one “Alpha” Reader, and that all outcomes merge back into the Reader eventually.

Someone “spoke to Gamzee” about the truth of the world. If he thinks the Reader is going to “meet him soon”, maybe he means someone in the Dreambubbles? Like LE? 

Considering this is a timeline where Gamzee goes off the wall and kills everyone (or so it seems, since he’s yet to be stopped), could this allude to the honk HONK timeline? Can’t remember if they ever entered the game or not. It’d be a nice touch if so!

The pie is definitely NOT something you’re meant to eat, and I’d assume the initial nausea is Reader’s body trying to reject it before the effects kick in. Now we know what it’s like, there’s literally no surprise that Gamzee eats the pie all the time. It really does dampen him - but with a much stronger, more immediate effect.

(Amended to the above, if Gamzee is easily influenced to Split as soon as he stops eating the pie, then consistently eating is key. Explains why even refusing to eat once hashes him out.)

“Someone wants you to forget. Forget all of your friends and past adventures”. So, Reader is likely still very much under Doc Scratch’s control? Or if not Doc Scratch, then something else (maybe just the narrative) - but interesting to note how it doesn’t work while Reader is high.

The sopor slime really must block out any and all attempts from outside influences to control the mental flow of the consuming character.

Trying to go to the Friendsim timeline causes something very wrong to occur; Reader is literally blocked out from it, and managing to do it seems to fuck everything up for a split second. I have no idea what the T-posing alien was for, though.

VRISKA

“You step on a weird bug and you don’t even care” that’s a reference but I can’t for the life of me remember it. EDIT: FOUND IT. Page 797 of Homestuck, titled “Jade: Lose interest in fauna and never speak of it again”, the narrative details her being a majestic beast and ends with “you eat a weird bug and don’t even care”.  

The Reader is still being forced to make new friends. Even when their feelings are very much against this - and I assume they are still struggling with that concept of doing things with no meaning - their narrative is forcing them to do it. 

Vriska trans.

Vriska steals Reader’s luck. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it, I think, but I’m assuming that’s what it is. I’m also assuming this is why the Reader can’t speak out against her at first, and all of our options are just one box; she’s stealing their narrative importance, too, and the only good outcomes are ones that favour her and her ego/character.

Vriska deciding not to rag on Reader for up-chucking is oddly kind of her, but at the same time you’re getting this really heavy handed sense that she’s a lonely girl - the same one we got in her conversations with John in actual Homestuck. Feels like this might replicate that sort of friendship? Where she ends up opening up to John prior to going after Jack Noir about her life and how much she dislikes it.

On top of that, she seems genuinely upset when the Reader leaves. Vriska wants friends but has no idea how to make them, although that doesn’t admittedly excuse her actions towards Kanaya - though it does show more about how conflicted she is as a person. 

Reader can just open up the game client at will. Reader if you ever touch the close window button I will destroy you.

Reader really dislikes having a name. It’s not a comfortable facet of their being, despite having shown they own one - likely because they’re just meant to be a vessel for our whims, and therefore shouldn’t have a name.

More implications that the Reader is living multiple canons at once that then merge together into a singular Reader at the end, since here they already know Vriska’s name before being told (which they do, in one route).

Like with the humans, Vriska can’t actually control the Reader. More hints to Reader being human? Or just to Vriska’s inability to control something that isn’t Alternian?

This Reader is, in fact, the Reader from the comic - the Land of Stumps and Dismay is clearly referenced.

Boldir appearing is so fucking sad. Poor Reader. In a more genuine sense, though, Pesterquest seems to be trying to say here that this offshoot of Homestuck isn’t fake unless we see it as such - and that, I assume, something good (and perhaps will) come of it. The Reader has complete freedom to do as they please, even if they’re still a puppet on strings for the moment - if they can remember, then they can fix it.

More clarity on the Reader; their memories are, indeed, locked away. Not gone entirely, but repressed by Doc Scratch for the purpose of the story. On top of that, Reader was definitely being used to set Act 2 of Hiveswap in place. Vibes well with the announcement of Act 2′s trailer. 

This story is for the Reader - and always has been. It doesn’t belong to “them” - which I assume means Doc Scratch and Dirk, perhaps? This isn’t their story. It’s ours. “What will you do?” Vibes well with Homestuck^2′s fanonicity. 

Oof. Doc Scratch returns to knock Reader down. Reader, supposedly, is only relevant because Doc Scratch says they are - as an observer, as a vessel for the story. The story can go on without Reader (although I highly suspect that it can’t, since Doc Scratch mentions “the really important bits” would survive without them - e.g. Meat could go on, but Candy couldn’t, and Pesterquest is a mix of both.)

Did Doc Scratch really just call Reader “darling”? And more references to the Reader and little girls. I’m starting to get a fairly female-vibe here when combined with Gamzee’s prior references to the Reader as “sister”. Which is ironic when you consider that the women in Homestuck tend to be the ones that carry the plot along, and the men tend to be the hands that enact it out.

Doc Scratch isn’t “the one doing this”, whatever that means. I’m assuming something along the lines of “are you controlling the narrative? Are you making this happen?” But he clearly is, I think, unless the strings we saw don’t belong to him. Or he could be refering to something else entirely, or going a bit meta (thereby saying no, he isn’t doing it, but Hussie is). Might need to think on that more. 

What is the scratchy voice that screams “fix this”? Hopefully this means in the next few volumes, Reader is going to start remembering more and trying to fix the timeline - or at least stop it from being one heaving big paradox.

Vriska is really not happy about having to feed her lusus. I know it’s gone over in Homestuck, but it’s way more evident here; she does not want to do this. I think it’s sad, too, that she feels betrayed and hurt when Reader doesn’t turn around. Maybe she knows how bad it looks and knows that the Reader standing up to her makes her seem the villain? That Reader’s suddenly the hero trying to stop the big baddy from killing the innocent trolls that she doesn’t even want to kill?

Oh. Huh yeah that’s exactly what she thinks, I just didn’t read far enough before typing. I wonder how often this has happened? Or if she’s just adamantly aware that every time she feeds someone to her lusus, she’s being a bad guy - while being a victim at the same time, and struggling between the two views. 

Poor Vriska. Her sobbing at the end fucking hurts. How many friends has she had to feed to her beast of a mother?

Vriska’s lusus talks to her constantly. That’s got to be hell, going through your life knowing that your mother is demanding more food from people you actually, genuinely like if you want to not be eaten by her as well.

Vriska turned on Terezi after the revenge thing because “that’s what you do to backstabbers”. I wonder if she even wanted to, then, or if she did it because she felt betrayed and hurt and that was how she dealt with being betrayed by someone who knew that she did what she did because she couldn’t not do it?

Her being down that Terezi doesn’t care anymore makes a lot of sense as to why she tried to use Kanaya to get back in with Karkat and Terezi. I think, more than anything, Vriska hates being ignored. She can handle being hated so long as there are still people there - but when they leave, and people always leave, then she’s left on her own to deal with a life she really does not enjoy.  

Vriska’s concept of love is horrifically skewed by her perception of herself and of romance as dictated by Mindfang’s journal. She thinks there’s this person she has to be and she struggles deeply with it. Quite literally, tables in player handbooks that tell her who she is and what she has to do.  

She’s not content with Kanaya because she thinks Kanaya sees her as something broken that needs to be fixed - which isn’t wrong, because Kanaya is trying to change her for the better, without wholly knowing what’s going on and making a lot of misconceptions because Vriska doesn’t know how to talk to her about the truth - and therefore she sees a lot of what Kanaya does as just another person wanting something from her. 

I’m assuming the other “she” she mentions is Terezi - aka Terezi is the only person who cuts through the self doubt and the self hatred and these concepts of who she should be (and the voice of her lusus literally telling her she’s not good enough, on top of ther own doubts). Which would explain why Terezi’s betrayal hurts her so much. 

Reader pointing out that Vriska let her guard down around Terezi only to be betrayed and force her to put up a stronger guard? That shit hurtes. Case in point, though; Vriska sets up this guard around her because she can’t afford not to (because she’ll either get hurt or end up having to feed the troll to her lusus anyway). 

Vriska can save her friends by feeding her lusus enough trolls - so, more death to keep the people she likes alive. Though she mentions Karkat in line with this? Did Karkat ever meet Vriska IRL?

Schoolfeeds indoctrinate the trolls with the idea that they have to kill everyone below them so they’re more viciously okay with killing any species out in space - which are naturally lower than them in status by warrant of “not being Alternians”. 

Vriska wants to be like Mindfang literally right after mentioning how Mindfang joined the Summoner’s rebellion? She really wants to change what Alternia is like. I’d go so far as to say she gives 0 fucks about the hemospectrum in truth. Seems like she wants a better world for everyone, though - not just herself. 

Oof. Vriska’s self image is likely severely fucked up by her lusus. Must really fuck a 13 year old girl up to be told you’re fatter than your mom and you have to bring her more kids to feed her. Especially when you’re dying and she refuses to stop even then. 

You’re looking at a survivor. At someone who did nothing wrong. FUCK that hits hard. I love the comments about Dave, Rose, and Jade, too - and the specific exclusion of John. That ramps up my “all the kids suffered prior to the game, gained what they wanted after the game - except John, who is an inversion of that” theory for his Classpect.

Reader’s taking control of the narrative! I repeat! Reader’s TAKING CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE! Now this bodes well to future volumes, and makes me wonder if this is the first step to the Reader fixing everything.

[femnet]

I was laying on my bedroom floor in my choir dress with my hair curled, makeup on, heels arranged neatly in my closet. An hour before I was smiling. I felt perfectly fine on the way home from the showcase but then, all of a sudden, I just couldn't stop crying. 

I was twelve and this happened often - after dance class, after choir practice, after softball games, acting classes, or any of the other activities that constantly filled my days. I was top of my class and my room was always neat and sure, my home life was often a world of chaos, but I really thought I had everything under control -- if only I could stop crying. Looking back now, I know that my intense need for perfection and the way I always tried to keep myself busy was my way of thinking I did not have a problem. Someone who is depressed could not possibly do all the things I did. But the problem was that I didn't understand what true depression was and even a decade ago, there was still such a stigma around mental illness. Surely my friends didn't spend their nights crying on the floor. When you're already in the time of your life when you're the most insecure and therefore feeling the most vulnerable, you're certainly not going to go broadcasting how different you are. I was angry then too. Impatient, stand-offish, sometimes downright mean. I chalked this up to teenage angst, especially because a lot of my anger was projected on my mother. What teenage girl doesn't fight with her mom? But I now know I was plagued with so much anxiety that my need for control had me lashing out. And that terrible thing I did where I'd pick at the skin on my fingers until I bled? That was anxiety too. 

So how did I get help? Begrudgingly at first. Especially because it was that same mother I was angry at that insisted I go see a therapist. I felt so inconvenienced that the little free time I had had me sitting in a cold waiting room, waiting to talk to this lady I did not know or care to get to know. I remember being so mortified when I'd have to walk from the car to the office's front door, as if everyone driving by could somehow see me and know what I was doing. Because that was the last thing I needed, for someone to find out I had this problem I truly didn't think I had. 

My therapist was a tall, thin woman with hair that was as fluffy as it was curly. She always wore flowy skirts and her office was long and rectangular. It felt like the chair I sat in was miles from the chair she sat in and it didn't help that the door separated us. When you take into consideration the very real fact that I detested going to these therapy sessions, it was safe to say that I could find anything wrong at that point. I was determined not to make it work. But then something happened. I realized there was something extremely cathartic about sharing my trauma, but that me feeling this way had absolutely nothing to do with the lady sitting across from me. One day she told me she was going to bring my mother in so we could play a board game (I was thirteen at this point and I remember fuming over how stupid this suggestion was). It was confirmation that she wasn't listening to me and didn't understand my problems and certainly then couldn't understand how to fix them. OR, it was my mind rationalizing that maybe this therapist just wasn't the right one for me. I took a break from therapy. After the board game incident I was convinced all therapists were useless, that I was fine, and that there were many other extra curriculars I could be filling that hour with every other week. 

Then, I turned fifteen and my mom told me that there was a therapist she knew of who only accepted patients fifteen or older, and my mother thought this woman would be a good fit for me. I was tentative but I gave it another shot. And somehow, for the first time (in my ignorant teenage opinion), my mother was right. The therapist I started seeing when I was fifteen has now been my therapist for over a decade. She will disagree but she has saved my life. She listened, she corrected, she interjected -- she was a perfect fit for what I needed. I know now how crucial it is to have a therapist you vibe with. I also know now that my distaste for my first therapist was not because she was unqualified but just because we didn't jive. I was so incredibly lucky to find my perfect match on the second try. I know so many people are not this lucky. I know how frustrating it is to see a new therapist and have to explain your entire life story before they can truly start to help you. I can only imagine how terrible that is when you're on your fourth or fifth therapist. But please, PLEASE wait. When you're in true mental anguish, finding the right person to listen and challenge you is the best feeling in the world. 

For some people, therapy is enough. For some, we need meds too. My diagnosis requires me to have both. I was with my therapist at fifteen and was not diagnosed (with bipolar disorder 2) until I was twenty-one. Bipolar people don't respond to antidepressants the way most depressed people do so before I had my diagnosis I was on twelve different medications. TWELVE. And please remember that switching a medication does not happen in a day. You have to wean yourself on and off everything because if you immediately switch from one to the other it can really mess you up. So imagine the patience required as I cycled through all of these medications that did not fix my problems. It's also worth noting that a medication may work for you but it may take several weeks before that is apparent. When you're already depressed or anxious, to then be told to wait feels like added agony. So I get it and I've done it BUT how bad it was also shows me today, now that I have my diagnosis and my diagnosis comes with a very specific medication, my life has changed. That anger? Mostly disappeared. I am a completely different person because of the medications I take. But it took me 6 plus years to find the right combination. BE PATIENT. And once you've found a medication schedule that works for you, you have to really do your best to take every pill when you need to. Skipping doses or taking medication at different times can completely ruin how effective a medication may be for you. TRUST ME. 

