#i have stage 5 mental illness from this episode

[sophsun1]

Interview With The Vampire – 1.01 | 2.03

[disappearinginq]

I’m so excited you like Steve Crain too! He’s been a favorite character of mine for years at this point, and doesn’t deserve the hate he gets.

It bothers me when people don’t recognize the responsibility that weighs on characters. They essentially lost both of their parents at the same time, and you know Steve had to be the one to step up.

This isn’t just applicable to Haunting of Hill House, of course. But I’ve noticed that fans vilify the characters that aren’t victimized as obviously / aren’t the main character.

Anyways, just wanted to share with a fellow Steve-enjoyed lol

New Bestie - same. I got into a very heated discussion about how if the Crain siblings are supposed to represent the 5 stages of grief, the fandom has Steve and Shirley switched around, because everyone says that Steve is Denial and Shirley is Bargaining.

Meanwhile, in the show, Steve spends his adult life going around not necessarily trying to debunk ghosts, but hoping that maybe this time, it will be ghosts, because then maybe his family will just be a different kind of crazy. He says his mom and his sister are sick, and they needed help. He reminds me more of Fox Mulder - the "I want to believe" vibe. But he also is in the unique position of seeing ghosts and not knowing about it. All of his ghosts are people with jobs, moving around the house like normal people. Everyone hears the dogs at night, not just him. He doesn't hear banging on the walls, he doesn't see creepy zombies in the basement, he doesn't have his future self freaking the hell out of him his entire life. He sees his mom - and as far as he's concerned (because this is a horror show, not supernatural, the world he occupies is the one we're in - no vampires and ghosts, etc, and that is Understood) it's just the mental illness that has gone through his whole family finally catching up with him. Anyone in this world who has a family member swear they're being stalked by a faceless ghost while they're high on drugs is going to come to same conclusion Steve does, which is that they're nuts. BUT - he looks for any signs that he is wrong. And I'm still mad that they cut out part of the first episode that has Steve refusing to write about his family anymore, no matter the price, while driving by an accident where he sees multiple people standing around, but when he turns away and the camera is the only one on the accident, you only see the firefighters/first responders.

Meanwhile, Shirley is 100% in denial about everything, including what her own ghosts were. In her House Nightmare at the end, she even denies what actually happened - in her version, she doesn't have an affair. The House actually calls her out on "But that's not what happened, is it?" When Steve is doing CPR on his dying brother, Shirley's first words are "This isn't real". She denies Luke from going to Nell's wedding. She denies that their mother had anything wrong with her, she's in denial that she's running her own business into the ground, she's in denial about the death of the kittens, she's in denial about ghosts too - even though she has much more explicit contact with them with the knocking, and with a witness both times (Theo). She's in denial about the night that they had to flee Hill House. Like if she says it often enough, then it will be true that her family is fine and nothing is wrong.

Sorry. Long rant. But I love this character and this show so much and no one ever wants to talk about it (except @amandagaelic, and she has listened to me for literally hours at this point). One of these days, I will actually finish the Haunting of Hill House fic I have, and it will be posted.

We might all be dead from old age, or so senile we don't even remember the source material, but I'll stipulate in my will that it has to be posted. :-D

AND YES - people have a weird habit of like...picking one character to defend and that's the end of it. No one else can do any right and that character can do no wrong. I see it in Yellowstone fandom a lot. Or in Marvel (the Steve/Tony argument made me leave it altogether). I don't know if it's because fandoms are now predominantly younger, louder/more obnoxious from the safety net of internet anonymity or what, but Seeing Things from Someone Else's Point of View seems to be a lost art in both media and reality.

[lullabyes22-blog]

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 17 - Grounded

Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

Playlist on Youtube

Fanart, Meta, Snippets

Chapters: 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |8 | 9 | 10 |11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54

CH 17: Silco and Jinx. A pitch-black comedy with a pinch of magic.

HEAVY TW: Suicidal ideation, discussions of suicide, attempted suicide.

Secondary tw: violence, disturbing adult behavior among adolescents, depictions of mental illness.

cw for drug use, jumpscares, and the aftermath of war.

If I've missed any tw's, please drop me a PM!

I love and I hate it at the same time you and I drank poison from the same vine ~ "Daylight" – David Kushner

The young bootblack trudges home.

His workbag is slung over his small shoulder. His bones ache in the mizzle hanging like translucent curtains over the cobblestones. It's been a long day. Hellishly long. The explosion in the lower-zones is over. But fear hangs in the air like a persistent chill.

Like after the war.

It wasn't so bad after the first few months. They started tearing down and rebuilding the broken bits in the city, like a stage set from one of those street plays. The web of merchant alleys in the Sumps were pitched with colorful tents, strands of lanterns and chaotic booths. Shops started opening in the Promenade, their doors releasing the aroma of fresh-baked scones and candied carvernfruit. Entresol ran thick with somber suited-up men and women filing in and out of skyscrapers—what his grandpa calls The infernal machines of bureaucracy.

The boy takes it to mean literal machines. All steam and gears and pulleys, powering the city. He doesn't mind it. There were people out on the streets again. Hundreds of shoes stomping through the sludge across the pavements. Dirty shoes mean coins.

By the month's end, he'll have less chances to make coins. There is talk of public schools, and compulsory education for urchins under fifteen. He dislikes the idea of school. Grandpa has promised him there'll be new games to play. But playing outside is better.

Not tonight.

All the streets are emptied. Folks are only allowed to get food from the grocer's, and return home. The street-corners are full of whispers. Firelights—Jinx—The Eye of Zaun. The boy isn't sure what any of it means, except that the city has fallen dark again. Blackguards patrol in chem-suits, carrying guns.

They aren't here to play. Their guns aren't toys.

Under the flickering halo of a street lantern, the boy stops to roll a cigarette. Grandpa warned him not to tarry. Trouble's a-brewing, he'd said. Finish yer work, then sling yer hook.

But it's good to be out, if only for a few minutes.

The boy licks the edge of the paper, and takes a slow breath of the sticky April night.

"Diesel strain, hm? You're having yourself a time."

The man looming from the fog is tall. Taller than Grandpa. His face is like Grandpa's too: all wrinkles and scars. But only on one side, hidden under unruly twists of dark hair. He wears a long coat, the hem clouded with dust, like the tips of his boots, which have metal winking on the toes.

His smile is a sharp thing. But his one blue eye lingers gently on the boy, as if he might be thinking of some other child from long ago.

The stare is unsettling. The boy thinks of a fly caught in a spider's web. He likes spiders. He keeps a big fat one—Billy-O—in a shoebox under his and Grandpa's bed, and feeds it dead bugs.

This is different. This isn't a spider—but something spookier—unfolding out of the dark and blocking his path.

Hastily, the boy tucks the unlit cigarette behind his ear. "I'll be off, sir."

"Do. It's dangerous at this hour."

There is no sinister game of hopscotch. The man sidesteps smoothly, letting the boy go. Close-up, the boy glimpses the man's other eye from behind the veil of hair. It shines with an otherworldly glow: ember and shadow. The boy's heart plummets. He takes off like a shot. Giddiness is a thin cover for undiluted terror.

Death darkening the door—as Grandpa says.

Daring a glance over his shoulder, the boy looks for the strange man.

The streets are empty.

The streets are empty, but Silco is at home.

He's always at home, no matter what part of Zaun he's in. The city's spirit throbs in his bloodstream. Outrunning it is like trying to outrun his own skin. Still—it's been a long time since he's gone from the zenith to ground-zero. He has a view of the cityscape's glittering tapestry through his office window. But it's different from being in the thick of it.

Right in Zaun's bazaar of the bizarre.

Slipping out of his headquarters was easy, even with the doubled guards, and tripled surveillance. When Silco first had the building renovated, he'd ordered it designed the way illusionists build the trappings of their stage. There was the façade: an Art Noveau showcase of steel-framed glass. Then there was the inner sanctum: a warren of trap-doors and tunnels.

His network was privy to the barest blueprint. Silco kept a skeleton crew on permanent shift, guarding each escape hatch. The rest of the labyrinth was his own to traverse: his memory the skeleton key. For a man whose trade is trickery, home was an architecture of vice. Sliding panels to practice eavesdropping. Escape-chutes to deploy ambushes. Every brick a conspiracy and every bolt a ruse.

Silco's fondest wish was that he'd one day give Jinx the tour. Show her that the artistry of the lie was just as essential as the mechanics of the crime. Power could be neither bought nor sold. It was the system of pulleys that gave the machinery the impetus to keep spinning.

Tonight the machinery has seized up. The gears have stalled. A suite full of dead bodies and deadheaded braids—and he was powerless.

He must make things right.

The hatch from the Chancellor's penthouse suite disgorged Silco to the subterranean endpoint at the bottom floor. From there, a twisting shaft that led out beneath the roadways. The stairwell echoed hollowly under his boots. Overhead steel rumbled and dust trickled. The darkness exhaled like a pair of lungs. The space Silco emerged into was an unfinished service passage at Entresol central district—grease-slicked cinderblocks and rough-hewn floors. He'd made a show of hiring the most talented stonemason in his network. But it was an entirely different breed of workmen who built this passageway.

He kept it as they'd left it. No torch or chem-light.

The path to freedom was as black as coal.

The passage terminated in a vault door. Silco worked the combination: 1-0-1-0.

Jinx's birthday.

The night air was hot and sludge-thick. Silco stepped into an ambit of light cast by a gooseneck streelamp. Mizzle fell, droplets alighting on his hair and shoulders. Old piss-stains rose wick-like up the walls like flames. The old alleyway reeked of rot. Silco knew the odor well—the same smell from when he was a boy, trailing after Vander to chase vermin for the ratcatchers.

He took it in stride. It was the reek of life.

A few louts anointed with booze were scattered on the cobblestones. At Silco's footfalls, they staggered to their feet. They didn't look like vagrants. More like scavengers—eyes sharp in skeletal faces—wearing vagrant's clothes.

"Arright, mate?"

Silco nodded.

"Had yer fill of the lights, eh?" One man clapped Silco's shoulder. "Lost yer way?"

"Close enough."

"Don't we know it!" A chorus of laughter. "Let's get you home, eh? We'll help you find the right track."

From inside his coat, the man withdrew a flask. There was an unmistakable whiff: tequila, sea-salt, slime. The sum total of every despair-inducing organism in this city.

That, and a shot of kerosene.

The man grinned—false bonhomie hiding bottomless malice.

"One sip," he said. "It'll make your night."

His companions circled closer. Their laughter ebbed. Their violence pooled in Silco's mouth. Heavy, salty, electric.

A taste he'd missed like his basest self.

Silco's eyes drifted up to the man. His lip curled, exposing serrated teeth.

"Don't I know it," he said.

In a blur, he smashed the flask into the man's jaw. The crack was as wet as the night.

His victim reeled, blood frothing from his mouth. He dropped in a heap. His companions froze in their tracks. The exchange had taken less than five seconds. Less time than it would've taken them to stick a pocketknife into Silco's gut.

It was a favorite tactic of water-rats—muggers. After dark, they preyed on suckers in the blind spots. Once upon a time, they'd been fine sport for Silco to practice his own knifework on.

Now it felt like picking bones off a plate.

In the aftermath, Silco stood, arms loose at his sides. His bad eye glowed red in the refracted lamplight.

"Off," he said. "Else I'll use you for kindling."

The remaining water-rats scattered.

Silco poured the swill from their flask into a dumpster. The fluid soaked the scraps of paper and discarded empties. He struck a matchstick, and let it drop. The stuff ignited with a whoosh.

Let the blackguards chase a pyromaniac tonight. It would keep them off his back—and out of the way.

Flames nibbled at the periphery of darkness. The silky laughter of fire gathered into a roar. Silco strode off without a backward glance.

The thoroughfare was a haze of motorcars and smoke. Oil-slicked puddles showed distorted reflections of pedestrians hurrying home after the curfew. Most wore hats, filtration masks or scarves in case of a Gnasher. Only a few stragglers went barefaced.

Bad weather was a sneak-thief's best friend.

Silco tugged the collar of his coat high, donned his own mask, and melted into the crowd. At Bridgewaltz, no one stopped him. At Emberflit Alley, blackguards crisscrossed the district, but gave him an indifferent berth. At Drop Street, he blurred into the scenery.

A scarred raw-boned man is no rarity in the Undercity. Even with his disguise, most don't recognize Silco by sight. His face isn't well known. Only his voice—and designation.

The Eye.

Chin low, shoulders high, Silco allows his features to slip now into a mask of flat-eyed vacancy. His body surrenders to the flow of the passing crowd. Small steps; slow movements.

Just a little fish in a big pool. Nothing to see.

Beyond the neon ripples of Entresol, the Sumps are chokingly quiet. Streets are scudded with low-lying smog. In the glow of a lantern, Silco takes his bearings. He is in the southern quadrant—a long way from the Oshra Va'Zaun tunnels. He has a half-night's worth of ground to cover before the network is alerted to his disappearance. There will be sentinels at every shortcut; guards in every bolthole.

Fortunately, Silco's sonar is guided by a different map.

Janna performs an act of gracious negligence by camouflaging his silhouette down the rooftops. He slithers without sound from parapet to plinth. Vaults the gaps between signposts like a phantom. The wind whips his hair in his eyes; cold, sharp, bracing. Silco welcomes the sting. He'd been naturally fluid once. But now he lacks the lightness of his younger days. Worse, his bad eye has skewed his depth perception. Momentum bleeds into vertigo. His arms and legs feel cooked. More than once, he has to recalibrate the distance between two points—lest he take a fatal tumble.

Age makes fools of everyone.

And yet the southbound journey holds a bittersweet catharsis. All the time overhead has dulled his sense of scale. His world has become a machine with a single gear: the endless grind. No rest, no respite. Just a mind fine-tuned to run and keep running.

Roof-runs are different. There is an art to keeping one's balance. It requires a sure step; a steady head.

An eye on the horizon.

Silco remembers the horizon of six years ago. Himself and Jinx, hand-in-hand—racing down this very stretch of rooftops. He remembers how they'd kept seamless pace with each other, her small hand folded through his. His shadow; his comet-tail. They'd race together across the crazy jumble of rooftops: teetering like tightrope walkers across the asymmetrical shingles, darting like moths around the gaseous radiance enrobing the gables, skittering like spiders down the storm pipes. He remembers squeezing Jinx's hand whenever she'd make a particularly spry move. Her giggles were like a blue ribbon, unfurling out and out into the night.

In those moments, dizzied with bittersweet kinship, Silco counted himself the luckiest bastard in the city.

(And I squandered it.)

Six years. A long time to keep an eye to the horizon. An eternity, even for the sharpest man. Silco was ready to give his own lifetime up for the return on investment. But he'd neglected the simplest fact of all: Jinx was never meant to be an investment. He'd done the damage, and reaped the rewards. Left her an orphan; made her a killer. And he'd known the cost, hadn't he? The rot creeping in the cracks. The reaper's silhouette darkening the door. He could outwit a dozen devils. But no conman can escape the consequences of his cut. No smooth-talker can talk his way out of the truth.

Nobody can ride the tide of denial forever.

(Forgive me, Jinx.)

Silco sinks deeper into Oshra Va' Zaun's bowels. Down the fire-escape of a shuttered station. Past the chrome glaze of a rusted turbine. His reflection travels the panes of cobwebbed metal like a shark under ripplets of water. His boots hit the dirt with no sound.

Leaning forward, palms on knees, Silco catches his breath. His brain pulses on adrenaline. The surge is familiar: a sparking song of nerves.

Call and response.

(Are you here, my lovely?)

The explosion site is cordoned off. Blackguards scuttle in the shadows like roaches. But Silco knows a dozen tortuous passages from his mining heyday. Jinx was fond of using them for games of hide-and-seek—with Firelights as her quarries. The tunnels were littered with their bones.

Now they are vaporized. Like everything else.

The perimeter of Jinx's hideout is a scorched crater. The catwalks are incinerated into charred rubble. The turbines are reduced to misshapen exoskeletons. The air reeks of a doused firepit. The leftover heat from the blast still radiates off the caverns. Now and then, pebbles skitter, presaging a more sinister collapse.

A similar sensation creeps through Silco.

Not dread.

Grief.

This hideout was his first gift to her. His acknowledgement of her specialness. Her acknowledgement of him as a father. By blowing it up, was she excising their bond? Or did it signify something deeper? Like Jinx spiriting off with Hex-gem. Like Silco setting foot in Zaun's depths. A return to the base elements—shadows and bilgewater for him, magic and gunpowder for her.

Mostly, he wonders if it's a trap. If Jinx is luring him out to deal the death-blow.

He's ready to chance it.

He creeps through the ruined hideout. Most exits are blocked off. Some lead to cul-de-sacs choked with debris. Others void into antechambers of noxious trapped gases. Only one tunnel remains intact. Silco peers through. It is barely large enough to squeeze through. The dimensions are pure darkness, thick and unending.

Silco steps back, taking a breath. A faint prickle of something ripples around the aperture, like the leftovers of a fireworks display. Blue motes glitter at the edges off his sightline.

The aftermath of a blast from the Hex-gem.

He doesn't hesitate. When it comes to Jinx, concern outweighs caution. Switching on his chem-light, Silco crawls into the tunnel. The inside is slimed with dampness and pitted with holes; some coin-sized, others the wide as hubcaps. Their interior yields a grainy dimness, giving no sense of depth.

Silco crawls on, alert for sounds. All he hears is a hollow whispering. Where it could be coming from—?

A spiky shimmer darts through the air. Silco squints. It is a dragonfly. At least it resembles one. But its carapace is glossier. It gives off a maddening whine, zipping by Silco's ear. He slaps it against the tunnel wall. The little bastard crumples like tinfoil.

A raspy croon floats in:

"Peek-a-boo."

A pair of hands flash out of the hole closest to him. They snatch his leg with astonishing strength. Silco makes a sharp involuntary sound. His chem-light skitters from his hands. The last thing he glimpses is a ghost-white face surfacing out of the darkness. A pair of eyes glow pink as cherry-bombs.

Jinx.

"Shoulda known it wouldn't be easy."

"What—?"

Then she yanks and Silco plunges into space.

He feels himself falling: a giddy weightlessness. It lasts no more than an eyeblink. He hits not ground but water, its icy shock sucking the breath from his lungs. He thrashes, disoriented. A little hand seizes his wrist. Then he is swept away—not by an undercurrent but Jinx's unyielding ferocity.

Out into an unknowable darkness.

Silco has grounded Jinx once—and only once.

It was also the only time he'd nearly struck her.

Jinx was thirteen. Her first teenage autumn; a milestone. Zaun had a rite of passage for each. Nothing like Piltover, where bored adolescents celebrated the trappings of maturity by sneaking off to indulge in vices like alcohol, sex or drugs.

Most sumpsnipes were already acclimated with such unsavoriness.

And worse.

In the Fissures, each coming-of-age was marked by something else. A test of courage. At seven, sumpsnipes came together in packs and leapt across the jagged firmament of rooftops, every iron spire and rusted stairwell beckoning with a broken neck. At ten, they swarmed any Topside automobile left carelessly parked in the alleyside, stripping it down to the bone with homemade chisels and gemmies. By sixteen, most had joined gangs, each with their own bloodthirsty initiations: maraudings, maimings, murders. By the Big Nineteenth, if they'd not already slugged a shot of gutrot hooch, cut a chem-baron's purse, ridden the Rising Howl, and cased a Topside joint for a smash-and-grab, they hadn't truly achieved their majority.

Thus, by the Big Nineteenth, the majority of sumpsnipes were dead.

The thirteenth-year marked the turning point. For those who survived it, childhood was done.

Jinx's childhood was already dead and buried.

At the edge of Zaun's outskirts, equidistant between Factorywood and the Sumps, sat a massive turbine, grimed with decades of filth. Large as a crater, with rotor blades the size of boats. It was part of a defunct structure known as the Treatment Stump, that once purified the foul-smelling run-off from Factorywood's smelteries. The whole complex was as primitively derelict as the rest of Zaun's infrastructure.

A monument to rust.

A tributary forking away from the Pilt sat under the treatment plant, corrosive with waste effluents. Upriver, at the Promenade, it was a smooth blue vein. As it snaked lower, past Entresol's Canal Zone, it narrowed, a lurking serpent of foulness, twisting ever downward along the Sumps until it finally reached Factorywood. There, it pooled and collected in a toxic bog at the Treatment Stump, before spiraling lower into the caverns of Oshra Va'Zaun, and merging with the underground river that spat out into the Deadlands.

On their thirteenth Name Day, sumpsnipes anxiously gathered at the edges of the Treatment Stump's turbine, watching the blades whip around, feeling the foul backdraft on their skins. The speed seemed sluggish at first glimpse; only up close did it betray its dangerous velocity.

The sumpsnipes would hold their breaths, gather their courage—then leap fluidly onto the blades.