Everyone's mental health journey is completely unique. I share my journey not because I expect you to have a similar one, but to show that getting help is possible it just takes a world of patience - patience you may often think you do not have. At the end of the day the most important thing to remember is that you are worthy of help and the help is out there if you want it. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm just saying it's worth it.

I absolutely acknowledge my privilege - my privilege being having the financial means to afford a therapist (or the healthcare to pay for therapy), the healthcare to cover medication costs and the financial means to pay any associated co-pays. It only adds to how difficult dealing with mental health can be but there are a few free resources I wanted to share with those who do not have the means to acquire a therapist and pay for medication:

Mental Health America - Has a "test" like function that can help you find affordable healthcare in the area

Health Resources Service Administration (ie. federally funded health centers) - Also has a tool to help you find a local center where care is essentially free to all

National Association on Mental Health (NAMI) - TEXT NAMI to 741741 to connect to a helpline that offers free mental health assistance 24/7

Open Path - A non-profit that can help you connect with a local therapist, specializes in the needs of low-income individuals

Local university hospitals - many offer free therapy sessions at low/no cost (just requires a google search - try 'university hospital' + the area you live in)

Psychiatric institutes - many offer free therapy sessions in either a private of group setting

Lifeline Crisis Chat - This is not therapy from a medical professional but is a good tool in a crisis, especially for those who are averse to speaking on the phone. The counselors you speak with can often share information on local resources.

Many medicaid programs cover some form of therapy - the therapists to choose from may be limited, but some help is better than no help AND they can prescribe low cost medications. To find out if you qualify: https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen’s Rambles about Magical Girl Spec Ops

Well folks, since the second half of MGRP: Limited isn’t going to come out for likely another 4 months I’ll have to talk about different Edgy Magical Girl series for awhile. Thankfully, I’ve been reading for a while that’s finally got enough material for me to talk about, Magical Girl Spec Ops -Asuka-, or MGSO as I’m going to be calling it. I was originally going to talk about this one in another Seinen Adventure, but... I won’t have enough material for that part of my blog for at least another few months, and I want to talk about this manga now before the anime of it comes out in a few weeks.

But moving on, MGSO is about Asuka Otori, a retired magical girl that fought in a war against the Disas Beasts three years before the story the begins. She’s in high school now and wishes to just live a normal life after the horrors of war she saw during the Disas War.

As for why such a war was trauma... well, the the Disas Beasts in question are basically...

This... So I think the horrors of a war with them explains itself. They also explain how Magical Girls and magical items are used as tools of wars, some stuff about global politics, things like that. 

Eventually, Asuka is forced back onto the frontlines as Magical Girls and magical world items start to be traded around by criminal organizations and terrorist groups around the world, with said groups finally coming to Japan. And... 

Well, that’s the main reason I’ve been hesitating on writing about this series for so long folks. There’s only 4 volumes of the manga out as of the time I’m writing this. Through those 4 volumes have so far shown us how the world works now that Magical Girls are essential super soldiers working for their countries with all the political nonsense that goes with it, but that’s all it’s done.There’s an overarching plot of the Disas Beasts being artificially made and sold by a secret organization called the Babel Brigade that’s been drip-fed to us, but there’s not enough concrete stuff about them to say what their main goal is, nor the big players within it. I really wouldn’t expect much in terms of actual plot development until the next volume coming out in late January. So far it’s just been Call of Duty: Black Ops featuring Magical Girls.

That said, this series has gripped me with what it’s shown. I was originally going to have those plus sides in paragraph form, but... again, with no streamlined plot as of yet and not enough information on anyone aside from Asuka to talk about, I’ll just stick it all in list form. There will be some spoilers ahead, but I’ll try and keep them brief and vague.

Asuka is treated less as a traditional magical girl and more as a soldier coming back to service after a big war and I love that. She even has some PTSD flashbacks at times that make her want to back out of most military operations, but trudges on for the sake of her friends and former teammates. Her struggle to keep a normal life while doing secret military operations and the mental toll it takes on her just makes me want her to succeed even more.

As for as much as politics move the plot and the girls we’re thankfully not subjected to seeing a bunch of suits sitting in a room and debating politics. There’s enough of a political aspect is there enough to show that these girls and these soldiers are political tools, but not so much that there’s more talking than shooting. 

The fact that all of Asuka’s original squad was ethnically diverse was a pleasant surprise, with the main group of survivors being her, a former classmate of hers, an American, a Russian, and... a Hong Kong magical girl. Among the original girl there was also a French and Mexican magical too, but going any further is spoiler territory. 

Yes, the American and Russian magical girls are petty as hell with each other and it’s hilarious.

“Yo, Russkie!” 

“Long time no see, Yankee. Are you still hotheaded and stupid as always?”  

“Oh, says you! Your cold-fish robot vibe hasn’t changed one bit.” 

This is my favorite exchange in the manga yet.

The side characters are pretty good as well. Asuka’s non-magical girl friends provide some levity to the tenser moments, and you really feel worried for their safety when Asuka’s soldier life intertwines and interferes with her student life and puts her friends in danger. That balance between the two feels a lot more serious than most magical girl series.

I’m also excited to see the newest magical girl villian, Chisato. Her rise to villainy makes her pretty sympathetic to me. She chose to work for the bad guys, but let out of spite and more to show appreciation for how they helped her despite their evil deeds.

There are some other points I found interesting as well, but those would really spoiler the series. Overall, I’m excited to read more of this manga in the coming weeks, and for the anime that’ll be coming out soon, but like usual I’ll probably stick with the manga unless some cool fight scenes get animated.

Actually... I think I’ll explain this now since it’s second time I’ve done something like this and for the same reason I didn’t watch the Goblin Slayer anime.

I’ve said this several times before, but for me, between my Ramblings, my digital drawings, my video game habits, I frankly stare at enough screens in my day. I like to use manga and books as a way to give my eyes a break from all the lights. I usually don’t watch anime adaptations of manga I’m actively reading because I already know what happens, and I already have certain expectations of how certain characters sound and deliver lines. Even the Japanese dub tends to irk me at times when something isn’t what I expected, and I don’t want to turn into a venomous fanboy constantly making comparisons between the two sources. I don’t think it’s good to compare an adaptation to the original too heavily, and when I’m so invested in a series both emotionally and financially I tend to get a little... rabid. Besides, as I said before the real plot of the manga with the Babel Brigade hasn’t kicked off yet, and I don’t want to be spoiled on that by the anime, so I’ll wait a few months after the winter season ends to binge it. I know that sounds a bit arrogant, but in this way I won’t start whining about every little difference like a fanboy, so... make of that what you will.

In any case, I think that’s it for this Rambling. Still not up to my preference in terms of quality, but MGSO is still drip-feeding it’s main plot, so maybe my next essay will be better. I’ve got... some plans for these next few essays.

[fordarkisthesuede]

At the Brink of Midnight - Chapter 9

*Arrives two days late with Starbucks* ‘Sup, guys! σ( ▼∀▼)σ These past 96 hours have somehow filled me with a weird chaotic energy, and I pumped out the longest roller-coaster of a chapter I’ve ever done in such a short amount of time!!! Thank you, whoever sent all the writing vibes my way!!!! ★>d(,,･ε´-,,)⌒☆ I’m sending out strong vibes to everybody in return! *May you get hit by the writing bug and have the opportunity and energy to completely translate your ideas to printed words!*

Buuut a big note before we get to the good stuff:  I realized too late that the original events of S2 take place in Spring. Like…April. I was writing all of this with the thought that S2 took place in fall; I mean, the characters can wear a leather jacket or a couple of layers comfortably, so I thought “yeah that sounds like early autumn”. Nope! So that means that for this story’s timeline, everything gets shifted into where it should be. On the downside, that means I had to go through and edit all the bits where it said “it was totally spring, you guys”. On the upside… IT’S NOW OCTOBER!!!!! THE SPOOKY SEASON THAT COMPLETELY FITS WITH WHAT’S GOING ON!!! And coincidentally, it’s my favorite time of the year, so I love writing about it even more! I get to add in a thing here and there about the spookiest time of the year, so I’ll have a nice list of what those little changes are uploaded here soon if you don’t feel like re-reading the whole thing. A re-read isn't necessary though, just keep in mind that the humid air of rainy spring in the city is replaced with chilling fronts and even more cloud cover than usual. Why am I bothering with this? Because I’m a stickler for keeping with canon as much as possible and I feel like an absolute fool for not remembering what goddamn time of year it was to begin with. (I mean, I went so far as to download all of TeamFourStar’s play-through because I watched it so often, you think I'd remember to go back and watch the very beginning once in a while…)

Anywho, thank you all again for your continuously loving support!!! 

♡~(ɔ ˘3˘)˘⌣˘ c)

Important Spoiler Tags: drugs (mentioned), swearing, canon-typical violence, electric shocks (mentioned), torture of flowers, flirting, almost an excessive use of emoji, crying, romantic dirty thoughts

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Chapter 9:  Grapevines

Bruce Wayne couldn’t remember the last time he’d conducted a meeting from his home office. It wasn’t as if he didn’t use it – the desk surface had hardly any dust settled on it and two empty coffee mugs he’d forgotten about on two different occasions just happened to be stacked behind the monitor – but it felt strange, like a lot of things did lately.

He knew part of the reason for that was watching houses down in the Batcave right now. Knowing he wasn’t alone in the house was comforting, but knowing there were two cops outside the Manor’s front door just waiting for a chance to grab his best friend-cum-houseguest was not, and knowing that they were both close to being thrown in hot water was even less so.

He figured the other reason he felt strange was because he was slipping back into his old habit as if it had never been shelved in the first place. He had time to kill before the video meeting started, so he’d been scouring for information on “Pam”, Jonathan Crane’s ‘old friend’.

There were a few Pamela’s in Gotham, but only one fit within Crane’s age-range and attended Gotham University at about the same time:  Pamela Isley, a forty-four-year-old former botanist with a record that ran the length of his arm. Theft, assault, threats, and attempted poisonings all done in the name of extreme environmentalism and social activism were sprinkled in her history before and after her days as a researcher, and according to GCPD records, she was now suspected of running her own drug-ring under the moniker of ‘Poison Ivy’. (Bruce found several recorded instances of people claiming to be Poison Ivy, most of whom were already arrested.)

Bruce would’ve wondered why on Earth she hadn’t been thrown in prison when she made a bomb-threat at a wealthy businessman several states away nearly a decade ago if he hadn’t seen her mug-shot from back then. At thirty-five, she looked every bit as beautiful as a top-billed Hollywood star, with natural orange-red curls cascading over her pale shoulders and ample bust in chemically-tamed waves, flashing the camera a come-hither stare that made it look like she was trying for a part in a high-budget porn flick rather than standing in front of a height chart for her criminal record. Pamela’s charges were mysteriously swept under the rug.

The latest photo he found of her reminded him a bit of those ‘cougar’ dating ads he’d seen – the older Pamela was blowing a kiss to the camera with a mocking look in her dark green eyes. Bruce glared at it. There was little doubt she was using people to cover for her constantly, and when she was in trouble, she managed to wriggle out of it with her looks.

Not this time. She was friends with Dr. Jonathan Crane, and that meant she wasn’t going to get out of this unharmed. The second his virtual meeting was over, Bruce was heading towards Toxic Acres, and hopefully the wounded Crane would still be there to see Batman’s fist hit his –

Bruce snapped out of his thoughts at the buzz of his phone. A message from the BatComputer…?

I’m bored :/

Bruce blinked down at the screen. John had found the emergency messaging system. Of course he had. He was just grateful that the encryption software on his phone was still up to date. Just what else did John poke his nose into down there…? (There was the chance that John would see files he shouldn’t, but Bruce kept those under a thumbprint encryption. He shouldn’t even entertain the thought.)

Stake-outs are usually pretty boring.

It wouldn’t be so bad if you were down here tho! :)

Bruce hovered his thumb over the keyboard, unsure of what to say. The feeling was kind of mutual, if he was being honest; having another person around on a stakeout would at least keep his mind wandering into the worsts of what-ifs and double-checking every last security issue…

No movement on either houses btw. Been reading Crane’s docs in the meantime but it’s DREADFUL!!! I feel like I’m reading a sleeping pill… =_=

You finish your WE stuff yet?

Meeting’s not for another 20 minutes. Been looking up stuff on Crane’s “friend”.

Oh??? :o Do tell!!!!

Bruce couldn’t help but smile at the enthusiasm.

Pamela Isley, former botanist w/ criminal rec., mostly extreme protest kind of stuff. Good chance she’s the head of a drug-ring that moved here a couple months ago; their leader goes by “Poison Ivy”.

They went to college together, but Pamela moved back here recently.

hMmMmm…. That means no burning the place down if we’re stuck! Bad fumes everywhere xP

Bruce focused on the word “we’re”. He hadn’t been planning on bringing John along. He wanted him safe, at home, where no one had a chance of seeing him and he wasn’t put in harm’s way…

Oh!!! You’ve got a bunch of sticky electro-shockers around - do you mind if I tinker with them? :3c pleeeeaaasssee?

What are you thinking of doing with them?

Making one BIIIIIG shock-bomb, of course! ;D I can wire them together so the shock spreads evenly in the space while it’s discharging.

Bruce reconsidered bringing John. He was still learning to curb his impulses, so being outside in a fighting environment would be a serious gamble, but... Maybe that could be their advantage, too. Bruce made a mental note to go dig out the spare bullet-proof vest from his closet’s secret panel.

You can do that?

I played around with making something like it before, but……well, you know.

Time + supplies for that project were low att. I figured I could always go back to it later anyway.

Bruce felt like his heart had deflated and swelled in such a short time that it hurt.

I mean I’m fine with throwing knives around too but I figured that would be less discrete ¯\_(ツ )_/¯

He’d been thinking of different methods of entering the “house”. Most of them featured a silent slip-in and as little combat as possible, but he knew that there would likely be some muscle around to stop any would-be intruders, and getting a quieter jump on them would certainly be helpful. He would certainly be lying if he said he wasn’t impressed that John had thought that far ahead even back then.

If you think you can get it done within 1.5 hours, then yes.