Done right, a sumpsnipe landed feet-first, and became one with the rotors' rhythm. Jumping from one blade to the next, a spray-can in hand, they'd emblazon its surface with gang insignias, a multicolored impasto to mark the passage of generations. If miscalculated, the sumpsnipe fell through the gap between the rotors—and straight into the churning spume.

A handful of boys and girls did fall. Some drowned. Others were crippled for life.

When Vander was a boy, he'd made the leap successfully. So had Silco.

The trick was to center your focus not on the rotors but their rhythm. To learn it, without letting yourself become hypnotized by its inexorable whirr. You must not fall into the vortex; you must ride it. Once your feet hit the blades, you were safe, in the eye of ordered chaos. The rest was a joyride.

Nothing in Jinx's life was a joyride.

She'd leapt under Silco's watch. Not a milestone but an initiation. The first jump—and the first kill.

A chem-punk was fastened to the rotor. A snitch. He'd been caught slipping intel on Silco's Shimmer strongholds to the Slickjaws. During the last raid, Silco had lost twelve men. Six were taken captive and tortured to death. One was a girl, only fourteen. The Slickjaws had sown her mouth shut, taken her eyes, and left the rest of her splayed in a butchered wreckage outside the Drop.

Jinx had found her corpse.

Afterward, she'd made it her mission to smoke the snitch out. Her methodical approach was no different from Silco's. She'd used stealth instead of subterfuge, but otherwise she'd followed the same strategy. She'd infiltrated one of the Slickjaws' hideouts. She'd tracked their visitors. She'd watched for patterns. Then she'd followed them deep, and cornered the snitch—a Blind Man's bluff turned dead-man's-hand.

Silco had received him hogtied like a prize. TRAITOR was branded on his forehead with blood-red ink.

Jinx had tiptoed coyly up to Silco. "Do I get a reward?"

Silco had put a hand to her cheek. His touch wasn't tender so much as thoughtful. Eyes aglow, Jinx leaned into it. She was always like that: a black cat twining around him, mrrrowing for affection.

Silco had little patience for affection. Jinx was proving his sole exception.

"I'll do you one better, child."

"Huh?"

"You're a fast learner. But you're still not equal to the crew." He'd given her a solemn look. "You've been my little shadow. But shadows must shed their skin."

Jinx had giggled, but there was a brittle edge to it.

"What d'you mean?"

"You trapped the snitch. You captured him, alive and breathing. The Slickjaws will know you for an enemy. They will hunt you."

Jinx bit her lip. Old doubts clouded the clearness of her eyes.

"But...I-I'm not a fighter."

"You're not." He'd smoothed a hand through her hair. "You're better. You're a planner. There is no situation you cannot think your way out of. But sometimes, it takes more than guile to outmaneuver danger. Sometimes, it takes blood."

Jinx's breath wavered.

"It's time," Silco said. "You're ready for the first taste."

His eyes had passed from Jinx to the snitch. He lay on Silco's floor, bound hand and foot, mouth sealed with duct tape. At the intensifying burn of Silco's stare, he began to whimper.

"Let's make it a special one."

At his side, Jinx hadn't made a sound.

Now the snitch was spreadeagled to the turbine. A spit-soaked gag was wadded between his jaws. Bullseyes whorled across his scored skin. Silco's crew had taken their time on him, beating him and branding him. But they'd left him intact.

He was Jinx's quarry. Her treat.

Her kill.

"Two steps," Silco said. "Make the leap—and put a bullet in his brainpan."

The crew were present for the initiation: Sevika, Lock, Ran and Dustin. They'd joshed and jostled Jinx, but none dared push her toward the rotors. Not in Silco's presence. Sevika spoke matter-of-factly of how best to do it: time the rotor's sweeps and jump a split-second in advance. Don't look the target in the eye. Just take aim and squeeze the trigger. And if Jinx was too chickenshit, hey, she could put if off—put her acceptance into their world off—for another year.

A cruel goad. Jinx should've been too clever to fall for it.

Her defiant streak always outmatched her cleverness.

Glowering, she'd elbowed past the crew. Silco can still picture her. Perched like a cat at the edge of the railing, Puff-Puff in hand, the wan moonlight plating her pale skin. The backdraft from the turbine ruffled her bangs and stirred her braids. Goose pimples rose on her arms. The crew encircled her and began the traditional chant:

"Let 'er rip!"

"Let 'er rip!"

"Let 'er rip!"

The whole time they shouted, louder and louder, Jinx didn't take her eyes off the chem-punk. She took a breath, steadied her spine and bit her lower lip. Her body was static; her brain was the opposite, its fierce workings lighting sparks in her eyes.

At the last moment, she glanced up at Silco. The small nod he gave was rewarded with her smile at the highest wattage.

She leapt.

The crew fell silent. It was instinctual. Like watching a comet fall. One heartbeat Jinx was crouched on the railing. The next, she was perched crosslegged on the rotors.

One arm lifted, languorously. A pert middle finger aimed skyward.

The crew blinked. Then the cheers began. Sevika rolled her eyes, then grudgingly clapped along. Silco stayed just outside their half circle, his expression unreadable save for a small smile.

Inside his chest, pride stirred.

But this was half the test. The most critical was yet to come.

Jinx traipsed up to the chem-punk. He squirmed against his bindings, emitting high-pitched shrieks against the gag. Without any perceptible shift in expression, Jinx cocked Puff-Puff. Her eyes were blank as distant moons. They beheld her target the same way, as if he were a fragment of space-junk caught in her orbit.

Do it, Silco thought.

It was but one of the hundred steps to forging her into polished perfection. To peeling away the moony-eyed child to expose that tungsten chilliness that Silco knew was at her center. Power was a commodity in their world. By dint of its nature, supply was limited. All scarcity came with cost—be it a rival chem-boss putting a bullseye between your eyes, or a treacherous ally sticking a knife in your back, or greedy underlings seeking to steal your throne from under your feet.

They all wanted to own what you possessed.

They all took without paying the price.

Silco had taught Jinx the language of knives. He'd showed her the intimacy of violence, not just as a display of force but a measure of skill. Now she needed to master the final lesson. Anyone in the Undercity could wield a weapon. Anything in the Undercity could become a weapon. But at its core, a weapon was neither a toy for showy enjoyment nor a tool for sanctified self-defense. It was the purest and most absolute means of death.

He wasn't making Jinx a killer. He was teaching her the cost of survival.

About its winners—and losers.

Do it.

The chem-punk let off a choking sob and began to cry.

Jinx stared back. Her visage stayed empty. But Puff-Puff wavered in her grip.

The crew began muttering to themselves. Was this going to presage another meltdown? Ruthlessly competent as Jinx was with gadgetry, she had yet to learn that bloodwork was a different beast entirely. There was no room for error in the business of life and death.

Maybe, the crew whispered, she's not cut out for this business?

Maybe she was as they'd always suspected: a loose end.

Silco kept his peace. His focus was on Jinx. Every muscle in her body was tensed as if for rupture—or release. Her blue eyes, flat as mirrors, held a liquid sheen.

Tears were trickling down the chem-punk's cheeks.

Softly, Silco said, "Quick and clean."

Jinx's head jerked up.

"If you make a kill," Silco said, "do it right."

Jinx swallowed, once. Nodded.

"Finish it."

All hesitation fled Jinx's features.

In a practiced one-two, she took aim—and fired. The bullet slammed into the chem-punk's forehead. Blood splattered. His breath hitched in his lungs. His feet drummed the rotors.

He subsided into stillness.

Jinx released a shuddering sigh. With a well-aimed kick, she sent the corpse tumbling over the rotor's edge.

Down into sucking blackness.

Meanwhile, within the whirling blur of the rotors, Jinx's body flowed like graceful script. Armed with a spray-can, she decorated the surface around the blood-splatter with her monkey motif, trippy slashes of green overlaying deep-red. Then, like a little girl in a game of hopscotch, she danced from one rotor to the next, before somersaulting up and over the railing to land amid the crew.

They cheered louder than ever. Jinx grinned like a child with a Name Day cake. For the first time, she felt like she belonged in their circle.

Then Dustin made the error of errors: "Guess the cannery made good practice, huh?"

In hindsight, Silco should have slit his throat. It would've saved him a night of trouble.

Silence crept in. Sevika glared as if, by means of some anatomical freak-accident, Dustin's arsehole had pinwheeled where his mouth should be. Ran's jaw swerved to grinding teeth. Lock's features resolidified to stone.

Jinx stared, her face frozen around its previous gleeful expression. Her eyes seemed to turn inside out, like something old and rusted was unhinging. A cold electricity flowed in. Memory. Pain. Hatred.

Dustin shrugged. "Just saying. Li'l Miss already has a mighty fine body-count. I bet once she hits the Big Nineteenth—owfuck!"

In a flash, Jinx's boot hit his kneecap. His bad kneecap; the one she'd cracked two years ago with a mallet. In the same blink, she unscrewed her body from gravity, and backflipped onto the railing. Her stare held a fierce emptiness. She eyed the whipping rotors, but seemed not to see them.

Silco edged closer. "Jinx—"

To this day, he's not sure what happened. Maybe a pall of shadow fell over the scenery. A trick of light. A shift of wind.

Whatever the case—Jinx vanished.

Her shape spilled off the railing, and disappeared into a gap between the rotors. Swallowed by a dark so pure it was like staring into everlasting night.

Or death.

The crew stared, their heads cocked at quizzical angles. Like the first time Jinx had jumped, they seemed not to comprehend what they were seeing. Below, the turbines roared. Above, the space was paradoxically quiet. Then Sevika said, "Fuck," and it was like a ghostly susurrus from the depths.

A call to arms.

Adrenaline sliced through Silco. He whipped forward. He would've vaulted the railing and taken the same trajectory as Jinx at suicidal speed.

Sevika's arm caught him around the waist.

"Silso—don't!"

"Let go!"

"She's gone."

Gone.

Like a lost toy.

Gone and Jinx didn't belong in the same sentence.

Rage tore through Silco's ribcage. His elbow jerked, catching Sevika in the gut. She grunted; he broke free. For the first time since his boyhood, he was gripped by a mad tangle of impulses. The hot rush of horror like a buried river, the high-pitched buzz of fury like vultures circling a carcass, the cold slither of ruthlessness like a sea serpent riding a storm's waves.

His eyes cut mercilessly into the crew. "Find her."

Sevika argued, "Sir, there's no way she'd survive that fall—"

"Find. Her."

The crew had no choice but to obey.

The entire night, a search party combed the path running parallel to the tributary. Lackeys sprinted through the darkness. Torches shone. Every so often voices called a chorus of nicknames—Ghostberry? Bossgirl? Li'l Miss? The Pilt's soft lapping soaked up the cries.