Ha ha ha with these supplies I can get it done in like 40 mins! >:3 just you watch!!!

Btw have you seen the news?

Not yet. Why?

I was on the morning edition! At least they used a good pic ;D

But also saw a guy getting fished out of the harbor. Your handy-dandy invasion software said he’s a registered Ryde driver.

I told you not to fiddle with that.

Sorry, but I only used it the once! Promise!!!

Bruce sighed through his nostrils.

Besides I thought you’d want to know. Think Crane stole his ride and dumped him by the docks? :v

Probably. I can get the plate from up here to verify. DO NOT TOUCH THAT PROGRAM AGAIN.

Yes sir ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Bruce wasn’t sure if that message was supposed to be flirtatious or mocking.

The incoming call from Iman Avesta stopped him from responding. He figured it had to do with John’s escape and the extra security added at Wayne Tower this morning, but why was she calling him now, rather than several hours ago?

“Iman?”

“Hey, Bruce. Hold on a sec – there we go, now we can both -”

“Bruce, what the fuck?” Tiffany asked over the line. “Are you at home right now?”

Bruce almost sighed at the attitude. “Yes, Tiffany, I’m at home, in my office.”

“Uh-huh. I keep getting alerts that your basement’s messaging system is being used. Care to explain that?”

Oh. Of course. He’d forgotten Tiffany had linked her phone to that, too. It’d just…been too long, he supposed. (She couldn’t read them, though, could she? He was fairly sure it didn’t give out mass-texts unless prompted.) “…where are you right now?”

Iman responded instead. “We’re in your second office.”

“…the line’s secure?”

“Of course.” Iman paused, and Bruce knew his new CSO was choosing her words carefully. “I’m guessing you have John Doe in the Batcave?”

“Yes.”

“Bruce, did you fucking break him out?” Tiffany asked with no shortness of impatience.

“I rescued him,” Bruce said firmly. “I know what you’re thinking, and I have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to say, but listen:  I had no choice but to take him with me. One of the doctors working at Arkham has gone rogue – he’d been doing experiments on patients, and I have a feeling he’s going to continue them on civilians. I need to find him before then, and John has been helping me.”

“Helping…? You’re not bringing him in the field with you?” Tiffany said disbelievingly. “After that psychopath almost killed us?”

Bruce could still see Joker running at Tiffany, knife in hand, his psychotic breakdown in full force. He could still see him being smacked against the railing, sheer madness played over his long, bloody face as he desperately fought to stab what was his hero.

But John and Joker were as much the same as Bruce and Batman were, and they were constantly changing.

The Joker in the Batcave wasn’t the same one from Ace Chemicals.  

“I know what John did,” he answered, trying to breathe even as something wanted to hitch in his throat, “and I know how far he’s come since then. I know you both regret-”

“No, I’m not listening to this right now,” Tiffany scowled, her voice fading in the middle her sentence like she was leaving the room. “Talk some sense into him.”

Bruce heard Iman’s voice call after her, and then nothing for a beat.

Iman sighed. “I’ll talk to her. But Bruce,” she started seriously, “Tiffany isn’t the only one worrying about you. Six months can’t possibly cure everything wrong with a man whose spent his life in an asylum.” He could practically hear her chew over her phrasing. “I need to know… If John goes too far – if he shows signs of regressing…or just becoming more volatile – I need to know you’re going to put your foot down.”

“I’m more than capable of handling him, Iman.”

“Please, Bruce, I’d rather not have to pull you off another broken pipe lodged in your kidney.” She paused, and Bruce let her continue, feeling the scar in his side twinge at the painful memory. “I know you care a lot about him,” she resumed in a softer tone, “and I know you trust him. But if you doubt him at any time, you need you to step back and re-evaluate your choices. I don’t want him to regress back into the Joker.”

That was a different Joker, Bruce wanted to say. He knew that wouldn’t sound the way it should. “I promise I won’t let that happen.”

“Good to know,” Iman replied, sounding somewhat relieved. “This doctor you’re hunting – is there anything we can do to help?”

Bruce shot a look at the clock in the corner of his monitor. He didn’t have as much time left as he would’ve liked before his virtual meeting started. “Tiffany can fill you in a bit, I had her help searching Arkham’s records before. Can you run a plate for me? I think Dr. Crane is running with a stolen car; I’ll send you the details in a bit.”

“Sure. We can check traffic cams for it, too, if you’d like.”

“If you would. And the second I have anything concrete on Dr. Crane, I’m sending Tiffany the details – I need her pull as Oracle to get the word out to the GCPD before anything happens. They’ll listen to their number-one informant more than a vigilante coming out of retirement.”

“…you’re…?”

He could almost see the shock in her face. They’d had a short discussion about his alter-ego when he decided to quit the first time; she’d been incredibly understanding about the whole thing. It was almost as if she’d seen it coming.

“Are you sure?”

He was as sure. She didn’t know about the instincts broiling underneath his surface every day. She didn’t know he never really stopped being half of himself. She wouldn’t know or really understand that he just shoved it all down and aside like he did so much else just to get through things. “I don’t have any other options at this point.”

“…you know you can count on us if you need the help.”

“Of course I do.”

“Right. Well, in the meantime we’ll keep the fort over here running as smoothly as possible.”

“Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Good luck.”

The line went silent, and Bruce pulled his phone away, catching a glimpse of three unread messages.

Sorry, buddy, I was just kidding around, you know? Ha ha

Bruce???

Hello???????

Sorry, had a phone call and couldn’t reply. It’s fine.

Seconds ticked by, and Bruce began changing out of his black t-shirt and into his button-down. It wouldn’t do to appear as a CEO in anything less than a proper suit. He could leave the jeans on, at least.

“Oh! Uh…sorry, Bruce…”

He felt his heart stop for a second. That was definitely John’s voice, even though it crackled slightly from the speakers. The monitor didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. John must have been using the spy-camera feature on the Batcomputer; it was linked to most the devices in the house, and Bruce’s webcam was no exception. He’d almost forgotten it had a loudspeaker function, too.

“I didn’t realize you were…um, changing.”

Bruce glared at the webcam’s lens. “John, what did I tell you about fiddling with the Batcomputer?”

“…sorry. I was worried when you didn’t answer me.”

He sounded genuine, at least. Bruce could easily picture him running upstairs to find him, if there wasn’t a chance he would’ve been seen. “I answered you a minute ago. I was on a call with Iman,” he stated plainly, fixing the buttons on his sleeves.

“…oh, ha ha, there it is! Uh, I guess I’ll just…go, then…”

Bruce almost questioned why John was sounding nervous and distracted, but it wasn’t until he saw the webcam light wink off again that he realized his shirt was wide open, the scars littering his torso half on display from the waist up.

Thankfully, no one was around to see Bruce bury his face in the palm of his hand for a moment, feeling like his face was on fire from first and second-hand embarrassment.

It didn’t last long. Bruce took a few deep breaths as he fixed himself up, and dialed into the meeting with a fixed expression of calm, firmly ignoring the heat that had settled in his stomach that threatened to go lower at the thought that John was bound not to forget any of that.

Driving the Batmobile in full gear again was certainly something else. Bruce felt the weight of the Kevlar body armor press against his limbs as he sped down Gotham’s twisting alley streets, no one any the wiser that the Wayne’s red sports car was hiding Batman behind it. The city’s CCTV signal was scrambled with the flick of a switch as he came into driving distance of the alley’s camera, making him almost untraceable.

He’d given the Honda Accord a head-start; it couldn’t go nearly as fast as the Batmobile, and Bruce had to find a spot to safely change before going to go pick John up from his drop-off point, and the post-working-hours traffic had already gotten its usual early start. It was a slower drive than he’d like it to be, even with Bruce’s shortcuts.

The setting sun was completely obscured by a dark overcast. It made the orange streetlamps glowing over the decorations sitting here and there in windows and doors even more energetic, like every corner of Gotham was slowly growing with the energy of Halloween.

Bruce clicked the communicator in his cowl. “John, are you there yet?”

Silence for a few seconds, and then a rustling noise. “Sorry, I had to take this off for a bit. What?”

“Are you there yet?”

John giggled slightly. “Oh, yeah, I’m here. Just waiting on you, pal.”

He was already at the meeting point? How did he get there so fast? “You put everything back where it was supposed to be?”

“No, I stripped the seats and threw everything into the garbage,” John grumbled with dripping sarcasm. “Of course I did, it’d be rude not to put Jerry’s stuff back. What do you take me for?”

“…I’m just making sure you didn’t forget anything.”

“I didn’t.” There was a loud slurping noise, like the last of a liquid being sucked from a straw.

“John, where are you right now?”

“In the alley, waiting for you.”

“Did you make a stop?”

John giggled, a little louder, but not at all nervous. He was enjoying himself. “What can I say? Going out on the town with you like this makes me thirsty,” he said with a strange purr. “Besides, no one bats an eye at me when I look like this anyway.” He paused. “Well, no, I’ve gotten some eyes on me, but, uh, I think they’re more the appreciative type. I guess ZZ Top was kinda right about the sharp-dresser thing.”

Bruce felt his brows knit together. “You’ve always looked sharp,” he said truthfully, turning down a narrow alley.

“Yeah, but not thousand-dollar-suit sharp. There’s a difference! Plus I think this bullet-proof vest makes me look a little bulkier than I actually am.”

Bruce spotted him leaning against the graffiti-covered wall, a Burger Lord cup in one hand and a plastic orange bag in another. Just how much time did Bruce lose while he was changing?

John tossed the drink in the dumpster and practically jumped into the car, shoving the orange bag behind the driver seat and slamming the door shut as Bruce switched off the communicator. He took one look at Bruce’s questioning glower and gave a nervous sort of grin. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, there’s something in there for you, too.”

Bruce almost asked what, but decided that a lecture on keeping a low profile and not taking money from his house’s various hiding spots would have to wait. (Though he supposed whatever John got wasn’t expensive. He was quite frugal, and it wasn’t as if Bruce couldn’t afford to buy John whatever he wanted anyway.) He concentrated instead on heading down the twisting path towards Toxic Acres. At least the traffic over there was a hell of a lot lighter.

“Hey, when you drove me to the Batcave, did you go in fourth gear, or third?”

He wasn’t sure why he asked, but he honestly couldn’t remember. He just recalled putting his foot to the floor and keeping his eyes on the road, occasionally reaching over to check John’s pulse. “I wasn’t really paying attention to that; I concentrating more on driving as fast as possible.”

“Oh – so you didn’t know you could punch the shift down into third whenever you wanted? It was so fun! I can say I literally punched it out of the Batcave!” He laughed. “I’m guessing you can’t do that in this car?”

“…I’ve got paddle shifters.” They were starting to travel into the more deserted road leading into Toxic Acres. Bruce took a sharp turn onto the hill with the broken Do Not Enter sign, and checking that no one was behind him, flipped the switch to shift the car into armored plates and pressed the wheel-paddle for a lower gear.

They flew down the road with a whirring whine of the engine, John’s notorious excited laugh mixing with it, and Bruce allowed himself to smile a little at it, knowing his own little joyful thrill wouldn’t last very long.

John was soon tapping his fingers together in some kind of rhythm as they passed by more empty houses, Bruce moving a little slower to keep his eyes out for trouble. Sitting close to the river on the outskirts of the city, they were originally meant to be a long neighborhood for the middle and upper class to build their lives, but as the unemployment and crime rates rose, the place became abandoned. It didn’t help that the piping structure to carry water there had been faulty, making either lead poisoning or unfiltered dirty water a prominent problem and giving the section of Gotham its nickname.

“How do we know which place is the botanist’s?” John asked, his green eyes scouring the houses in front of them.

“I sent out another drone earlier for some aerial shots. There’s a place with camouflaged green-houses in the back on Aster Place.”

“Wow, you did that before I left? That was fast…”

“It was a quick job. I’m not picking up the other drone until later.”

They turned the corner onto Aster Place; the road would dead-end in a while, but Bruce knew the house wouldn’t be situated at the end.

“Oh, there’s the spot Jackie got shot at!” John pointed ahead. “I wonder if there’s a bloodstain left…!”

Bruce tightened his grip on the wheel. “We’re close.”

It was oddly quiet out there. There was no other sign of life in what was a hot-spot of criminal hide-outs. Bruce turned on the thermal vision in his cowl; a lot of the houses were actually empty for once.

Except for one. 1801 Aster Place. There were a group of people scattered around on the bottom floor and what appeared to be a lot of heat-lamps running on the top floor. If one of the people in the group wasn’t Pamela Isley, then she might have been holding up in the basement…

They left the Batmobile out of sight down the road, and Bruce and John moved swiftly behind the backs of the houses in the chilly night air, the taser bomb safely in John’s coat pocket; John was surprisingly quiet, only humming a familiar tune here and there. (Wasn’t it the theme from that old spy-thriller…?) Bruce managed to quiet him with a look, and John mimed locking his mouth shut and throwing the key away.

Two unknown people were standing in what used to be a kitchen; three more people were up in the front room of the house. There were no security cameras to be seen.  

“Stick close to me,” Bruce whispered, the modifier in his cowl deepening his voice. “We go in through the back window, take out the two in the kitchen quietly and throw the bomb up front so we can cuff the lot. If none of them are Ms. Isley, we find the basement.”

John gave him a thumbs up, pulling out the riot baton he had hidden away. (Bruce had still not remembered when he or Alfred bought that, but vaguely remembered stashing it in the towel cupboard with some other emergency gear. He wasn’t surprised John found it.)

The bathroom window’s locks weren’t difficult to break. They looked like they had been broken several times already. Bruce slid the insect screen up and slipped in through the thin opening feet-first, twisting his limbs just right to softly land on the floor. He had to help pull John through the rest of the way after he smacked his head on the bottom of the window; thankfully he hadn’t made any noise, but he did give Bruce a strange look as brushed himself off where Bruce had gripped his sides.

Bruce didn’t have time to think about it.

The two people in the kitchen stood in semi-darkness, watching through the patio windows with rifles leaning against the wall. There wasn’t so much a bare bulb to give off light. Bruce figured their eyes might have adjusted to the dark, and signaled John to follow as he crept up behind the two goons.