Silco and Sevika covered the southern bend, where the spume churned through the turbine's filters and spat the waste into the soil itself. Nothing but sedge and sludge for miles. At the horizon, a streak of green smog bisected the moon. To the north, the Bridge arced against the surreal cupola of the sky. Squares of light from the warehouses at Factorywood glowed.

Silco's boots splashed through puddles shimmering with toxic hues. The runoff from the dump sites boiled off the vista. If Jinx had washed up on these shores, there's no way she'd survive. She'd have quaffed up the poisons and choked to death. A vision slotted through his mind: Jinx floating facedown, braids drifting like blue snakes, blood pooling from her open mouth.

Dead minutes after her first kill.

Lost our girl already? said a voice inside Silco's head—a gravely voice that he'd stopped hearing since he'd stabbed Vander.

Teeth gritted, Silco blocked it off.

Jinx wasn't dead. He knew it in his bones. Like him, the child was maddeningly unkillable. It would take more than a rusted turbine to cut her down to size. But her being lost was tenfold worse. She could be anywhere. Trapped in a factory cesspit. Despoiled by toxic spume. Strangling in stray wires.

He ordered Sevika to search the eastside. Silco took the west. His eyes kept a careful scan; his body moved in a deliberate rhythm, limbs loosening the way they always did when he was near water. Yet inside, something raked him like a broken spur.

It wasn't fear. He'd tasted that many times before. Mastered it and made it his own. This was different: edgeless and yet ordinary. Part of it was a generalized concern: Jinx was his brightest asset. He was responsible for her safety. The other part was irrationally specific.

Jinx was more than his asset. She was his.

His.

Silco's feet flashed through the bristling trash, navigating between coils of rusted metal and shards of bottles that scattered the river bed. He left the subdivisions and dumpsites behind. The darkened water of the streambeds gave way to something purer and yet dense with minerals. Instinctively, he was cutting a path parallel to the Oshra Va' Zaun caverns.

Down to the Deadlands.

They were a stretch of wasteland between the ore-mines and Zaun proper—a raw patch without a blade of grass or a speck of steel. The vista was hellish desolation: dead trees fossilized into gnarled silhouettes; sludgy pools choked with carcasses; a soil of chalky ash suited to funeral pyres. The name itself—Deadland—had its origin in the toxic gas pockets that leaked from the caverns.

The place was a death-trap, all the more lethal for its isolation.

Once, the Deadlands were home to the castaways of Oshra Va'Zaun. After the early settlers came, it became a squalid pit of cannibalism. Bones buried under blackened cairns; desiccated corpses nailed to posts like scarecrows. Here and there, rock formations loomed: less mountains than obelisks, thrusting up from the scorched earth as if some titanic spirit had roused itself from the mire.

The obelisks were carved with runes beneath layers of dust. Curses, lamentations, blessings—nobody could decide.

In Silco's boyhood, the Deadlands were forsaken except by wagons en route to the mines. On the outskirts, a string of bunkhouses were erected: less abodes than makeshift shacks. A network of tram lines crisscrossed the terrain. Others, collapsed beneath the weight of rock-falls, were ghost-tracks tracing live veins of riverwater—still pumping, and miraculously pure.

When Silco was younger, he and Vander would follow the route on hot summer days. They'd find the deepest, bluest pools to wash the grime off their skins. For Vander, it was an adventure. Silco simply wanted to be in the water. The streams soothed him like nothing else could.

By late noon, the skies would open into downpour. Silco and Vander would take refuge in the caves. They'd carve out shells of dried cavernfruit, and use them as bowls for rainwater. Other times they'd catch fish, and smoke them over a small fire. Afterwards, bellies full, they'd drowse side-by-side. The rainfall would blend with the rise-and-fall of Vander's breaths.

Back then, the Deadlands were Silco's favorite place. He loved how the wind whistled across the wastes. He loved its wildness and eeriness. He loved how, when the clouds broke and the sun shone, everything gleamed as if it coated in diamond dust.

At night, he and Vander counted the stars from the peaks of obelisks. Nestled together, they'd talk of tomorrow, until sleep came.

Now, the Deadlands were no better than burial grounds. A place where even the desperate gave up their last-ditch hopes. Bodies lay piled behind the rocks; bones rattled in the winds. The tram lines were skeletal husks, sunken deep in the soil. The bunkhouses were an expanse of collapsing sticks.

Only the obelisks stood whole—stretching up to break the sky's pall.

Unerringly, Silco's boots found the old path. If he kept going further downstream, he'd rediscover the old railway trestle where he and Vander used to jump off for a swim.

Silco's mind wasn't on swimming.

"Jinx? Jinx?"

A pressure gathered behind his ribcage. He was breathing raggedly, but it had nothing to do with exertion. How, he wondered, was he going to liberate the Undercity—birth Zaun into being—when he couldn't even safeguard a damn girl? Especially this girl, who'd proven such a godsend, a bona fide miracle. Who'd restored color to the edges of his world, while the rest of him dangled over the void, empty-hearted.

What would he do without her?

Dread congealed. Until that moment, he'd not understood how dangerously far he'd fallen under the child's spell.

(Is that fatherhood?)

That's when he heard it. A soft snuffling. At first Silco mistook it for the wind. Then it took a familiar shape. Crying. Scrambling to a halt, Silco cocked his ear. The sound was coming from somewhere behind an overhang of jutting obelisks. Water rippled; moonlight caught the zipping shapes of river-dwelling fish along the shores, their scales distorted by pustules.

Silco followed the sound, until it separated itself from the ambience of barren nature. His boots slipped on wet stones. Catching his balance, he rounded the bend.

There was Jinx.

She sat on a large boulder, cross-legged and toying with her braids. Sniffling, she skipped flat stones across the shoreline, each one bouncing eight or nine times before it sank. Silco crept toward her on silent feet. Like the folklore of hunters who chance upon Celestials, he was half-convinced the little imp would vanish if he startled her.

Two steps. Four steps. Ten.

At the crunch of boots on silt, Jinx spun. By then, Silco had hemmed her in: his body on one side, the water glittering behind her. His voice was a coiled garotte.

"Where have you been, Jinx?"

She flinched. Tears shone on her pink-mottled cheeks. The rest of her was bone-dry.

"I-I crawled out through the vent," she mumbled.

"What vent?"

"The one under the turbine." She sawed a hand under her nose. "It's part of a conduit. Most of 'em crisscross under the old Oshra Va'Zaun caverns. Some go to the Sumps. Some go here."

"Do you know where 'here' is?"

She tossed her head, defiant. "Sure I do!" Then, in a Powderish fit of doubt. "Mostly."

"You got lost, didn't you?"

Lip bit, Jinx fiddled with her braids.

Silco felt the skin tightening at his temples. His palms twitched. He stuffed them into his pockets.

"Did it occur to you," he said, deceptively composed, "that I might wonder what happened?"

She tipped a shoulder. "I figured you'd just leave. Not like it's the first time I've lit out."

It was true.

Restless pest syndrome—Sevika called it. Now and then Jinx would catch a twitchy case of wanderlust, and take off wherever little jumping beans did: the caverns, the turrets, the scrapyards. In boyhood, Silco used to be the same. Sometimes, he still went to ground, as it were. Took a day off to reconnoiter in blessed solitude. It proved harder the higher he rose in the Undercity. His absences would rouse Sevika's territorial instincts. Like a dragon she'd sink in her teeth and not loosen her grip unless he gave her a metaphorical kick in pursuit of privacy.

Jinx was harder to shake off. She followed him everywhere. To narrow her margin of persuasive tactics (including and not limited to tying him to chairs), Silco planned his absences at the last minute, when there would be no room for negotiation.

Jinx would sulk. But in her way, she understood.

They were loners at heart; misfits who'd learnt to befriend their own isolation. Even after years of communal living, neither of them had quite gotten the hang of belonging to a pack.

This was different.

Silco edged closer, his temper climbing to red. "Child, you'd drive a saint to murder."

"Huh?"

"Do you know what kind of filth wanders the Deadlands? You're lucky I found you before someone else did."

"I wanted to be alone, okay?! That stupid Dustin. He—hey. Why're you lookin' at me like that?"

"I thought—"

"What? I was dead?" She let off a burbling laugh. But her eyes flickered nervously. "I was just—"

She cried out when Silco snatched her up, so sharply she couldn't evade. His arm moved in an instinctive arc—the surge of momentum vicious in its familiarity. He'd have slapped her head clean off her shoulders. Same way he'd done numberless lackeys who'd crossed him.

But at the last second, he felt her flinch. The tautness of her body. The rabbiting of her pulse.

Rage gave way to a different reflex. He shut his good eye, shut it tight and dragged her against him. As soon as her small body was in his embrace, his breath seized. His arms became a stranglehold.

"Owwww!"

"You're grounded."

"What—?!"

"Don't ever do that again!"

Nearly breaking his own maxim—We don't hit each other—and he wonders what would've happened if he'd carelessly struck her. The same way Vi had. The same way Vander had.

The capacity was in him. The desire. The rage.

Yet it was eclipsed by a disorienting enormity of terror. How could one child leave him so out of his depth? What did it mean, that she held in her hands the power to undo him so utterly?

(Is that fatherhood?)

Jinx shivered against him. Fear gave way to confusion. A stillborn swat was still a swat. After Vi, she was terrified of screwing up and reliving the same violence at someone else's hands. Except the violence boiled not because of her presence—but her absence. Jinx's mind couldn't reconcile the contradiction. He saw in in the frantic tangle of her emotions: her liquid eyes, her pinched little chin, her trembling lip. He felt it in the crazy thubbing of her heart: a cadence that matched his own.

For a moment, Silco couldn't speak. He just gathered her in closer, his face in her hair.

"Don't, Jinx."

"D-Don't—?"

"Don't disappear like that again."

Jinx craned her neck. The brightness in her eyes spilled from the corners to streak her cheeks. "Wh-why should it matter to you?"

"I—"

"You're n-not my dad. I'm not your kid. So why—"

"Why?!"

With a snarl, Silco swept her in again. But it was all right. She wasn't shrinking away. Her strong skinny arms were wrapping around his neck, and she was burrowing closer, their foreheads together, cold on hot, an inarticulate melding of relief.

It was a relief. Just a misunderstanding. His murderous little sprite was safe. By his side.

Right where she belonged.

(Is that fatherhood?)

(Is it?)

Everything hurts.