“I dunno, with all the hype surrounding episode four, you just know those guys are going to mess up somewhere. Remember when they decided to let Celestyne drop to his death back in season one?” The one with dreadlocks asked.

“Oh, come on, that was just to test the game’s limits. Besides, Celestyne couldn’t die; I don’t think Jane can, either,” the second person responded in a higher voice with a casual shrug.

“Dude, you know the game’s gonna make her a villain in the end, though, right? She might die…”

Bruce was ready. John was gripping the baton with a widening grin…

“Are you kidding me? They have her affection meter up so high I’m surprised the game doesn’t have a dating opt-”

Bruce slammed dreadlocked goon’s head into the wall just as the baton crashed down on the other goon’s skull, little smears of blood marking the plaster and paint with a satisfying crack.

John clutched the collar of the goon he’d struck, gripping the slightly bloody baton a little harder in his other hand. He seemed to be thinking.

Bruce took a zip-tie out and cuffed the goon’s hands behind their back, and wondered just what John was staring at until he’d turned the person around and caught a glimpse of them in the light of the window.

They were both women with little tattoos of vines creeping along the back of their necks.

If Bruce guessed right, those were ivy leaves on the vine. Poison Ivy had a loyal gang.

John zip-tied the wrists of the woman he’d struck and patted the part of her head that wasn’t wounded. “Sorry,” he whispered as if she would hear it. “Lauren’s ex,” John mumbled, gesturing to the woman on the floor as if he knew Bruce had raised his eyebrow at him.

Bruce simply swept onward, spying the door for the basement. There was a light on in the front room, and three women who looked like they could be professional boxers of different weight categories were sitting in different areas. One was sharpening a knife at the table, and another was cleaning a semi-automatic rifle as the third kept watch over a monitor showing security camera footage; three looked to be by the greenhouses (Bruce recognized the Foxglove variety growing in one under an opening in the glass, sitting next to something that looked primeval), and two were watching over the plants upstairs (marijuana, by the looks of it) and in the basement.

There was a figure in the last screen, working over a row of potted plants with low lamps. A zoom-in with Bruce’s lenses showed long red hair.

Bruce felt a hand on his shoulder, and John crept ahead him, the taser-bomb in hand: it looked like a mass of the sticky-bombs grouped together, colorful wiring connecting them all like some kind of net, and before Bruce could do or say anything, John threw it into the living room, where it tumbled into the middle of the floor.

The group began to shoot out of their seats in a second, and in the next the ball seemed to expand like a geometric toy, the wired tasers being thrown in the air with a flash before smacking people and surfaces alike as they discharged. All three people fell to the floor in trembling heaps, and John dashed out and started to cuff them, Bruce close behind.

The electric bombs were safe to touch now that they had fully discharged, so Bruce had no qualm about stomping on the lightly-burning sections of carpet underneath some of them to prevent any spread of fire as he pushed them aside. The bulkiest goon wasn’t quite down for the count; she was still conscious.

She yanked John off her fallen comrade by his shoulder and threw him into the table’s edge. Bruce threw a Batarang at her arm just as she was about to punch, and John gave a swift knee to her stomach as she flinched.

She fell to the floor with a louder crash and a grunt, pulling the Batarang out from her arm and letting it drop to the floor. “You fucker…” She said, glaring up at John before looking over at Bruce, her eyes widening as he approached with more Batarangs at the ready. “B-Batman…?”

“Yup! He’s real,” John said playfully before smacking the side of her head with the baton. “And so am I,” he added with a growl. He decided to tie her wrists behind the nearest table leg. “I hate not being able to call myself Joker like this… Really sells it better.”

Bruce felt his heart twitch at the name. “You can call yourself that, if it helps,” Bruce said gently, tying the monitoring-station woman’s wrists together, “Just not to people’s faces.”

“Kinda defeats the point,” John grumbled.

Bruce shot a look at the security monitor – Pamela Isley didn’t seem to have heard anything. Still, precaution should be used. “Let’s go,” he said plainly, sweeping out of the room with a swish of his cape.

John tucked a hand into his pocket and followed.

The basement stairs were carpeted and quiet, but Bruce was careful to walk on the outsides rather than the middle. Spiders had clearly made themselves right at home in the damp corners of the walls, and he had to duck to avoid getting the tips of his cowl’s ears stuck in one of their webs. A soft sort of click was heard behind his back, and Bruce figured John had gotten out his grappling gun.

Pamela Isley was bent over a row of exotic-looking orchids posed under heat lamps, dabbing something into the center of a blue orchid’s petals. Bruce saw several troughs full of hallucinogenic mushrooms sitting on the other side of the wall.

“There you go, my darling,” she cooed in a honeyed voice, acting like she was carefully painting the center of the flower, “You’ll soon be the belle of the ball…”

Bruce eyed the electrical box on the other side of the room. It wouldn’t do to drown the place in darkness; he’d be able to see, but John wouldn’t. The best bet was to tackle and restrain her.

Or…

Bruce took out his own grappling gun, and aimed it at Isley’s collar. One click, and it snagged her shirt with practiced ease.

“What the-?!”

Pamela Isley was suddenly dragged yelping through the air at an angle, smacking hard into one of the tables and spilling several unusual potted flowers to the floor.

Bruce grabbed her and threw her to the concrete floor, standing over her with several Batarangs in his hand as John cackled beside him.

“Jonathan Crane,” Bruce growled out, “Where is he?”

Pamela Isley sat up, shock written all over her face as she processed exactly what happened – it quickly morphed to a steely stare. “Batman,” she said slowly in a sweet voice, “I thought you were an urban legend,” she continued, wiping the corner of her mouth where a dribble of blood leaked out. “Do you always treat a lady this way?”

Bruce dragged her up by her collar and threw her against the wall, keeping her at arm’s length. “I know he bought plants from you today. Tell me where he is.”

“Or what?” She taunted, smirking widely at him. “You think I haven’t been knocked around by men before? I’ve been in whole worlds of hurt, honey.”

There was the distinct sound of the grappling wire rushing through the air, and then an enormous crash – John had taken out one of the mushroom tables, the fungi now breaking and bouncing against the floor it the scattered in the dirt.

“Whoopsie,” John hummed, a wide unnerving grin on his face, “butter-fingers.”

Isley looked rather taken aback, but the expression quickly warped into a mocking glare. “You think destroying my inventory is going to intimidate me?”

John shrugged, leaning back against a table and knocking over a several small tropical plants with a slide of his hand, shattering the clay pots and sending the plants scattering to the hard floor.

That definitely got her attention; her face paled slightly and there was tremble in her. “Stop that!”

Bruce glared at her, mentally thanking John for his quick thinking. “Tell me where Crane is and I’ll consider stopping him from tearing this place apart.”

Her dark green eyes glared at him with a slow-boiling dislike. “Let me go first.”

Bruce did a very quick once-over; she didn’t seem to have a gun holster on her, and she was definitely a lighter build than the rest of her gang. Knives were still a possibility. He decided to let go, keeping a Batarang between his fingers just in case as he stepped just out of her reach.

Pamela dusted off her green turtleneck. “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care. He bought a few of my flowers and left,” she said, crossing her arms.

John laughed, fingering the leaves of the blue orchid she’d been attending. “With a hole in his shoulder? You didn’t even offer a band-aid for that?”

Pamela was closely eyeing the plant in John’s hand. “What if I did?”

“I know he’s a friend of yours, Isley,” Bruce growled. “You’re the only one who could know what he’s planning.”

“I told you, I don’t know,” she stated, “and I don’t care. I’m not his mother.”

“I can see why you were paying such close attention to this one,” John hummed, fingering the petals with a gloved hand. “It’s so pretty. You put a lot of effort into keeping all these, huh?” He grinned at her, almost looking like his usual self. “It’s not just some financial scheme for you, is it?”

“Of course it is,” Pamela stared at him, trying to keep her voice level; Bruce noticed her eyes kept flicking slightly downward, like she was watching the plant. “I breed and sell rare plants to collectors on the side.”

“Oh good! So this won’t bother you!”

In a swift move, John cut the blossom off the stem with the bowie knife one of the group upstairs had been sharpening.

The blossom fell to the table, and Pamela Isley looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

John picked up the blossom. “Let’s see – she’s honest,” he said playfully, plucking a petal from the stem, “she’s not!” He pulled another.

“STOP IT!” Pamela shrieked, making to rush at him – Bruce pulled her back and pointed the tip of the Batarang at her face. She glanced at it fearfully, but then looked back at the flower being torn apart in John’s hand, and it looked like she was watching a child die before her eyes.

“Stop that,” Bruce instructed; John hummed and held it still. “Talk, or my partner and I crush every plant in this place.”

Isley stared at the flower in John’s hand. “I… I don’t know what he’s planning,” she said quietly, her voice cracking slightly. John only touched the tip of a petal before she spoke again – “But-! But I know… He’s building something. He didn’t say what, but he asked for some muscle - I hooked him up with some of Maroni’s old boys.” She shut her eyes and took a breath before glaring at John like he was a complete monster. “I hope the lot of them tears you limb from limb.”

Bruce forced Isley’s hands behind her back and zip-tied them. “Down on the ground,” he growled, pushing down on the top of her head. John pointed the grappling gun in her face with a smirk; a good insurance if she decided to try and elbow Bruce in the face.

Pamela shot them both a hateful glare as she knelt down, and it didn’t waver as her ankles were tied, too. “I won’t forget this,” she spat.

Bruce sent off a message to Tiffany regarding the coordinates of “Poison Ivy”’s headquarters from his gauntlet. He knew she’d get the word out before he could even get back in the car. “Tell it to the judge,” he taunted, leading the way out of the basement, not missing the sparkle in John’s eyes as he followed, the severed, torn orchid blossom having been carelessly thrown at Pamela Isley’s feet.

John gathered up the sticky bomb device before they hustled back to the Batmobile, and it wasn’t until the doors closed that he spoke, and when he did it was in a tone Bruce would almost call revered.

“So, what do we do now, partner?” He asked, a definite glow on his face.

“We go look at some of the Maroni gang’s old haunts and see if we can find anyone recently hired,” Bruce said, the voice modifier in his cowl now disabled. He glanced at his recent text messages:  one from Tiffany giving the ok on Poison Ivy, and another from Iman with the last known location of the stolen Ryde car. “After we look into the motels in the red-light district. Crane might’ve stayed there.”

John laughed to himself, but for once he didn’t share the joke; instead, he pulled out a packet of jerky from the plastic bag he’d brought along. “I knew this would be a long night,” he said cheerfully, as if he was really looking forward to the whole thing.

It was well past one in the morning when Bruce arrived back home through the front gate, the Batsuit stowed away and the plates flipped back to red. The two patrol officers were only somewhat surprised to see him arrive back. Naturally, they reported nothing new, since John had been dropped off in the Batcave first.

Sore muscles were nothing new to Bruce. The old strained climb back up to his bed was just as annoying as ever. He honestly didn’t feel like he wanted to sleep, but after following several empty leads over the city and bruising a few heads alongside John, he did admit that he was physically exhausted. He knew lying down was better than nothing, and he still had to go to work in several hours like he didn’t have a double life. At least he wasn't starving, thanks to John thinking ahead and buying him protein-and-carb-filled snacks.

He forced himself to go through his usual nightly routine, despite the temptation to just flop into bed and lay there. He looked at the bruises on his back and ribs from where John had struggled against him under the influence of Crane’s drug, and decided not to bother putting the bruise-away cream on them, nor on the new ones forming on his shoulder from where one of the former mobsters had hit him.

When he did finally collapse onto the master bed in nothing but his boxer-briefs, his brain still decided to chat away at him.

There were no leads as to who exactly Isley had hired for Crane. Bruce cursed himself for not trying to work the specifics out of her. At least he knew she was arrested for drug possession and manufacturing, as well as smuggling illegal fauna.

There was no word on the whereabouts of Jackie Lant. Her car was missing, and she’d called into work sick. Her apartment hadn’t been visited in the entire time Bruce had his drone’s eye on it, and neither Tiffany nor Iman had seen anything when they looked into Jackie’s friends’ places, either. All Bruce knew was that she hadn’t called an ambulance to fetch her from Toxic Acres, that she hadn’t been admitted to a hospital, and that there was no sign of her body either in the Acres or in the Gotham River.

She was alive, somewhere, and Bruce didn’t know what she was going to do next. He hoped she was just going to lie low until he caught Crane.

Jonathan Crane was nowhere to be found. His house was still empty. He didn’t seem to be staying at any of the motels – or hotels – around the red-light district or its surrounding streets, and nothing had come of a quick credit-card check. The Ryde driver the GCPD fished out of the River that morning had been shot in the head, and his car was so common that if Crane could’ve switched the license plate with anything and been completely invisible. They’d done a quick search of the warehouse district and found no sign of him there, either.

Bruce had the nagging feeling that he wasn’t going to find Crane until the doctor reared his head.

The billionaire rolled onto his stomach, shoving the anxious thought away as he pressed his cheek further into the plush black jersey pillowcase. There were a couple more places he could check tomorrow…

The bedroom door creaked, and Bruce’s eyes shot open, a second away from grabbing the billy-club under his pillow – he could see John’s messy hair in his dark silhouette.

“Bruce? You awake?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“…can I come in?”

“Sure.”

Bruce noticed he closed the door behind him. Like he was planning to stay there.

That definitely put a new light onto the situation. A tense thrill was building in his shoulders as John deigned to sit on the edge of the mattress, his back to Bruce.

John was only wearing his Arkham-regulated pants, and the pale white of his bare skin almost shone in the light streaming in from the window. Bruce saw several bruises forming, one of which was from where he’d gotten grabbed by the shoulder by a Poison Ivy goon, and several more where he’d gotten knocked into.

“…I don’t think I can sleep in that guest room,” John sighed. “I mean, I tried my usual methods of sleep induction, but… It’s too big…and empty. I’m really not used to that.” His voice came out quieter and more contemplative. “I know it’s weird, but do you mind if I sleep in here?” He asked, turning halfway to look right at Bruce.