A spectrum of hurts. Silco's eyes open, and show him a brighter spectrum of moons—where in hell am I?—cycling around in a pinwheel before they resolve into one. A susurrating echo laps at his ears. He twists his head, trying to see where it is coming from. Tries to leap to his feet, but his body is immobile.

He is chained, padlocked and bolted.

Fuck.

The air holds a chill of mineral wetness. Silco shivers in his drenched clothes. Shafts of moonlight slip through a dappled scudding of clouds. With effort, he cranes his neck. He is sprawled on the spine of a steep ravine. The surrounding landscape is all grayscale: powdery grit, monolithic stone, scoured underbrush.

Like the inside of a skeleton's mouth.

The whispery echo persists. Cocking his ear, Silco recognizes it. The river Pilt. He is somewhere north of Oshra Va'Zaun's mines. They peel away into a cratered expanse of flatland and oxbows that run parallel to the river's shores. The verge where civilization gives way to wilderness.

The Deadlands.

Threads of moonlight hang in the air. He hears the reverberation of the river. Beyond that bleeds a profound silence. The silence particular to desolation: the creatures barely alive, the earth barely alive too.

The not-sound is terrible. Silco has become accustomed to the vibrant soundtrack of Zaun. He is surrounded by clamor all day long now. The drone of construction, the screech of traffic, the skirls of music. And while it can be maddening, it is life.

This is the opposite. The forsaken silence he'd once loved, and now loathes. Not even Vander's ghost is here to console him.

From the gloom: footsteps.

"Wakey, wakey, bats and bake-y."

Jinx looms over him. Her moonlike faces recoalesce from five to three to one. Relief is overpowering. She is alive. Silco's heart pounds in his chest; so wildly he thinks it might break through his chains.

"Jinx—where have you been?"

"Needed a change of scene."

"A change of—?" His scowl bridles. "What are you playing at? Every blackguard in the city is looking for you!"

"Oh. Them." She snorts. "Chasin' their tails. Bunch of morons."

In the half-shadow, her eyes are strangely sparkless. The contours of her face seem off. Silco squints. But she has already moved out of his line of sight.

He strains against the chains. His ankles are manacled together, arms tied behind his back, wrists at an uncomfortable twist. After Stillwater, he'd grown adept at slithering out of whatever restraints he'd been manhandled into. It was a simple matter of disjointing a thumb or dislocating a shoulder.

Except Jinx knows his history. The bindings are doubled and tripled. She's taking no chances.

Chances on what? Why is she out here?

"Jinx." He's in such turmoil he can barely string three words together. "You need to come home."

"Home?"

"Back to headquarters."

"Fat chance."

"What?"

She hovers back into view. Silco stares closely at her. She is a disheveled mess. Dressed in her street clothes, much-frayed and dirt-smeared, jacket around her body, boots at her feet. Her skin under its milk-and-freckles is flushed in ugly pink chameleon patterns. The old childhood mottle of distress. Her hair bursts in blue shards around her skull as if zapped by electricity.

Silco squints as if blinded. Then he remembers.

Gods.

Her hair. She'd butchered it.

Butchered the guards. Blasted her hideout to kingdom come. Now she's lured him out, with a prankster's whimsy that is pure premeditation. That's how Jinx operates. A method to the madness. She can seem deceptively ebullient for long stretches of time. Lull everyone in her periphery with a sense that all is well. Meanwhile the disconnect between inward and outward cracks into a molten chasm, so all her ghosts spiral out.

Catching fire—then exploding into catastrophe.

This is a catastrophe. A failure on Silco's part to spot the signs. Any chance of a goodbye kiss? Sweet Kindred, he'd been so stupid last morning. Why didn't he just cancel his meetings and stay with Jinx? Just tell his love and pride without wielding it like a blade up the sleeve? He knows he'd done that. He'd done it for years, done it again despite vowing to change, so no wonder—no wonder his poor girl—

"Jinx." He speaks with a quiet forcefulness. "We need to talk."

"Reaaaaally not in the mood."

"I know you're upset with me—"

"Upset?" The sulky softness of her face sharpens—a maniacal mask. She stays crouched close, her body giving off a peculiar hum like a tuning fork between strikes. "Why would I be upset, Daddy?"

"You tell me."

"You haven't figured it out? You're smarter'n that."

"Not about this." Silco folds without resistance. "Please, child—talk to me."

"I am talking to you." She glowers. "What's today?"

"It's—"

Bloody Sunday.

The whole city knows that. He can't puzzle any significance beyond that. It's not the Day of Ash—that's in September. It's not Jinx's Name Day—that passed in tandem with Progress Day. It's not the day they met—a date that also holds the dark privilege of being Vander's death anniversary

"I confess," he says. "I can think of nothing."

"Exactly!" Jinx snaps her fingers so rapidly sparks leap off them. "That's the first word that pops into my head when I wake up lately. Nothing. Well. Second word. The first is Fuckin.' Another day of doing fuckin' nothing!"

"I asked you to come along with me—"

"And do more fuckin' nothing? Pffff. I'd rather be a ghost. Ghosts can do whatever they want, right?"

"Is that why you blew your hide-out up?"

"No." A reflex of guilt twists her face. "I mistimed the explosives."

"What?"

"The explosion was gonna go off later. You'd be at HQ. You weren't supposed to be down here."

"You had this all planned?"

A nod.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Your hideout. Your braids. Your drawings." Silco drags a jittery breath. "Jinx, what are you doing?"

Jinx dips a finger into the hollow of his throat, where water collects. She dabs her wet fingertip down his scarred cheek like a tear. Her eyes glow dully; two doused embers.

She whispers, "Thought that was obvious."

"Far from."

"I'm saying goodbye."

Silco's mouth opens. No words come. A mineshaft collapses inside him, a thunder of dust and a blackness that tastes of fear, a cold edgeless fear like nothing he's ever known before. Not on the day Jinx vanished between the turbine rotors. Not on the night he'd found her at the Bridge, death a gasp away.

No.

No.

Silco's whole body is one throbbing heart. His struggles redouble against the chains

Jinx watches him with a strange subspecies of pity. Her hand cups his jaw. Their eyes meet. Silco's own are wild and blasted; hers are eerily calm. Leaning in, she touches their foreheads together. Old intimacy reduced to a sad mockery of leavetaking.

"Poor Silly," Jinx says. "I wasn't gonna do it this way."

"Jinx—please—"

"I was gonna break it to ya gently. After our twelve o' clock talk. I even wrote a script. See?"

From her pocket she digs out a scrap of paper flecked with paint, and unfolds it. Clearing her throat, she recites with mock-solemnity:

JINX: Dear Silco! Thanks for all the laughs and lessons and lunacy. I had fun being your Jinx. You showed her how to come into her own. And together, you showed Topside. You showed 'em all! But now it's time to skip the light-fantastic. There's no place for Jinx in Zaun. But there's a place for me in the After. Don't be sad. We'll see each other someday—when Ol' Hungry stops striking twelve!

SILCO: I understand, child. Good luck and fare thee well.

JINX: You were an okay Dad.

SILCO: And you were an A-Okay daughter.

JINX: I wish we'd met sooner. We had a lot in common—besides murdering our brothers and all. Our time together was too short. Ex-oh-ex-oh…

She falters, and bites her lip. Despite the cruel lampoon, her grief is palpable. "There's more. Mostly you lecturing me to dress warmly for the After. Then we hug and bid each other adieu." She smiles, but it has too many cracks. "You want that hug now?"

"Jinx." It's an effort to move his lips. "Untie me."

She shakes her head, a scolding side-to-side. "You can't have it back yet."

"Have what back?"

She reaches into her pocket and comes out with a glowing blue sphere. The Hex-gem. A single ray of moonlight pierces its interior to scatter in glittering fractals through the air. Jinx holds it overhead, turning it over between nimble fingers.

"On principle," she says, "I oughtta take it with me. Finders, keepers."

"Jinx—"

"It was my gift to you. But it talks to me."

"Jinx—I don't care about the gemstone. Just untie me. Please."

Her smile deepens. But there are layers of darkness in her eyes. "You're such a good liar."

"I'm not lying!"

"Pffft." Jinx mimes a hoop shot with the gem, then attempts to twirl it on one finger like a baseball. "The only reason you're even here is 'cause you thought I'd use Gemmy to blow up your precious Zaun."

"I'm here to take you home."

She makes a derisive sucking sound between her teeth. "Home? What's home where I'm not wanted?"

"I want you home!"

"Sure—but you don't need me! If you just want me around as salad dressing while you're playing First Chancellor—if you just want me in the background, then you don't really want me. You never did!"

It hits like a blow to the chest. "How can you say that?"

For the first time, emotion crackles in her eyes. She begins pacing, flinging the gemstone rapidly from hand to hand. "Because it's true! Every day since the war ended, you've told me over and over and over again that you don't need me—all without saying a word. Take it easy, Jinx. Don't rush, Jinx. No pressure, Jinx. The same thing you say to a sick doggy before you take it out back and shoot it!"

"Jinx, I never meant to—"

"The only thing I was trained for. The only dream I had. The only way to prove myself. That was all tied up with Zaun." There are tears now, bright and gelid, glossing the rims of her eyelids. "Now Zaun's real, and everybody's just, Thanks for your service, now fuck off. And do what? Retire? Go on hiatus? Take a vacation? What's left for Jinx?!"

Silco stares at her. His damp clothes are heavy as the chains folded around his body.

Not as heavy as the grief.

He knows the parameters of Jinx's insecurities as intimately as his own. His are enough to fill a room; hers are enough to crowd a castle. But that's different from seeing them up-close—a raw reality of carnage.

The suite splattered in blood. Her braids amputated. Her hideout jellied.

All things he could've prevented. He'd seen the patterns in their private life and yet refused to connect them. He'd isolated her for the sake of letting her rest (kept her on a short leash). He'd shaped a stable daily routine of cooking, conversation, cuddles (stabilized the surface while her inner-wounds festered). He'd given her a room with a locked door (when Jinx's ghosts are most attracted to things with locks.)

Worst of all, he'd waited for her to come to him. As a father, he should've sought her out first. It is his duty to check in with his child as often as with his crew. More—because Jinx is fragile. Jinx needs him. The onus of Jinx's welfare—tonight's utter shitshow—is all squarely on him.

Shame congeals. His words come choked.

"Jinx—forgive me. I never meant for things to go this far—"

"Yeah, sure. So sorry you're barely ever around. It's all just Zaun, Zaun, Zaun. You're behind the scenes. You're in the spotlight. Got a real sweet life going for yourself, don'tcha?"

He swallows hard. "Jinx, listen to me. This is important."

"Oh, piffle." She peers through the Hex-gem as if through a crystal ball. "Don't bother making excuses, Mr. I'm-too-busy-for-you. They won't work. So you might as well spare yourself the drama and let it happen. It shoulda happened a looooong time ago."

"Don't say that." He tries to meet her eyes, to force a connection. If not for the chains, he'd claw at her, sink his teeth into her. Anything to keep her. "The city needs you. Our people need you. Not just because you're the brightest mind we have—"

"—and look where that's got me, huh?"

Silco's fists tighten against the manacles. "But because you're our future. Without you, Topside has won. They've destroyed us before we've even rebuilt. Like they've destroyed everything before. But not you, Jinx. You're stronger than they are. Stronger than this. You still have your entire life waiting for you."

A sudden rage lights Jinx up from toes to the tips of her bristling hair. "A life—to do what? Join the blackguards? Attend soirees as First Daughter? Do scutwork as your private secretary? You say my whole life is waiting for me—but that's not my life. Nothing since Vi walked away from me has been my life!" Her mouth quivers; she crams her thumb into it. "She knows it too. That's why she didn't say goodbye. She left. Again."

It takes Silco so long to connect the words that Jinx could slap him twice before he finishes.

Again.

Fuck.

She knows Vi was here.

Their stares meet. Silco's calm fractures.

"How—" he rasps, "How did you—?"

"How'd I figure it out?" Jinx's smile is glitteringly sharp. "Oh, y'know. Bugs on the sill. Bats in the attic. Her name got whispered down plenty of secret corridors. Rumors passed from ear to ear until they reached mine. And mine are pretty sharp now, if I do say so myself." A shrug. "Also, the blackguard blabbed."

"The blackguard..."

"Yeah. One of 'em was really into my swimmy time." She twirls her mangled hair and pastes on a little girl smile. "Chatty fella. Especially after I promised not to shoot him... anyplace fatal."

Silco utters a frustrated sound. "That fool."

"Hey! No harshin' on the dead! At least—I'm guessing he's dead. I let him live. No way you'd do the same." Her smile fades. "He told me... Vi was at Entresol a few weeks ago. She'd brought a drone. She was spyin' for Topside—and that stupid Enforcer girl was working with her." She blinks blindishly. "She came. She saw. She left-right-left. And you knew." She jabs a finger at him. "Liar."

Silco tries a dozen glib excuses that run empty.

"Jinx," he says. "I kept it secret for a reason."

"Let me guess. To protect me?"

"Yes."

"From what? My feelings? How crazy I am?"

Rooted to the spot, he explodes, "From ending up dead on the Bridge! Or have you forgotten how she left you bleeding—or who found you and took you back?"

"Back to Singed's table?"

"Back with family." His shout escalates to match hers. "Real family. Not ones who get you killed and never look back. Yes—your sister was here. Yes—she was working with Topside. Yes—I didn't tell you. Because I could only deal with the biggest crisis—not the fallout!"

"Who—Vi?"

"You." His breaths come ragged. "One glimpse of her undoes all the progress you've made! Just a rumor and you're right back where you started. Worse—because now you're undoing even that." He jerks at his chains. "I won't allow it, Jinx. You've had your tantrum. You've swung the city upside-down and put me through my paces. Now it's time to come back where you belong."

Jinx's face smooths so suddenly into an impenetrable mask that she resembles a mannequin.

"I know where I belong," she says. "It's not with Vi. Or with you."

"Jinx—"

She darts beyond his sightlines. Silco struggles and rolls onto his side. A band of moonlight falls through the clouds. He is greeted by an unsettling sight. He is facing a sheer cliff; its blackness so total it swallows the night. Pebbles skitter down the incline. They drop into the pit, engulfed by silence.

A hand seizes the back of his collar. With dizzying strength, Jinx hauls him up. "Tsk, Silco. This ain't your goodbye."

"Jinx—listen—"

"Shh-shh." She hums, identical in cadence to how Silco would soothe her in childhood, whenever she'd whip herself up into a panicky froth. "It'll be over in a minute. Here's the gem, 'kay?" She slips it in his jacket pocket, as if restoring a toy to a squalling toddler. "I'll put the keys in your hand too. But you won't be able to get loose until after."

"After—?"

After she's offed herself.

Silco thrashes madly. But Jinx's strength overmasters his. Once upon a time, he'd hefted her into his arms as easily as a ragdoll. Now it's the opposite. He's helpless against a girl so tiny she belongs in a music-box. It would be funny—except the Shimer zinging in her veins is no joke.

One false move, and she'll carelessly crack him in two.

She drags him up the cliffside. Gently sets him down against a blunted edge of rock. Silco folds to his knees, rough gravel jabbing against his aching joints. Jinx slips a cold key into his cuffed hands, which flex clumsily around it. With a dozen padlocks around his body, she's reasoned that he won't be able to break loose fast enough.

Kingpins do not possess the talents of Houdini.

Jinx skips light-toed down the cliffside. Shadows pool around a collection of shapes huddled at the edge. Silco squints. For a few pulseless seconds, he can't comprehend what he's seeing. Either it is a negative space that the protective part of his brain has erased from his sight. Or he sees it, and is too paralyzed with cowardice to recognize it.

Jinx hadn't blown up everything in her hideout.

A handful of mementos remain.

All of them are from her drawings. The two grotesque mannequins she'd repurposed into replicas of her dead 'brothers.' Between them are Vander's gauntlets, mottled with rust. The squalid lump of a stuffed bunny is perched between them. The rest is a bric-a-brac of grisly nostalgia. Old toys splattered in blood. Finger-paintings of dead Firelights. Doodled-on bombshells—Whisker, Buttons, Punch.

Everything is piled into an old red wheelbarrow. It is retrofitted with a small motor and heavy-duty tires. The tray is splattered with acid-green graffiti—XOXO.

All of Jinx's history—all of her heartbreaks—ready to tip over the edge.

Like her.

"Jinx, don't do this!"

Shaking her head, looking everywhere but at him, Jinx climbs into the wheelbarrow. Six-dozen sticks of TNT are corded together in a tight bundle. A cheap plastic egg timer—from Silco's own goddamned kitchen—is wired to the fuses and strapped to the dynamite with swathes of duct tape.

Jinx twists the knob with precise turns of her wrist.

"Five minutes," she says.

"What—?"

"You get five minutes to skeddadle."

Five minutes until the wheelbarrow rockets off the cliffside.

Five minutes until Jinx is blown to smithereens.

Five minutes until Silco's universe folds into flames.

No.

Terror seizes him, a bone-deep electricity that sets every nerve center on fire. Earlier, he'd not allowed himself to panic. But it was instinctual self-preservation. The same backlash as against prodding a seeping wound. Now he can feel it engulfing him, a full-bodied convulsion. The surface of his face refuses to harden; his emotions are a wretched nakedness.

It is like the night Vander attacked him at the Pilt. The night the Temple of Janna was bombarded by shelling. The night he'd found Jinx blood-smeared at the Bridge.

He screams: "Stop!"

The unhinged sound rips through the night. Jinx's head swivels. Her eyes are no longer glowing pink. The pupils are dilated, a blackness so absolute it encompasses each iris. It turns her stare into a horrid pit, a hungering for someone to swallow.

Or save her.

That's why she'd orchestrated tonight's nightmarish tableau. Her drawings to presage her plans. Her braids to exorcise the past. Her gun to bid farewell. That's why she'd made him run this macabre gauntlet: two truths and a lie, their old game taken to grotesque extremes. The key is in his hands; her life hangs in the balance.

Tonight is his last chance. The narrowest rescue. A toss of the coin.

And she has put the onus on him.

Him—not Vi, or everyone else who'd ever failed her.

She wants him to prove he is different. She wants to punish him for falling short in every possible way. She wants to show him how much pain he's caused her. How horrendously he's used her for his own end, while failing to see the same end reflected back at him tenfold. The same end that shaped her out of a child and into his shadow, his anima, his apotheosis, so now she can't find a way to unmake herself, except by this.

This.

"Stop! Just—stop!" Silco jerks against the chains. "This isn't the way out!"

Jinx hums in lusterless singsong. "Got a few explode-y buddies that say otherwise."

"Your friends are wrong! So are you! After doesn't square debts or rewrite regrets. After is just that. After."

Jinx stares at him.

"How dare you do this, Jinx? How dare you buy a fool's lie?" A sudden rage boils like acid. "Ending your life won't undo anything! Broken things can't be unbroken. What you left behind will remain—only it will be unfinished because you didn't see it through!"

He watches her face change, the fluid trick of moonlight that makes her eyes spark from despairing holes to fire opals. Her jaw hardens and her mouth folds down. With jerky movements, she climbs out of the wheelbarrow and stalks toward him. "Easy for you to say! You've got something to stay behind for. Zaun's your big dream. Your unfinished story. Now you can write any way you choose!"

"Zaun's nothing without you!"

"Me—who?" She stamps her foot. The soil ripples, a tiny seismic tremor. "Why don't you get it? Jinx is dead! She died at the Bridge. You're chasing her ghost!"

"That's not true!"

"Don't tell me what's true and what's not!" Her breaths come ragged, like she's about to heave up her guts. "Jinx is dead. I am. I never woke up after the night on Singed's table. I never got better. I'm dead, like Vander, and Mylo, and Claggor, and I get deader every day. I lost me after I lost Vi, it's all run out. Sand in the hourglass, and every day I lose more—"

"Child—no—"

"I'm dead, and what's left is a disappointment to you. I always was. Take Jinx away, and it's just stupid Powder and her screw-ups and everyone she couldn't save. Everyone who left her behind." A sob wallops her. "I see their faces. I hear their voices. I can't shut 'em out. Quick and clean, you taught me. Make a kill. Do it right. Except there's no right. There's only wrong. All my life, I've only ever been wrong. And now I've done the worst of it." She holds up a fist, opens and closes it. "I can't get the blood out, Silco. I can't see past it. There's only more and more and more and if I don't stop now—"

"You're afraid you'll never stop." Silco's heart is a wringing rag. Oh Gods, she is sick, sick with wounds. And it's all his fault. "Oh my love. I know. I know it hurts. If I had any idea of how much you were suffering—"

"Don't pretend to understand!"

"I do understand. I—I remember the night I killed Vander. I thought I'd never be able to see my way clear of the blackness again. But you showed me I could. It took time, but we did it together. We'll do it again." He tugs at his chains. If he speaks fast enough, if he pleads hard enough, he might outrun the last few minutes. Might salvage the ruins of his life. "Jinx, listen to me. We're all different now. Zaun is different. Don't take away your future because of your past. You're hurting, you've held it together admirably, but, sweetness, just hold on a little longer. I promise—"

"You're not listening!" Her chest heaves, breaths thick with stymied tears. "I'm tired of holding on! I'm tired of bein' left behind. I'm tired of feeling this way, so trapped and angry and broken all the time. I'm so tired—" She stops, the words dying in her throat. "I'm tired of turning my back on everything you start and I finish."