He felt trapped. If he said no, at the worst John would sulk, and at the best John wouldn’t get any sleep, and that was definitely worse for his mental health. John had mentioned before about how regular sleep cycles were supposed to help with that.

If he said yes, though, he’d know he was sleeping next to John, and there was the tiny worry in the back of his head that John might…try something. Or at least roll over too much.

“I promise I’ll stay over on my side,” John muttered, not tearing his eyes away.

“Alright.”

A sweet smile stretched on his face. “Thanks, Bruce. You won’t regret this.”

“If you keep talking, I might.”

John giggled as he slid beneath the covers on the far side of the bed, flopping one of the extra pillows down between them. “There – a no-roll barrier,” he said as if he had to explain the concept to Bruce.

It did not escape Bruce’s attention that John had decided to lie facing him and rest his arm on top of the pillow. John had pulled the covers up to just underneath his armpits; Bruce could see John's sharp collarbone and the lean wiry muscle of his chest. (Bruce made sure not to look for more than a moment's curiosity would allow.)

God, John’s face was actually his for the first time that whole night. Bruce had gotten used to seeing it in the natural makeup, but it was almost a relief to see it in its normal borderline-luminescent white. He looked like the man Bruce knew.

Acid-green eyes stared at him, flicking slightly and growing soft. “I…did want to talk to you about something, though. If it’s okay.”

“I suppose I’m still awake,” Bruce said in an attempt to lighten the tension in his arms. “Sure.”

“Do you ever…look back on something, and think about the worst thing that could’ve happened in that situation?”

He didn’t like to admit it, but he had. Usually in his worst moods, he’d think about how everything could’ve gone wrong. He’d usually think about everything he could’ve done better, too. “I try not to, but…sometimes, yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking about our fight a lot, lately,” John confessed, “At Ace. I used to think about it a lot when I got recommitted, but… You started visiting me,” he said softly, a light smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You remember when I told you I thought I’d messed things up for us?”

“Yeah.” It was Bruce’s first visit to John. He never forgot the sheer hopeful joy on John’s face upon seeing him. It was practically engraved in his memory.

“Ever since I started sessions with Crane, I kept going back to that night. He always tried to weasel my worst secrets out of me,” he said with a low scowl, “but when he started using that…toxin on me… I kept…thinking about what could have happened back there. I… I know I almost killed you.”

The sheer pain reading in John’s eyes was enough to make Bruce want to wrap his arms around him. It was beautiful and raw and honest, and Bruce found himself holding stock still, almost captivated by the expression.

“I kept seeing it. Over and over – it was like I could see myself throwing you over the railing or-or stabbing you, or...” Bruce saw tears welling up as John clenched the pillow between them. “I don’t want to come close to that again, Bruce,” he managed to say, his voice starting to hitch. “I don’t… I don’t want to kill you.”

Bruce threw his pride away and grabbed John’s hand in his. “You won’t.”

“You…you don’t know that,” John said with a light sob. “If…if I…go back to how I was… If I mess up...”

Bruce squeezed his hand, feeling the soft skin twitch under his fingertips. “I won’t pretend you’re perfect,” he said, honesty seeping through every word, “but I know you, John. I know you’re not going after Crane out of revenge, like you did with Waller. You reached out to me for help – but you were already trying to find a way to stop him without resorting to just stabbing him with the nearest shiv.”

John sniffed, a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth like he was almost smiling. “Yeah…”

“So you’re not the same person you were then, are you?” He soothed with a supportive smile. “Even if you feel you are going backward, I know it won’t be to that same point.”

“Maybe…” he said with another sniff, looking more serious. “But Bruce, you know there are things I can’t ever really stop, right? The auditory psychosis is pretty much going to stay with me the rest of my life,” he started, clutching Bruce’s hand back, “and I’m not going to lie here and pretend my pulse wasn’t pounding a mile a minute when we were fighting those mobsters out there.” He sported a small knowing grin at him. “You know what that’s like, though, don’t you…”

(Yes, he did.)

“…you know what’s funny? I used to think one bad day could turn a person completely upside down.” John managed to stroke his thumb against Bruce’s knuckle, sending a little shiver over the skin, and Bruce wondered if John knew how incredibly intimate that gesture felt as he stared softly at him from the pillow. “Especially after Waller came to town… But…I never really thought things could go back up after it. I guess it just…takes a while.”

Bruce knew there was something right in John’s line of thinking. It only took one day to turn his life on its head, and he felt he knew, despite John having no memory of his life before Arkham, that something similar had happened to him. “Well…they say time heals all wounds.”

“How much passed before yours started to heal?”

He almost didn’t want to answer. The truth was that he wasn’t sure at all if he was ever going to fully heal, despite knowing what his parent’s really were. Maybe it was because he knew the terrible truth about them that they wouldn’t ever heal right. Maybe he’d always have that miserable note in the background of his life.

“…I’m still healing.”

“I didn’t say you stopped, buddy,” John chuckled with a knowing look. “Still…got good days and bad days, huh?”

“Feels like it, yeah.” Today…was definitely more of a mixed day. Looking at John across from him, though, all honest and open, and thinking back to how it felt to fight alongside him again, and investigate with him, with that warmth and instant familiar comfort between that never faded away, he almost felt like he wanted to call it a good day. “Today might have tilted things right-side up.”

John laughed, a genuine, humored one that was almost infectious. “Now I know I’m rubbing off on you; that sounds like something I’d say!”

John slipped his hand away and turned to lie on his back, still chuckling to himself. The warmth still burned in Bruce’s palm, and he found himself reluctant to pull his hand away at all.

John turned to him once more, an all-too-familiar affection shimmering brightly in the green depths. It pulled Bruce in and made him feel like he should inch close enough to feel the warmth and security it promised. “’Night, Bruce.”

“Goodnight, John.”

John turned over, leaving Bruce to stare at the bruises forming on his shoulders. There was the terrible temptation in his hands to shove the pillow between them aside and wrap his arm around the man’s middle so he could lean into that pale, battered back and bury his face in a head of soft, green hair.

There was a worse urge, one so vivid it almost made Bruce’s head spin – he could just reach out and touch the bruises, feather-light, and trail his fingertips down the curve of spine until it arched with a pleased shudder, and Bruce could follow that trail with his mouth as far as John would let him.

Bruce turned his head away, the memory of John’s lips on his coming to the front of his mind, and he shut out the mental image of repeating that kiss right then and there, telling himself that he really shouldn’t feel that way towards someone who desperately needed support, nor to his best friend who he’d left scarred in more ways than one, and certainly not someone who was both.

It had been a long time since Bruce shared a bed with someone, and far, far longer when he shared one with someone he didn’t have sex with.

He hoped that was all it was. Just the bed’s memory getting to him, and nothing else…

Notes:  Super-sexy-plant-person-in-her-late-twenties Ivy is OUT. Cougar-aged-mobster-botanist Ivy is IN! >:) 

I really wanted a different Ivy. I’m tired of the young, uber-sexy walking plant-human-hybrid that’s immune to all toxins and diseases; plants get diseases, too, and she’s so plant-like she should have some kind of physical humanizing weakness! It’s much more interesting to have a human who’s just built up an immunity and uses her babies for weapons and business; I kept her serious environmentalist trait, though, because while I dislike the anti-hero thing she’s got going on lately and would love to see her as a straight-up villain again, we do have to relate to her somehow, and her love of nature is always going to be a good part of her. Since Harley’s older, too, I figured it would be alright if they had a ten-year gap between them, so when Pam eventually goes to Black Gate one day, they’ll be pals. ;)

And Bruce you complete fool!!!! You should’ve kissed him!!!  Why do you do this to yourseellllfff? D:

I'm sorry it took so long, but as you can tell, I had a lot to work on, and I’m doing my best to write the next chapter as quickly as I can while this nutty energy in my brain is still fresh. I’m trying to keep with my weekly schedule, but I hope you guys are okay with having a gap day, as appears to be the habit now. ( ._. ) I mean, no one yells at me or anything for being late, but I aim to please with my work, and part of that is being consistent. 

I shall continue to try my hardest! (*｀へ´*) 彡3 See you next weekend!!!

[cheylouwho]

South Park: The affect of Abuse and ACEs on Behavior

One thing that’s been a hot topic in the SP fandom as of late is the discussion of how the behavior (both past and present) of the child characters are affected by the experiences we’ve seen/heard about in canon. Today we’re going to talk a little about three of the most damning cases; Cartman, Tweek and Butters.

Disclaimer 1: This analysis will contain several mentions of childhood trauma such as abuse, neglect and sexual relations. Please be mindful that you have been warned.

Disclaimer 2: This is for the sake of analysis and application of knowledge that I (and those in the SP analysis discord) have. We are in no way professionals. I am only a preschool teacher so my knowledge in the field of abuse and neglect is limited to what I’ve been taught and what I have witnessed/experienced. Please take the speculation with a grain of salt… maybe even the whole shaker. Just dump it in your mouth and enjoy almost 4,000 words of fully sourced “its not that deep, fam”.

Preface: What We Know about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Before we can really dive into this whole thing, we need to discuss ACEs. These are, to put it simply, traumatic events that occur during childhood that can have lasting effects on a person’s social/emotional, cognitive and even physical development well into adulthood. They’re mostly used for identifying children/people at risk and for research. It’s pretty interesting how that’s done, so I implore you to research more if you’re curious. These experiences can include:

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Emotional abuse

Physical neglect

Emotional neglect

Intimate partner violence

Mother treated violently

Substance misuse within household

Household mental illness

Parental separation or divorce

Incarcerated household member

(Source)

Given we’re talking about Cartman, Butters and Tweek, I think you can see why I bring this up. Taking a look at this list and the canon evidence we have in show, it’s easy to say that they’ve all experienced some of these traumas. Two more important things from the source article should also be noted for the sake of this analysis:

ACEs cluster. Almost 40% of the Kaiser sample reported two or more ACEs and 12.5% experienced four or more. Because ACEs cluster, many subsequent studies now look at the cumulative effects of ACEs rather than the individual effects of each.

ACEs have a dose-response relationship with many health problems. As researchers followed participants over time, they discovered that a person’s cumulative ACEs score has a strong, graded relationship to numerous health, social, and behavioral problems throughout their lifespan, including substance use disorders.

“Chey, what the fuck are you on about? This doesn’t make sense!” you might be saying. To truly understand how these ACEs apply to these three kids and how they affect their behavior, let’s take a look at them on a case by case basis.

Cartman’s Case

Eric Cartman is probably the most interesting child in terms of applying the ACEs checklist, as well as other knowledge about abuse and neglect affects on children. We know, from canon, that Cartman lives with his single mother. He’s a low-income family. His mother has been/may still be a sex worker. He’s is very inclined to violence and seems obsessed with sexual topics. It’s very interesting to note that towards the beginning of the series, while evidences were present, Cartman was a lot more innocent. As the show went on and some of these ACE experiences actually happened in building canon, it’s worn on him and shaped him in real time into the character we know today.

ACE 1: Sexual Abuse. It’s been strongly implied that Cartman has been sexually abused.Here is a not-so-short list of examples from the fanon wiki (source). It’s long winded and detailed, so here are a few notable points (as well as some that I’ve added myself).

Engaged in inappropriate/sexual behavior for his age, such as “touching wieners” with one of his cousins (le petit tourette), giving handjobs (Fat Butt and Pancake Head), insisting on measuring penises of his classmates (TMI), putting Butters’ penis in his mouth (Cartman Sucks)

Has been sexually abused by his mother/because of his mother (An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig)

Has been abused by several adult men ON SCREEN (The Simpsons Already Did It, Cripple Fight, Cartman Joins NAMBLA, AWESOM-O, The Return of Chef, It’s A Jersey Thing)

There’s also the strong point that Cartman has come to associate sex/love as something undesired, humiliating or painful. Again, the wiki wonderfully spells these out, but I’ll summarize. Cartman constantly treats any form of sexual or romantic relations as rape and assault. One example is in the Coon and Friends trilogy, he believes a woman having a consensual relationship with a man in the park is being “raped” and needs to be saved. Another example is his expressed sadness at the New Kid’s “dad fucked your mom” backstory in FBW. Another one that is not often touched upon in his reaction to Tweek and Craig’s fight in Tweek X Craig, in which he exclaims wholeheartedly that the two of them getting into an alteration is “sex” and seems intrigued to watch what’s going to happen. He also uses sex as a form of humiliation. I’m sure this is common knowledge at this point but his infatuation with making Kyle suck his balls in Imaginationland but also in his culmination of Butters’ photographical humiliation (AKA, sticking his penis in his mouth).

It’s not talked about on the ACEs website, but children who are sexually abused are likely to exhibit disdain (but interest) in sexual relations and acting sexually mature for their age.

ACE 2 and 3: Emotional abuse and neglect. Now, before I start this, you’re probably going to say, “BUT CHEY! Liane loves and dotes on Cartman! That’s why he’s spoiled!” Boy, do I hear you, but I’m going to explain myself. While Liane does spoil Cartman to hell and back, I’d like to argue that it’s empty. Liane may often tell Cartman she loves him, she also uses tactics such as bribery (food and other things Cartman likes), neglect (Cartman has said in canon, and she’s admitted herself, to being too busy to deal with him due to being a single parent), and also exposes him to things he should not be exposed to (sex, drugs). She treats him like a friend or a companion rather than her son (Tsst) which allows Cartman to have free reign. But free reign is not always out of love and care. I’d like to argue a lot of Cartman’s power is from lack of parenting and involvement in his life.I’m sorry if this part isn’t phrased too well; I had a hard time articulating it.

This may also be why Cartman has such a mixed relationship with his mother. He’s fed the idea that things are okay and great, that nothing is wrong, and he literally eats it up. He’s not outwardly talkative about what goes on at home, and when he is, he seems to regret it immediately. His disdain for his mom may not be purely “selfish greedy child”, but completely justified “abused child”. As phrased wonderfully by one of our server members, “that’s why he calls her a bitch and all those kinds of things yet still protecting her whenever they try to rip on Liane. Because that’s the kind of love he’s used to.”