"Jinx—"

"That's our waltz, Silco. Round and round. You spark the tinder. I burn the house down. You dragged Vander to the cannery. I sent him to his grave. You wanted to tear his family apart. I blew them up." A sick laugh judders through her. "Me and my big booms. You and your big plans. Only, I don't get the happy ending." Her eyes take on a flat sheen. "There's only one end to Jinx's story."

"It doesn't have to be that way!"

"It does." She swallows. "Look, I know what you're trying to say. All the good things I could do, if I stay. You want to tell me that I can find something worth living for. Well. I tried that. And I failed. I tried and tried. Every day, I woke up, and I tried to find a way back to who I was. And the harder I tried, the worse it got." Her sobs come muffled, as if against a pillow. "It's no good. I've lost me. The me you wanted. I wasn't the girl you thought, Silco. I'm sorry."

Silco's muscles strain against the chains. His fingers work clumsily with the key behind his back. "You are what I thought, Jinx. I knew it the moment we met."

"You saw what you wanted to see."

He shakes her head. "I saw you. I saw the bomb, and I saw your potential. But I saw you before everything else, Jinx. You were a skinny little twig. You had patchwork clothes and dozens of clips in your hair and scrapes on your elbows and knees. I remember because it reminded me of when I'd climb the rooftops with Vander and lose my balance as a boy. I was a hopeless clod. You were too. But—" He's been speaking more and more softly; now his pitch is barely above a whisper. "You were also just you. Brave enough to climb up and rescue your sister. Smart enough to build a bomb that took my fledgling empire down in a single night."

Jinx's face is pale where it isn't streaked with Shimmer tears. "That's why you stole me, isn't it? You didn't see a smart, brave girl. You saw a blank sheet. Vi left me, and she left a big-ass label stamped on my forehead. JINX JINX JINX. You wrote in the rest. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all bullets and booms. A monster for Zaun. Now Zaun's real, but I don't think that girl is."

"She's right here."

"Half-right." Her mouth is a dark misshapen heart. "You can keep her bones."

"Jinx—"

"As a souvenir. For Zaun."

"Fuck Zaun."

Shock drains Jinx of animation. Maybe she is incredulous at the profanity passing his lips. He's doesn't curse in her presence. Or maybe her incredulity stems from the statement itself.

Fuck Zaun.

A sentence so improbable it verges on treasonous.

It isn't treason. It is truth.

He'd chased Zaun as his lifelong dream. His be-all and end-all; the Undercity's last shot at survival. It was why he'd fought so fiercely for his people. To make sure they weren't destroyed by Piltover's hubris. He'd given himself to the dream, in ways he'd given himself to nothing else. He'd powered himself on blind ambition. Blind faith. Blind rage.

Yet here is the flipside of fathering a dream.

Fatherhood.

He'd never wanted to be a father. Fatherhood was a wasting disease. Fatherhood sucked the marrow from the bones. Fatherhood replaced courage with—

What?

Not cowardice, as Silco had one believed. Not the distilled piss and vinegar of disillusionment.

In his bones, he feels it like a steadying gravity. It doesn't weigh him down. It keeps him going. It powers him like fuel and yet enrobes him like lightning. A shock-pink risk. A flowering blue reward. Silco thrives in risk, but it isn't the reward that's worth having.

It is Jinx.

I am a father. The phrase wheels through his mind, shorting it out of reality and into truth. I am a father and there has never remotely been a miracle like her in my life. Someone I love over my own ambition. Someone who turns my thoughts inside-out. Someone who changes my nature in ways even Nature could not change before. I cherish her over anything else. To lose her is to lose—

Everything.

Jinx stands paralyzed. Her silhouette seems to meld with the moonrays, then separate, then meld again. Silco blinks against the disorienting vision. The hours he's crossed crunch up, and threaten to crunch the last pieces of his sanity. He refuses to succumb.

Refuses to let his dream slip from his fingers.

Jinx.

With love like a knife in his chest, he meets her eyes. "I came down here for you, Jinx. I wake each morning and make Zaun strong for you. I come home each night and make plans for you. But if you leave me—it's all for nothing. Your life and mine. I was wrong to expect so much of you. I was wrong to push you so hard. You were only a child. Your whole life I took and bent in my hands." His good eye narrows. The bad one burns without mercy. "But I never bent you, Jinx. You were always you—at your center. You earned your first lessons with Vi, and practiced to perfection with me. But your spirit? Your fury? That was all you. It's why we're such a pair, remember? We were both left behind. So we vowed to show them all. Now we've done what we vowed, and must live with it. We can choose the same as before. Or we can choose different. But if you end it, there's no choice at all."

Jinx's cheeks are blotched. Tears fill her bright round eyes. "I'm t-t-trying to unjinx it. For Vi. For Vander and Mylo and Claggor. All the things I did. The things I couldn't do."

"You're trying to evade it. Evade me. Evade everything they are to you. Everything we are to each other." Silco's tone sharpens in urgency. He can't stand the thought of her lifelong efforts, the blood spilled and the torments endured, ending on the stale note of his daughter's suicide. "You've forgotten what you are. Not just a jinx—bad or good. You're a survivor. A fighter. You've forgotten how courageous you are, or else you'd never come here. Forgotten how special you are, else you'd never bribe me with a Hex-gem in trade for your life. There's no specialness in leaping into hell. Champions have no place in hell, remember? That's my dominion in the After. Yours is Zaun."

Jinx shies away as if burnt. "I don't belong in Zaun, either. I'd never rest there. They—" A sweep of her arm encompasses the mementos in the wheelbarrow, "—won't let me!"

"It won't be that way forever. I promise."

"You make plenty of promises, Silco." Her bleary eyes slit. "They're like bombs. You drop 'em to get what you want."

Silco's throat works; his voicebox is a noose. Duplicity is never far from his surface. But he can't summon it now. In its place is an agony he can no longer conceal. He looks at her, sees his own reflection. She is a fragment, a mirror, an echo of a thousand old wrongs.

A reminder to do better.

"No bombs, Jinx," he says hoarsely. "Just the truth. I owe you that."

"The truth?"

"I promised, didn't I? We'd talk when I got home?"

Jinx breathes in edgy gasps. But she makes no move to stop him.

"The night Vi left you on the Bridge," Silco says. "I made the choice to take you to Singed. Not because I couldn't afford to lose my finest fighter. I couldn't bear to lose you. Afterward, Piltover demanded a parley. Once, I'd never have entertained it. I would have sent back their missive drenched in blood. But after the state you'd been reduced to… I was ready to negotiate peace."

"So why didn't you?" Jinx cries. "Why choose war? We won by the skin of our teeth! If I hadn't fought for you—"

"I'd have lost anyway."

"What?"

He stares at her, the girl whose torment mocks his own. "Don't you see, Jinx? You are my jugular vein in plain sight. All of Zaun knows it. Topside knew too. After leaving you on the Bridge, your sister was taken before the Council. She revealed your name. She understood the damage your loss would do to our operation. To me. The evening of our parley, Talis offered me Zaun. A place at the table. A nation of our own. All on a silver platter—with you as the caveat." He spends his breath in a harsh laugh that feels like his last. "The worst deal in the world? Hardly. I've negotiated worse. But not if you were the cost, Jinx. At the time, I'd rationalized your survival as Zaun's survival. One could not exist without the other. But my motives were more selfish. You weren't theirs to take. Not for anything. You are my daughter."

The words are is undisguised rage, and Jinx can't look away. Her mouth spasms; her eyelashes glisten like wet spiders.

"My daughter," Silco repeats. "All my sacrifices, all my triumphs, all my sins. None of them compare. History is full of fathers who martyr their children for the greater good. Not me, Jinx. I rejected their treaty the same night. No—not rejected. I threw it in their faces and declared war. I'd rather have you than all their laurels of peace. I'd rather keep you at my side in blood and flame, burning thousands for the cost of one, because what's dead is dead, and what's mine is mine. I know that makes me a failure as a leader. But I'll not pretend not to need what I do." His voice drops, quietly ragged. "And I need you, Jinx. Vi may forsake you. The rest may condemn you. But I will always choose you first. Whatever happens... for as long as I live."

The cliffside is all lunar silence. The wind has died to nothing. The air is an oven; it heats the airless pit of Silco's chest.

Jinx does not move.

"You—" She swallows. "You chose me?"

Silco's lips fold tightly; he can't trust his voice. His life is a dirge of lost loves. He's learned to reveal nothing, to trust no one, to take the blows like a man and riposte tenfold like a monster. Jinx is the sole exception. The only one to turn his weakness into strength. He'd fought to keep her from Piltover. Now, he'll fight to keep her.

Fight to the last drop of Shimmer in his veins.

"I am choosing you now," he breathes. "You, Jinx. Nobody else."

Jinx's knuckles wedge against her temples. Tears streak her cheeks in pink contrails. Her lips stir; her whisper is syllabic and strange. Not for him, but the furor inside her skull. The awful specters that she's had to chase out with gunfire and grenades. As strident as Silco's own specters are silent. As restless as Silco's own refuse to let him rest.

Now they are here. They have faces. They have form.

Jinx whispers: "The two of you. The three of you."

Silco watches in silence.

Her voice grows stronger, more urgent. She says a name, then another, then another, her pitch dropping to a lisp Silco hasn't heard since her girlhood. He doesn't need to know who she's talking to. He doesn't need to know what she's asking. He knows her better than himself. He knows her better than Zaun.

Fuck Zaun.

He doesn't need a dream. He has a miracle. He has a daughter.

"Vander—"

"Claggor—"

"Mylo—"

The wind picks up. It rustles the cracked soil and tosses Silco's hair into his eyes. It is electric and tastes like rain.

"I can't go with you," Jinx says. "Please. I need—I need more time."

She isn't speaking to Silco. She is beyond his world. Her grief is the conduit. Through it, she's speaking to her family—to the future they left behind. To the past they still haven't forgiven.

Because Jinx has never forgiven herself.

Silco's heart throbs like an open wound. He breathes, once, twice. His face is streaked with wetness.

It isn't rain.

"I'm sorry," Jinx whispers. "I'm so sorry, Claggor. For all the things I couldn't do for you. I'm sorry, Mylo. For all the times I lied to you. I'm sorry, Vander. For all the times I didn't tell you I needed you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please." She sags, shoulders bowed beneath her mangled hair. "Please forgive me."