Furthermore, consider the situation around Cartman’s birth. Liane was young, drunk and the town “slut” (their words, not mine). Cartman’s father’s identity had to be hidden and there’s no doubt that took a tole on her. I’d imagine being a young, single mother is not the path she wanted for herself. I tend to think of it as a cycle- Liane doesn’t want to deal with her child due to his behavior so she checks out of the situation, actually making Cartman’s behavior worse and so on and so on. Another possibly related scene could be in “Cartman’s Mom Is A Dirty Slut”, when she still outwardly seeks an abortion for her 8 year old son.

On a slightly unrelated note, this may also be one of the reasons for Cartman’s infatuation with Kyle. He seems to mistake the traits of abuse/neglect (anger, fighting, etc) as love due to how his mother treats him. This is why he thinks Kyle enjoys his company/likes him as a friend despite how much Kyle pushes back.

Other likely ACES: Witnessing intimate partner violence (his mother is a sex worker and he’s claimed to have been in the room during these acts), mother treated violently (FBW’s little Liane arc gives me bad vibes), substance abuse within household (I forget which episodes specifically but Liane’s done drugs), parent separation or divorce (absent father figure).

Cartman’s Conclusion:

Cartman has a grand total of SEVEN potential ACEs. The reason why I started those two additional facts at the start of this is because they are culminating (several often pop up and are related to each other) and affect behavior and relationships. Cartman’s behavior, while obnoxious and impulsive at best and downright despicable at worst, can be somewhat explained by the experiences he’s faced. Abuse, neglect and sexual assault have led him to search for forms of power and control in his life, whether that be over himself, his mother or his friends. His views of the world are shaped by what he’s seen and felt. Unlike Tweek, however, he doesn’t have much of a support system, and with the “sugarcoating” under the guise of love and care, he’s less likely to get the help he needs. His risks for childhood and subsequently adulthood are very high.

Butters’ Case

Butter’s is your stereotypical abused child in terms of his behavior and coping mechanisms. I believe that even casual show-watchers would agree that he’s in some deep shit. Unlike Cartman who is a lot more nuanced about displaying what he’s experienced, Butters is naive and innocent and resilient. He easily follows what others (CARTMAN) ask of him. He assumes a more submissive role in his life, working hard to make others happy and put them first to avoid trouble. He’s an easy target for bullying and being humiliated or used. He says things out loud without noticing their implications to what has happened to him.

Unlike Liane who covers her (probably unintentional) neglect with the guise of love, he has no such outward statements from either parent. The closest we get is “this is for your own good”, but there is no loving undertone, it’s purely corporeal.  Their abuse is right in his face; it’s physical, it’s mental, it’s terrible. Steven Stotch is the primary abuser, and while Linda has done her fair share of harm, she’s generally more passive. She even states in Grounded Vindaloop that she “lets [Steven] handle the grounding”. Steven Stotch, as of FBW, is also a victim of abuse, showing that he’s perpetrating it in a cycle (you’ll notice this theme a few times in this little essay).

It’s clear as of season 20 that the effects of constant abuse have finally worn on Butters, due to his angry outbursts and sudden shift in attitude (if you want to look at it from a character standpoint and not as lazy writing cough cough). He’s hit a breaking point in what he can take, and the more he’s been exposed to his ACEs (like Cartman’s case) the more behaviorally challenged he’s become.

Another aspect to consider is his relationship with Cartman. Both share similar ACEs, but cope with them in different ways. Cartman chooses to be a controller to earn back what he’s lost, while Butters is more suited to take a backseat and follow. This is why they, despite having a very dysfunctional friendship, stick together. It may appear that Cartman is the only one benefiting, but I believe it’s more mutualistic based on their respective coping mechanisms.

ACE 1: Physical Abuse. Butters has been shown to be physically abused time and time again by Steven. He’s been hit, talked about being hit, and the biggest piece of evidence that scares the shit out of me personally is that Steven pulled off his belt and prepared to hit Butters in front of his classmates in Grounded Vindaloop. Corporal punishment has been shown time and time again to be detrimental to children’s psyc, which aligns given how Butters acts.

ACE 2: Sexual Abuse. Butters has mentioned in The Return Of Chef that he has been sexually abused by his uncle, which does not surprise me in the slightest. Butters, unlike Cartman, goes the total opposite direction of how to cope with this sort of experience; he’s blissfully unaware of what has happened and rather than let it consume him (ex. cartman) he brushes it off as no big deal. Whether this means he is truly unaware of the connotations of what was done to him or if he’s purposely repressing it is unclear, but the evidence is there that it did happen.

ACE 3 and 4: Emotional Abuse and Neglect. This one is abundant in examples. Steven appears to play a lot of mind games with Butters, whether it’s demanding he stop having nightmares (The Death of Eric Cartman), getting in trouble for looking a certain way (How To Eat With Your Butt and The List), or simply for being bullied. They constantly ground him for things that he has no control over, simple mistakes or things that he was not even involved in. I believe that Steven, similar to Cartman, takes the helplessness from childhood abuse and hurts Butters in order to feel in control of himself.

Other Possible ACEs: Household mental illness could be argued as one of the ACEs Butters experiences, although not officially confirmed in canon. I do believe that Linda has some form of mental illness due to her behavior in Butters Own Episode. Although not listed in the article, Steven’s infidelity and the tension that causes on his and Linda’s marriage is also a potential ACE, especially given that Butters was directly exposed to that whole fiasco.  

Butters’ Conclusion:

Butters’ innocence is likely a form of coping mechanism for what he’s encountered during his life. Constant physical and mental abuse have worn on him over the years, turning him more bitter and forcing him to act out. I believe this also can be accredited to his mental break in season 19’s “Safe Space”, as this is the big start of his downward spiral. Unlike Cartman, there is no cover-up for his abuse being simply that- abuse- so being able to divorce himself and his emotions will be easier for him if he were to receive support or help in some form.

Tweek’s Case

Tweek is an interesting case because while he does have emotional abuse, neglect and and forced substance abuse (coffee and/or meth addiction), he also has canon mental illness that exists outside of how he’s treated. The abuse and neglect of his parents only amplify the effects of said illness. I’ve had a selection of anons over time talk about his potential (though not confirmed) mental state, most agreeing it’s some form of panic disorder (the Tweaks claim it’s ADD, but this is really just a load of bullshit and we all know it). He is often exploited by his parents (ex. “Having a homosexual son is good for the business” in FBW) or outright lied to for the sake of business. They often brush off his worries or ignore him completely.

ACEs 1 and 2: Emotional Abuse and Neglect (EXPLOITATION). The Tweak family are no strangers to emotional abuse and neglect. Right from Tweek’s character introduction, we know something isn’t quite right. His parents feed him excessive coffee, which is later revealed to be laced with meth (did you know that meth increases body temperature, as well as caffeine overdose raising heart rate and induces anxiety? (X) Would you look at that evidence). They also frequently blackmail him into work through the threat of “selling him into slavery”.

His defining traits are usually watered down to “spaz”, and more recently, “homosexual”, hinting that his parents really don’t pay much attention to him to know much more than that. They either ignore or hardly acknowledge his fears and worries, leaving him to cope with anxiety and personal issues completely alone. He’s clearly unhappy and potentially aware of his shitty situation- in Tweek vs Craig, he slams his head against the table repeating that he “want[s] out” and that “you never help me”. In Tweek x Craig, his parents only seem to take interest in his developing relationship due to the rest of the town and their desire to look good. If you use this as anything to go off, most of their “parenting” is feeble attempts to keep up appearances.

In SOT, it’s strongly implied that Tweek is the one to usually pick up meth deliveries from Kenny’s house. This is another form of abuse, though I’m not sure if it’s exactly emotional, that he’s forced to endure. A ten year old child should not be exposed to those sort of environments, let alone be involved in the trade of drugs.

ACE 3: Substance Abuse in the Household. Whether it’s coffee, meth or other form of drugs, there’s something going on in the Tweek home that I am certain counts for this ACE. As stated in the preface, higher numbers of ACEs contribute to higher likelihoods of substance abuse- what if the child is already unintentionally abusing substances? He’s got coffee with METH INSIDE IT. I don’t think I need to go much further. There is also the possibility that with his misdiagnosis of ADD, Tweek may be provided access to other drugs for substance abuse. Meth is actually used as a way of treating ADD (X) and could be in reach for him. There’s also Amphetamine (X) which has noted side effects of "excessive grinding of the teeth,... profuse sweating,... and tics..." which could be related to his behavior. This is all purely speculation, however.

Tweek’s Conclusion:

Tweek’s struggle with mental illness is not helped by his parents frequence abuse and neglect. He’s often blackmailed into situations he doesn’t want to be in. Similar to Cartman, his forms of abuse are often sugarcoated as love, making it a little less obvious for him to pick up on. In contrast to Butters, however, he’s much less of a follower and can throw a punch when he needs to protect himself. He’s incredibly resilient and has managed to, despite early substance addiction and neglect, hold strong and even overcome massive obstacles. Of course, these are partly due to his newfound support from...

The Effect of Solid Support: Craig, Heidi, and Liane

Creek shipper or not, there is no denying that Craig has played a massive role in Tweek’s recovery. While Tweek appears to be very naturally resilient despite the odds stacked against him, the presence of someone who will actually listen to his problems and not brush them off is a huge step in the right direction. With Craig, there is a sense of trust and understanding as well as respect. He’s treated as more than a few buzzwords or free labor or any slew of hurtful remarks. His fears are able to be acknowledged and sorted though, whether it be Craig’s logical talk-throughs or someone to pat his back and say “that sucks and it’s okay” (Put It Down). Ever since the introduction of Craig as his boyfriend, we’ve seen some interesting steps in the right direction.

S21’s main theme of relationships drew a lot of interesting parallels between Creek and Heiman, namely the difference between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy relationship. Similar to Steven Stotch, as mentioned in Butters’ case, Cartman went from abused to abuser in his relationship with Heidi. However, this was not always the case.

In early S20, Heidi was in search of her own form of support after being abused by society, simply put. She was able to find this in Cartman, who was dealing with a similar situation at the time after being “murdered” by his friends. Her presence did arguably turn him around for awhile- he seemed much happier before his self-destructive tendencies and self-doubt came in full swing. The cycle was perpetrated- Heidi wasn’t what he needed, so he went from abused to abuser. Heidi could be argued to have turned into another Cartman because she faced a watered-down version of his interpretation of “love”, aka abuse.

Let’s consider another pivotal moment for Cartman: TSST. This one is such a telling episode. While Liane is the source of most of his issues, when she was able to step into her role as a parent and provide the structure and support Cartman needed, his entire personality turned around. It wasn’t until she began treating him like a friend or companion again that he slipped back into his old ways.

Between these two scenarios, I believe it shows that if the patience and care is taken when dealing with Cartman, there is the possibility of healing. Heidi failed because she too was equally vulnerable and not in the right headspace, ultimately harming both of them (this does not excuse how cartman treated and manipulated her, BTW). Liane failed because she fell back into her cycle instead of sticking with what she had built up.

Conclusion

In conclusion, despite sharing similar ACEs, all three children we’ve discussed have different forms of coping and managing their trauma. The abuse that Butters has faced is easier to “remove” from his life due to no emotional (love) being involved in corporal punishment; however, Tweek and Cartman’s abuse have longer lasting repercussions because they’ve accepted and adapted as “that’s just the way it is”. That’s not to say they’re beyond help; all three, if done soon like in Tweek’s case, can be used to heal.

I leave this post with a sort of “call to action”. While we are talking about purely fictional characters and situations that “aren’t that deep, fam”, there are actual children suffering from these kinds of experiences. If you are aware of them, or see the red flags, please don’t hesitate to get help or find someone who can. Nobody should be like Eric Cartman and display serious red flags but slip under the radar. Thank you very much for reading my long, LONG analysis.

Special thanks/credit to the south park analysis discord ( and @dumbthotticusplayer2) for helping brainstorm/discuss :)

[kyuu-rereads-umineko]

Ep6, Chapter 9 (Part 2) & 10

Love Trial time! (warning: this is not a very good post, honestly. Ep6 is proving to be a struggle to write posts about, even this late into it...)

Eva and George are... in front of the mansion, I think? Eva’s clearly not happy with George and Shannon getting engaged, unsurprisingly.

Oh wait, no, they’re in front of the guesthouse, actually. CLOSE ENOUGH

“...Did you sleep with her? She told you she was pregnant to force you into a marriage, didn’t she?!” fucking OUCH

George states that he’s “a strong believe that chastity is to be preserved before marriage.” That matches up with their date in Ep2, so...

Eva asks why they got engaged, and George replies, “I asked her. She accepted. What more could be needed?” Eva disagrees, of course.

“What about her parents? Relationships between the two families? Are you some stray alley cat, or are you Ushiromiya George?!” Even putting aside the dramatic irony of this statement, it’s... interesting. I’m guessing Eva’s just talking in terms of general issues, as opposed to issues with Shannon x George.

George states his desire to “build his own country and castle from scratch” like Hideyoshi did, and Eva angrily replies that it wasn’t easy, and he was “often saved by luck and coincidence”. George replies, “And he got through it because he had a wonderful life partner by his side... you. Sayo is the kind of person who’ll support me and make me be reborn as an even stronger man. You’ve praised me for becoming the adult that I am, but that could never have happened without her.” Tohya loves Yasu, writes love letter to her in form of his forgeries, etc.

Eva asks if he plans on “betraying the feelings” of a woman they met with at a marriage meeting. He replies that even though the two of them went out (due to their - or at least his - parents’ insistence), they “never even looked at each other.” Eva objects, and George replies, “You want me to marry her because it will benefit you. You aren’t pushing that engagement for the sake of anyone but yourself.” SHOTS FUCKING FIRED

Eva starts crying and screaming about how she and Hideyoshi have always been thinking about what’s “best for George.” “If I didn’t care for you, we wouldn’t be having this fight! [...] Don’t worry, we won’t do anything bad to Shannon-chan. After all, it’s thanks to her that you’ve grown so much... We won’t forget that. So leave the rest to us... George...”

George turns his back, seemingly torn on what to do, then says, “Alright. I think that’s enough. All my life, you’ve done a great job raising me, and I’m grateful for that. When I have children and become a parent... I’ll become a parent like you. I’ll be the kind of parent most worthy of respect in the entire world, one who can truly fight for his children’s sake.”

“I think it’s about time you learned... to let go of your son, Mother.”

“Let’s forget that you’re my parent and let our true intentions ring clear... The reason you want to choose the person I marry... is for financial reasons, public appearances, and... so that you can posture in that still-continuing quarrel between you and your siblings. You have no other reason.” I’d forgotten just how few fucks George gives in this scene, damn. He declares that she’s “a wall, a trial, standing in the way of the future he’s trying to grasp.” “Now I’ll overcome the final barrier... you!!”

EVATRICE TIMEEEEEEEE

I don’t really have a lot to say about this sequence, other than yay fantasy battles.

Having said that - After getting beaten around a bit (okay, a lot), George stands up, saying, “I cannot count the number of things I’ve learned from Sayo. She taught me... courage and chivalry, how to be ambitious and witty and humorous, and just a little stylish. It’s ironic... Almost all of the things you say are so wonderful about me... didn’t come from you at all.”

A bit more fantasy battle (now with martial arts!), and George kills Evatrice... then straightens his glasses and says, “I know you’re somewhere over there, Gaap.” lol

“I have something to ask of you.” Gaap responds kinda flippantly, and George’s response... well: “The threat in his voice held the solemn presence of a king who could control demons. That presence made Gaap gulp, and she licked her lips before bowing respectfully to his back.” I don’t remember the parallels between George and Kinzo being commented on much outside of Ep4, so this is pretty interesting, to say the least.

“I like hot guys, but I like monarchs even more.” lol gaap

At George’s request, she moves Eva’s body to the VIP room in the mansion, and leaves Evatrice’s staff behind. George steps on it to launch it into the air, and catches it in his hand, whereupon it disperses into gold butterflies. GETTING A LOT OF EP4 VIBES HERE

In the gameboard meta, George declares his “part” to be over, and Jessica is shocked that he decided to go after Eva for the love trial. 

He replies, “It’s the person who loves you first in the world... and the last one you have to separate yourself from. ...That’s what it means to leave your home. This is the courage I need to show to take Sayo as my wife.” 

Ah, right, the nature of the trial is mentioned here. “So that the love of the pair will stand true, offer up the life of one person by your own hands.”

The narrative compares it to Beato’s test in Ep4, which is... interesting! I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I suppose it kinda is similar, just with “your own life” and “your lover’s life” automatically excluded (well, except in Battler’s case, but).

“For the versions of themselves to whom the game board was the only world, this was a tragic parricide... but to these ones who stood around the game board in this witch’s smoking room, it was nothing more than a movement of the pieces, representing George’s will to overcome his parents.” meta gonna meta

After a moment’s hesitation (during which Zepar and Furfur almost declare George and Shannon the winners), Jessica volunteers to go next. “Alright, I’ll do it... I’ll show you that I’m serious about Kanon-kun!!”

Meanwhile, during a break in the family conference, Kyrie’s wandered off to a hallway on the second floor of the mansion. “I need to regain my spirit and support my husband, even if I’m not allowed to speak. ...That’s the duty I’ve won.”

HI JESSICA

Ooh, that’s interesting. Jessica decided to basically wander around the mansion and kill the first person she runs into, and Furfur describes it as “Jessica’s roulette of fate.” battler u aren’t a very subtle writer are u

...Though she’s still not committed to actually going through with killing anyone, so she ends up asking Kyrie for advice. “Sounds nasty... Love that can only succeed by using the others as a footstool.”

“I think I see where you’re going with this... Something like this, right? ‘How far is a person allowed to take advantage of others to find happiness’?” Ooof. That’s... painfully accurate - not for Jessica, but for Yasu. The question she’s constantly asking herself, wracked with guilt over being torn between George, Shannon, and Battler...

...Though, granted, Yasu’s circumstances are a bit different to Jessica’s here, but.

And then the music cuts out, as Kyrie tells Jessica that, as painful as it might be to have to cut short George and Shannon’s relationship, not fighting for her own love will be even worse.

Ange cuts in, mentioning finding Kyrie’s notebook sometime after the incident. “It was... practically a book of curses... it cleared up several questions I had vaguely felt back when I was six.”

“When I was six, it seemed as though my parents were very close and had no problems. ...And though I thought it odd that Onii-chan lived separately even though he was in our family, I accepted it as the way things were.”

As was shown in Ep5, it’s explained that Kyrie was effectively Rudolf’s “business partner.” “Though she served as Dad’s right-hand person, she slyly got rid of the other women in the shadows... It was only a matter of time before Mom would succeed in her love.”

Kyrie explains to Jessica that Asumu showed up, and was “good at triggering Rudolf’s protective instinct.” “Bit by bit, Rudolf had started to need a woman who could stay quiet and soothe him... without making him think about anything complicated.”

“I am ruthless and intellectual. Rational and economical. ...In a plank of Carneades situation, I would push the other person off without hesitating. ...I thought that was the kind of partner suitable for him.” kyrie gonna kyrie

“Yes, I did get the position of his business partner... But before I knew it, Rudolf-san had grown a need for a mental partner, someone who could heal his heart. Though I foolishly claimed to be the intellectual one, I never noticed.”

And then both Kyrie and Asumu became pregnant, though Kyrie wasn’t even aware of it herself until after Rudolf and Asumu had already gotten married. “Once she got her hands on Rudolf-san, she didn’t let go.”

Kyrie reflects that she at least wanted Rudolf to acknowledge her child - which he was apparently willing to do, going as far as visiting her in the hospital even though Asumu was giving birth on the same day. She calls him an awful man, and... I can’t say I really disagree, to be honest!

Except... she supposedly ended up having a stillbirth instead, while Asumu gave birth to Battler. In hindsight, the answer’s literally right there, isn’t it? We get it stated in red in Ep4 that Asumu isn’t Battler’s blood mother, and both here and in Ep3 it’s stated that Kyrie and Asumu had the same delivery date. Coupled with how strongly Battler and Ange resemble each other... yeah.

“Kyrie had fallen from Rudolf’s partner to his second wife... and then, unable to even give birth to the bond of a child... she tumbled down... to merely being his mistress. I can’t imagine... how much she must’ve hated Asumu and that kid... Battler.” Ange mentions that she was (understandably) shocked to find out just how much Kyrie likely hated Battler.

Back on the board, Kyrie tells Jessica that she only regrets one thing. “It’s my arrogance I regret. ‘Rudolf-san is already mine, so I’m completely safe... I’ll never lose to that Asumu girl.’”

Kyrie warns Jessica against being naive about her love, and that the regrets she’ll have if she doesn’t take it seriously enough “will make her crawl through hell.” Jessica is, understandably, speechless upon hearing of how harsh the “true form of love” is.

“Right now... I would do anything to keep Rudolf-san by my side. [...] If he wished it, I might not even hesitate at murder.” KYRIE GONNA KYRIE

Aaaand Kyrie flat-out says that she would’ve killed Asumu herself, if she hadn’t died on her own. Battler, are you having fun writing your mother like this...?

Kyrie laughs a bit and apologizes, not meaning to scare Jessica like she had. BIT LATE FOR THAT I THINK

“I don’t know what your love has been like, Jessica-chan... but if you have a rival and neither is willing to back down, you can’t let yourself become complacent. If you do, you’ll end up like me.”

“...For the sake of love, a woman should be willing to kill at least once in her life.” KYRIE NO

“Love really is like playing with fire. Anyone can play easily and lightheartedly... but when you mess up and get burned, that scar stays with you your whole life.”

I just want to let that line stand on its own.

Kyrie turns to leave, wishing Jessica good luck... and narrowly avoids getting her face smashed in. She’s quite nonchalant about Jessica trying to kill her, but... y’know, Kyrie. Who’s surprised at this point?

“Come now. If you had come from the guesthouse to get a book from your room, you wouldn’t have come through this hallway in that direction.” kyrie holmes

More fantasy battles, now with math! I do find it interesting, though, that George and Jessica ask for help from Gaap and Ronove, respectively, given Ep4.

At any rate, Jessica kills Kyrie in Krauss’s study, gets angry at Zepar and Furfur, etc. etc... And starts crying as she asks Kanon if she did anything wrong. Jessica...

Elder joins in on complimenting her. “Very impressive, Jessica! That ‘closed room murder’ just now was wonderful enough to fascinate even a witch like myself.”

Zepar and Furfur dance around a bit again. “Come, speak up!! Who is next?! Who will take the next trial?!”

[arzayleatheory]

ok so i know everyone's different and deals with things differently but i feel like arz romanticises her anxiety like the way she tweets about it makes it seem like she's trying to be "relatable" but there's no way she goes out that often and lives her life the way she does with her anxiety if it's as bad as she makes it out to be. like i have anxiety and it's not as bad as she says hers is and i literally have had to be taken to medical before because i couldn't cope one day at lunch

I thought long and hard about whether I should just answer this with something simple or let it get personal and I’m choosing the last option. I’m sure at least a few people will attack me and say I’m faking it just to bash Arzaylea, but whatever.

I’ve had severe anxiety throughout my entire life. It got really bad when I was around 12 and it literally controls me. I’ve been dealing with it since way before it was a “cool” thing. People mistake normal levels of stress for anxiety, over exaggerate, and fake it all the time – especially on the internet. It’s become a trend, regardless of what anyone says. It seems like everyone has “anxiety” these days.

I don’t want to come across as one of those people who’s overly sensitive and constantly telling others that their anxiety is non existent, so that’s why I’ve never spoken up about Arzaylea’s (or anyone else’s for that matter) claims. They could be valid – I don’t know – but they’ve always made me mad and I’ve always been suspicious because it hits so close to home for me.

Typically, someone who truly has an anxiety disorder doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s humiliating and you feel like you’re a burden to everyone around you when you have trouble participating in every day things because of what’s going on inside your head. Explaining your situation to family and friends is hard enough – the last thing you want to do is go brag about it to strangers on the internet. Even I feel like I’m oversharing right now.

Arzaylea will say anything in an attempt to get people to like her. Like I’ve said, her anxiety could be real, but I really just….don’t believe it is. She deals with stress and nerves — everyone does — but genuine anxiety? Probably not. She’s known for being a liar and I doubt this situation is any different. 

She’s constantly shoving her “anxiety” in everyone’s face in hopes of getting sympathy, manipulating people, and seeming relatable. She benefits from faking it – at least that’s what I suspect.

I remember when she went on a long twitter rant about how no one believes she struggles with mental health because she doesn’t look the part, and while that’s definitely a big problem for a lot of people, I don’t think she’s one of them. 

She’s right about the fact that there’s no mold that someone with anxiety has to fit into, and like you said, everyone is different, but she gives me strong “I’m faking it” vibes. She goes out all the time, loves drawing attention to herself and making people mad on purpose, and constantly brags about her “problems”. If she truly had anxiety, especially as bad as she claims, you’d think she’d be a little more cautious, reserved, and private.

Plus, she definitely wouldn’t be doing cocaine! Look at this. It says, “of all of the stimulants available today, the one that is essentially guaranteed to cause severe anxiety is cocaine.” Funny.

Anxiety isn’t pretty or enjoyable in any way, shape, or form. I’d literally sell both my legs and voluntarily spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair if it meant getting rid of mine. People who don’t have to deal with it have no idea how lucky they are and shouldn’t be going around faking it and wishing for it because it’s absolutely ridiculous. One day with legitimate anxiety and I’m sure they’d change their minds really fucking quickly.

[khalilhumam]

Trinidadian writer Ingrid Persaud talks about her new novel, ‘Love After Love’

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/trinidadian-writer-ingrid-persaud-talks-about-her-new-novel-love-after-love/

Trinidadian writer Ingrid Persaud talks about her new novel, ‘Love After Love’

‘Why are we seeking permission to use our English?

Ingrid Persaud's new novel, “Love After Love,” set in Trinidad. Photo by Nicholas Laughlin, used with permission.

In a review of Trinidadian novelist Ingrid Persaud's latest offering, “Love after Love,” poet Shivanee Ramlochan described the book as “a take-no-prisoners trip into […] three hearts.” The hearts she speaks of belong to Betty Ramdin, a survivor of domestic violence who is “more than her collection of bruises”; her son Solo, who is “more than a shy only child”; and their lodger, Mr. Chetan, who “elides easy pigeonholing reserved for queer Caribbean characters.” Chetan comes to board with them after Betty's abusive husband dies, and the trio forms a family of sorts. As they try to help heal each others’ wounds, however, secrets come out that change everything, leaving them struggling with questions of identity, duty, community, desire and reconciliation. Perhaps most importantly, the shattering revelations guide their individual struggles along the journey to self-love, a theme that the book, which shares its title with Derek Walcott's poem, examines. Set in Trinidad, the island of Persaud's birth, the novel pays tender reverence to the inimitable way in which Trinidadians communicate, imbuing the story's universal themes with local colour and vibrancy. I interviewed Persaud via email to discuss the novel, her first since winning the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award.

Author Ingrid Persaud; photo used with permission.

Janine Mendes-Franco (JMF): Are you at the level of self-love that Walcott wrote about? 

Ingrid Persaud (IP): I borrow the title of Walcott’s poem with deference and gratitude. In the act of loving another, do we not often carelessly lose sight of ourselves? I’m sure everyone can identify with that challenge. I’d like to think I’m getting better at coming back to my own door, my own mirror, to show myself a little compassion. We should all heed that famous last line where the poet directs: ‘Sit. Feast on your life.’

JMF: With “Love After Love,” you’ve taken the approach of telling stories through a definitively Trinidadian lens to a new level, not just with your use of local dialect, but with its accompanying rhythm and pace. Was it a conscious decision or did the story just demand to be written that way?

IP: “Love After Love” is set in Trinidad and the characters are all ordinary Trini people, so it’s arguable the story demanded our English. But there’s more at stake than place dictating language. This is our authentic English with the same validity as any other. It’s only dialect if you aren’t one of the millions from the English-speaking Caribbean. Why are we seeking permission to use our English? Badass [writer] Sam Selvon was successfully owning it 70 years ago. The issue isn’t why a mainstream publisher like Faber bought this book but rather why it took so long for the industry to embrace work like mine.

JMF: You say that, but in the Caribbean, there has been a lot of discussion around the use of the Patois/Creole language as opposed to the Queen’s English – its viability, what it communicates in terms of intelligence, social class, etc. How do you feel about what still appears to be an effort to humiliate (or at the very least, de-motivate) dialect speakers and keep them in their place, so to speak?

IP: While we hold the English of a tiny minority as the absolute standard, any different use of English becomes othered. By deciding that our English is less than this gold standard we are colluding with the othering of ourselves. As if this weren’t ironical enough, we are having these debates within the region precisely when our English, our Caribbean sensibility, is being feted elsewhere. Roger Robinson, a Trini, licked up both the prestigious T. S. Elliot Prize and the Ondaatje Prize for his collection, “A Portable Paradise,” [and] “Golden Child,” by Claire Adams has won several prizes. Caroline McKenzie has just published “One Year of Ugly.” Ayanna Lloyd’s novel has so much buzz already and it’s not coming out until 2022. As a country we should be celebrating.

JMF: You were confident in your decision not to soften the dialect or explain the terminology. There was no glossary, for instance, as exists for the Ibo words in Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.” Was it a difficult sell to your editor to go this route?

IP: Louisa Joyner, at Faber, and Nicole Counts, at One World, were incredible editors and I am full of gratitude to have learnt at their feet. Neither asked for a glossary. Indeed they were against the inclusion of any explanatory notes. The integrity of the writing would have to be sufficient. Hopefully the context of an unknown word or expression was enough for the non-Caribbean reader. Even better would be that readers left “Love After Love” with an increased vocabulary of words like steupse and bazodee, idioms like “cockroach have no right in fowl party” and expressions like “jeez” and “ages.”

JMF: What kind of feedback have you got from non-Trinbagonian readers about the language?

IP: Before publication, I made the decision not to look at comments from readers on the usual sites like Goodreads or Amazon. It just wasn’t going to be good for my mental health. All that to say the feedback I have had is limited to those who have sought me out specially and they naturally said nice things about the language in “Love after Love.” I don’t know about the swathes of readers who find the language off-putting. And that’s cool. To please everyone, I would have to be an Ali’s doubles with slight pepper.

JMF: You’ve been living outside of Trinidad for some time now, yet the language and the lilt have never left you. How do you manage that?

IP: Thank you for saying [it] hasn’t left me. I’m not always confident that I still hear it or hear it properly. When the doubt and longing sets in I pick up the phone and soak up the Trini voices of friends, family — anybody who will bother with me. Of course, language is a living thing. An expression might have evolved or vanished from everyday speech, so I pay attention to current usage. Our people are so creative that new words and idioms are constantly emerging. And we police our language as much as any other group. It would be literary suicide to write without consulting Winer’s huge tome – “Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago” or to abandon my well-thumbed copy of “Côté ci Côté là.”

JMF: Has that distance given you a unique perspective on identity and belonging?

IP: I don’t know if living outside of Trinidad has given me a unique perspective but it has made issues of identity and belonging central to my practice. Everyone needs a place called home, yet how that is constructed is always precarious and contested. I would point at San Fernando in south Trinidad and say — my navel string’s buried there. That is where I belong. Now I’m less sure GPS can locate my home. Years of self-exile have broken and remade my thinking. I’ve come to embrace the liminal space of non-belonging — simultaneously all and none of the places I inhabit. It’s closer to the everyday, lived experience without the push of alienation and pull of attachment.

JMF: Domestic violence and homophobia are themes that resonate strongly in the regional experience. Why did you want to examine them?

IP: I wrote about ordinary lives and, as you’ve said, domestic violence and homophobia are urgent and troubling everyday issues in our region. If you have gay characters then it’s impossible to ignore the homophobia that limits their life choices. I let the characters lead me and often, I wasn’t too sure where we would find ourselves. It was the only way I could navigate these themes.

JMF: You’re always able to hone in on the crux of a good narrative and structure it compellingly so that the reader is happily brought along for the ride. Describe what happens from the moment you think, “That’d make a good story.”

IP: You know how to make a bush bath to cleanse bad vibes that are clinging to your body and mind? I’m guessing you don’t. Maybe you can consult an old auntie who directs you to throw black sage and blue soap in the water. Then, you might ask a neighbour and he might add to the list of vital ingredients or even contradict what the old auntie suggested. Same thing with the creative process. Looking in, it feels like there must be a special alchemy that makes good writing. There isn’t any — or at least none that I’ve found. All you can do is show up at your desk every single day and write. If you do that, you might occasionally glimpse pure magic.

< p class='gv-rss-footer'>Written by Janine Mendes-Franco

[patheticphallacy]

This is part of my Music Monday series on my blog, where I talk all things music, from recommending songs to discussing my favourite music videos to compiling playlists based on prompts.

Summer is over!

I don’t want to say finally, because being off University has been pretty great, but I’m also so relieved the weather is going to get cooler. The weather fluctuated between INCREDIBLY HOT and ACTUALLY IT’S QUITE CHILLY in July and August and I just want it to be over please oh please.

So for Music Monday I figured I should do a little wrap up of the music I’ve enjoyed! I’ve made about 5 new music playlists for absolutely no reason at all other than I have no self control, and I keep having to edit down my 2019 playlist due to impulsively adding songs and then realising two weeks later that I honestly didn’t really love the song that much.

FAVOURITE SOLO ARTIST

My favourite solo artist this Summer was probably Sigrid. Generally with solo artists I get into one or two of their songs, and while those songs list in my favourite songs, the artist generally isn’t a new top favourite.

I’ve been a fan of Sigrid since 2017, and I finally felt like I was in the right space to listen to her new album Sucker Punch, which ended up solidifying her as one of my new favourite solo artists. She has a really intriguing voice and I love that you could dance to over half of this album because of how upbeat it is. There’s something to be said for lyrics that aren’t complicated, are easy to understand, because sometimes that makes them all the more relatable for a listener.

I also love how so much of her music is inspired by more than just romantic issues. There are crushes and friendship songs, songs about breaking free from toxic friendships– something that helped me as I reconcile with some of the more toxic elements of relationships I’ve had in the past– and there’s also a song inspired by not only Studio Ghibli, but also her attempt to control her image in the media, which is something I always love in music. Artists can be publicised so much we forget they are real human beings, and hearing their music about their public image is always humbling.

FAVOURITE BAND

  (Take This To Your Grave isn’t here because it wouldn’t fit, don’t fight me)

2008 Connie and 2019 Connie have one thing in common, and that’s their intense adoration of rock bands that formed in the 2000s. I’ve always been a fan of Fall Out Boy since I was little, but it’s only the past year I’ve actually started listening to all of their discography properly and begun appreciating what they’ve come out with.

This might be divisive, but I honestly think Fall Out Boy, of the ol’ rock/punk rock scene, have had the most consistently good albums since their debut. I think other bands have had decent albums and, in some cases, bad ones that only have one or two good songs in my opinion (Paramore’s self-titled album, I’msosorry), but not ones that have absolute hits.

Fall Out Boy are always great for me, every song on their albums that I’ve heard so far, and that’s why they are my favourite band of the Summer. They’ve changed with the times and the kind of music that’s popular in the moment without ever losing what made their earlier music so great. It’s just all very idiosyncratic, from the music videos to the content to the actual song titles, and I love them.

ALBUMS I LIKED

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Doom Days // Bastille

While doing some research on this album, I discovered that the concept for Doom Days is that it follows different points in the night at a party, a party that has a lot of “turbulent emotional chaos”. This explains why I love it so much.

In general, Bastille are a band that put a lot of thought into their music, and I think some really visceral imagery can be created from the concepts they shape the album around.

The titular song is actually my favourite of the album. It describes escapism from modern anxiety, and how, no matter how fucked the world is, you need to shut off sometimes. I struggle a lot with this– I constantly describe my own anxiety, something that I struggle with a lot, as having an IV line of straight modern horror flowing into me that I can’t disconnect from– and I think, as a song, it confronts modern fear– from climate change denial to porn addiction– without ever demonising those who make the decision to shut their brains off from it sometimes.

I think the Peter Pan reference especially reaffirms this. Yes, Peter Pan himself is a symbol of innocence, but at its core, Peter Pan’s narrative is about a girl who finds escape from the ‘real world’ long enough to figure out the issues of adulthood and growing up without losing herself along the way. In a way, that’s what this song, and the rest of the album, enforce. Escapism is good sometimes.

Third Eye Blind // Third Eye Blind

God of Wine has been one of my favourite songs for god knows how long, and after listening to a really bizarre mash-up of Welcome to the Black Parade with Semi-Charmed Life, I finally figured I should give the rest of the band’s music a try.

I’ve started with their self-titled first album, just because it’s easiest as I make my way through their discography, but I kind of stopped on this one. I just really love it. It mixes different sounds, sometimes crossing several in one song (Narcolepsy has an ending that jolts you out of your seat), with grim lyrics reflecting on suicide and mental health conditions, crystal meth, and sexual abuse.

Fun story: Semi-Charmed Life was very familiar to me before I’d even listened to the album, and when I researched into it, I realised that was because it was used in trailers for The Tigger Movie and, as a massive Winnie the Pooh fan and YouTube user, I had most definitely seen the trailer when I was younger and not put the pieces together. These trailers were obviously recalled because the song is about crystal meth, but I just think that’s a fun look into how little people actually pay attention to lyrics!

Sucker Punch // Sigrid

I’ve obviously discussed Sigrid in length earlier in this post, so I won’t say as much here. My favourite songs on the album are Basic, Don’t Kill My Vibe, and Business Dinners.

FAVOURITE SONGS

Arms Unfolding // Dodie

Oh, our fire died last Winter 

Heavy Metal Heart // Sky Ferreira

I describe the chorus and instrumentals of this as the musical equivalent of a headache, and I stand by that. Sky Ferreira’s voice is great, and I love the chaotic noisiness of this song.

Django Jane // Janelle Monáe

I actually only just listened to Dirty Computer. I tend to prolong listening to things until well after the hype surrounding them dies down, and I’m glad I did, as I’m not sure if I would have enjoyed the album otherwise.

I’m With You // Avril Lavigne

Can you tell I grew up goth? I remember memorising the lyrics to this when I was in year 3.

The Archer // Taylor Swift

Definitely the best song to come out of Taylor Swift’s latest album so far! I love the juxtaposition in the lyrics. I also wrote a whole post assigning her songs to Shakespeare Plays, if you’re interested in that sort of thing!

goodnight n go // Ariana Grande

I… don’t have much to say about this? It’s one of three songs I actually like off Sweetener. 

A Brand New Day // BTS&Zara Larsson

Everytime the first notes of this song play I get immediately hyped. I love the instruments used in this song, and I think the voices and sounds of the different collaborators in this (V and J-Hope, and Zara) all compliment each other really well.

Nightmare // Halsey

I Smile // DAY6

DAY6 were sold to me as a Korean rock group and I immediately jumped on that. I really love their album Sunrise.

Doom Days // Bastille

Someone You Loved // Lewis Capaldi

This has some iffy messages, especially concerning the idea of your partner– or a sole person– as a sort of therapist instead of pursuing other avenues (i.e. actual, paid-for therapy) to help you begin to tackle emotional issues. I do love Lewis Capaldi’s voice, though, and I think there are more ways to look at the song than just that. Remember kids: it’s okay to ask for help from loved ones and there should be a quid pro quo of support, but if your emotional issues are that bad, please seek professional help!

Kataomoi // Aimer

Baby Don’t Stop // NCT U

After how much time I’ve spent crafting paragraphs about music I love and trying to remain somewhat intelligent, I’m breaking that here: this song is just sexy. That’s the whole reason I love it. I’m sorry.

Ça Ira // Joyce Jonathan

This is a really fun song, it kind of reminds me of Sara Bareilles, only French. The fact that the music video is staged as her going on blind dates with people of all genders  is also really adorable and not something I see a lot of in music videos!

FAVOURITE MUSIC VIDEOS

Spring Day // BTS

I spend most of my time attempting to deconstruct every music video BTS have ever come out with, but Spring Day is almost the be-all-end-all for me. There’s so many layers to this music video, from the philosophical references– The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin is a direct inspiration for the music video– to its context within the general BTS ‘Universe’ they’ve created with their music videos. I know this isn’t considered a direct part of the BTSU, but it is to me, and I love it. I really love the music video for Lights as well!

Nightmare // Halsey

This is a fact not many people know about, but I desperately wanted to both be in a rock/heavy metal band when I was younger, and also date someone in a heavy metal band. So all of those black and white sequences of Halsey as the frontwoman for a rock band are honestly my favourite thing ever. I love the messages of this song; I know people are divisive over their opinion on Halsey, but I’ve always loved her honesty, so I really love this song.

Kataomoi // Aimer

It’s a very quiet music video and I love that! People can do a lot with smaller budgets and minimal people partaking, I think this music video is beautiful. My best friend actually recommended this song to me with the assurance that Namjoon from BTS talked about it before.

Winter Bear // V

Speaking of quiet music videos: THIS. It’s soft and mostly uses shots and clips V got himself walking around and touring, including a few Jimin got for him. I’m very much on both ends of the spectrum concerning music videos: I love so many large-budgets videos, but I also love ones that are minimalist and filmed on smaller budgets (if you don’t count the cost of what Taehyung is wearing, obviously).

What have you listened to this Summer? I’d love some music video recommendations especially, I think it’s amazing how carefully people can form stories and messages without ever using speech, especially when the imagery isn’t overt and you can do research into shots used to understand what it could mean.

Thank you for reading!

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Music I Enjoyed This Summer This is part of my Music Monday series on my blog, where I talk all things music, from recommending songs to discussing my favourite music videos to compiling playlists based on prompts.