Silco's fists tighten. His right hand is cramped around a key that he no longer needs. The metal is hot and slick as blood.

The wind picks up.

Jinx breathes, "Vi."

The final syllable. The trigger. The explosive release of every wound she's ever sustained. Every gunblast. Every grenade. Every death.

Jinx's shoulders tremble; her voice rises to a fever pitch.

"Vi—I'm sorry—Vi, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

The sobs bubble out, first softly, then in a broken hitching flood.

Collapsing to her knees, Jinx weeps.

The sight tears at Silco. Every fiber of his body is frantic to hold her. The key clicks into the padlock; he gives one good jerk against the cuffs. They drop. A heartbeat later, the chains give way, their weight collapsing off his body with a jangling chime.

Three minutes in total.

Kingpins do not possess the talents of Houdini. But any miner worth his salt can parse a hairline break in the heaviest chain. And for a man whose trade is trickery, a weak link is the only key he needs.

Silco stumbles to his feet. His stiff muscles enrage him. But the pain is welcome. It jars his body loose; it sharpens him up.

Jinx is still crying, shivery and loose-limbed as a kitten. But the jostling wrenches her attention. In an eyeblink, she springs up. Puff-Puff materializes in her hands.

She takes aim. His center of mass is right in her sightline.

"Stay back!"

Silco smiles—less at this turn of events, than at the gun-toting bane of his existence. "Or what? You'll shoot?"

Jinx fires.

The bullet whisks a centimeter past Silco's scalp. It strikes a boulder near his head, spraying splinters.

Silco throttles back a wince. He walked right into that one.

"Jinx," he says quietly. "Your aim is better than that."

"That was a warning shot!"

"It was an empty threat. I've taught you better."

She lets off a sound between a snarl and a sob. "Next time, I won't miss!"

Silco's smile, edged and bitter, softens. "I know."

"I mean it!"

"I know."

He draws nearer. Jinx whips around. The gun is still in her hands. It feels trivial. Just a toy. The real danger is Jinx. Her lovely face is trapped in a hideous transformation. It can either warp into the marionette mask of the Shimmer-demon. Or it can liquify into the beleaguered visage of Powder, a girl who oozed wretchedness like a cut vein.

Two creatures opposite and yet overlapping; born from having no control over their life.

"Don't," she says. A warning, a plea. "Don't."

"I'm not leaving without you, Jinx."

"I can't—"

"You can. It's your choice. You've always been free to make it. Stop acting like you don't deserve it."

"No! No no no no..." She is still sobbing; tears sluicing down her cheeks. But he is no longer the enemy she is struggling against. "It's not done yet! The goodbyes aren't finished. They have more to say. They need me to stay until—"

Until she's ready to say goodbye for real.

"You don't need them," Silco says gently. "They are only shadows, my lovely."

"They're everything! They're all I have left! If I can't fix them—I can't fix anything!"

"There is no fixed. We have to do it ourselves."

"Please. Please."

"Unless you'd like me to join you?" he says. "So we're all together. All of us in the After."

Jinx rears back as if he's slapped her. Their eyes meet. No bluffs; no bullshit. Either she comes home, or they exit hand-in-hand. Anything else is negotiable.

Including Zaun.

Jinx's gun clatters to the ground. A minute ago, she'd been a force of destruction. Now, sobbing and shuddering, she most resembles the little girl he'd first met in the rain.

Gods, she is still there.

Not Powder. Not the Shimmer-demon.

The spirit he'd fallen so purely in love with. The wildfire shining off her. All that strength and fragility and wonder. His little blue comet. His child. Yet it makes Silco sorry, to see her so beaten-down, beset by so much misery. Everything in him yearns to console her. Help her heal, or, failing that, absorb her grief.

Jinx sways, and Silco snatches her up. She doesn't resist. Her sobs are so fierce her whole body quakes. They hurt Silco in a way even war never could. He cradles her skull into the crook of his neck. Her heart is racing at double-time. So is his. When the emotional reaction finally hits him, it is violent as a gutting. Even though there's a torn space in his chest where there should rationally be relief, what he feels is a raw terror that makes him retch.

She nearly left.

She'd be gone and I'd be alone.

Silco's embrace tightens. She's dangling on tiptoe, the way he's holding onto her. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Her hands clutch fistfuls of his coat. It is a posture of turmoil so childlike that Silco nearly sobs in turn. Poor precious girl. How difficult it must be for her. How difficult it has always been. How little worth she's set in herself, not just her achievements and brilliance, but the astonishing, adorable incongruity that is Jinx.

He wants to speak. But the emotion is a crippling physical ache. And at the same time it is so perfect to have her back in his arms. She smells of her nightmarish ordeal—grit and gunpowder. But also so bittersweetly of home that he can't bear to let her go.

Except—

Against his chest, Jinx breathes, "Thirty seconds."

"What?"

"The timer."

"Gods—"

Reflexively, Silco snatches Jinx closer. But she's already broken loose. Not to abandon him. She pivots and swings a powerful kick at the wheelbarrow.

Jerking, it careens down the cliffside. Hits the edge, and tips straight over.

Plunging into darkness.

Thirty seconds.

Not enough time. The blast-zone is too close.

When the explosion comes, it rumbles like thunder and plumes like lava. It tears through the night, fire and ash billowing up and out of the chasm to blot out the moonlight. A shower of gritty black dust whizzes through the air. Flames balloon in a widening radius. The whole ravine jolts.

Jinx has already snatched Silco's wrist. Her fingers, fiendishly strong, clamp into his bones. Silco is swung into motion.

Then they are racing together, their boots pounding the rocks before everything whites out. Crash and thunder at their heels. Blistering heat giving chase. There is never anything stealthy in fire's pursuit. It charges madly, devouring everything in its path. The earth quakes beneath them. Jinx leaps clear of a crack widening under her boots. Silco stumbles and steadies and keeps motoring. His muscles boil; his nerves buzz. Adrenaline with a leftover froth of Shimmer.

Enough to last the distance?

It fucking better.

He and Jinx scramble up the incline. Embers billow in their wake. Thirty yards, twenty, ten. The obelisks, with their runic inscriptions, are a hazed silhouette against a burning heaven. A doorway glowing with promise. Jinx's palm finds Silco's. Their fingers lace together. She's leading the charge, but her eyes are locked on the horizon of his own.

His little comet, a blazing blue glory.

"I love you," she gasps.

They race hand-in-hand.

A gust of blistering wind buffets them. The flames rush closer, a maw that swallows everything it touches. Silco's lungs are acrid with smoke. Jinx is coughing raggedly. A cough like a miner's wheeze.

They keep running.

Five yards.

Four.

Three.

The obelisks beckon.

Two.

The runes are in reach.

One—

They leap, but it's too late. The flames have caught up to them. The cliff's edge is crumbling away in a slurry of soot. Jinx falls, and takes Silco with her. Her shriek is lost in the firestorm.

They fall together.

Through redness.

Through blackness.

Through nothing.

Then the world reorients itself.

Without warning the thunder ebbs and everything else sucked into silence before the silence turns itself inside-out in a shimmering blue-pink ether.

An eye of madness.

A burning pool.

A fusion of magic.

Before Silco's eyes, multicolored lights pop, and then he is falling not backwards but forwards into a portal, except it isn't a portal but a luminous web in the center of his mind, at the crux of his choices, and he sees—

Flash: A burning alley, Vander's corpse, a girl in the rain, and he kneels but doesn't take her in his arms, doesn't promise her the world on a pike, only encircles her to seize a fistful of blue hair and twist her neck bare, her face locked in horror as his blade slices across the pulse of her pale throat, blood sheeting her skin as her eyes go blank, Silco's own future blanking out with them, a barren vista with no freedom in sight, Zaun a stillborn death, his own life forfeit in a devil's bargain with no hope of redemption, and then—

Flash: the alley again, the girl in his arms, his voice crooning in her ear, and he takes her and keeps her, but their love is different, a bitter aftertaste at once rotten and unnatural, a perversion of family where she is nothing more than meat to devour, a means to an end, until sanity breaks and they glut themselves on each other's bones, two monsters cannibalizing their own, and in the echoing wrongness of the aftermath, he feels himself cracking in half, nothing but raw appetite left behind, a creature of feral impulse that will destroy anything it touches, and then—

Flash: the alley licked with flames, the girl sobbing in the rain, only she isn't a stranger, she is his own child, a legacy of his and Nandi's union, and now Silco cradles her close, and keeps her, and loves her purely, in blood and in truth, except she isn't Jinx, because Jinx wasn't born in this scenario, the exact genetic prerequisites failed to coalesce, but Silco doesn't know this as he nurtures her, and he doesn't know that when the sun rises on her sixteenth year, she will die screaming in agony, a corpse riven by Enforcer's bullets, because her cleverness isn't enough to spark Zaun's birth, because lightning only strikes once, and it's Jinx who is his lightning in a bottle, his child born without a drop of his blood but with the same shard of his soul, his comet, his treasure, and then—

Flash: Jinx as she is, except her body is a prism, fractured shards of light refracting off her skin, her eyes aglow, her beauty a rainbow in a rainstorm, except he isn't sheltering her, she is shielding him, a luminous talisman caught in her hands, a lance made of fire, and she is burning alive, but she unafraid, her laughter ringing true and sweet with the taste of victory.

And then—

He stumbles out of the web, the unlived lives brushing ghostlike at his skin before he falls free. The knowledge fades with him, nothing but an echo in his mind, a shadow at the corner of his eye. The explosion in the ravine is the same, relentless spume putting distance between its quarries.

He and Jinx are no longer in the same spot. They are at a craggy stretch of a plateau. The moon shines against the disturbed clouds in a welter of light. In the distance, the obelisk looms over a burnt landscape. The skyline around it shimmers with the wink of hundred glass windows. Or are they portals?

Between one breath and the next, they fade, until all that remains is the night sky.

Jinx skids to a stop, chest heaving. Silco trips and falls to his hands and knees. His lungs work like bellows. He coughs, throat burning. In that moment, he regrets every belt of whiskey and every lungful of cigarette he'd imbibed in the interceding years since meeting Jinx.

"By Kindred," he gasps. "Never again."

Blue particles fall like dust-motes—a glittering haze. The Hex-gem nearly burns a hole in his coat pocket.

What was that?

A lapse of sanity? Or the crux of miracles?

Something cannonballs into him.

Jinx.

She is on him, a keening flurry of blue and white and pink. The force knocks Silco backwards. Nearly a replica of their first meeting, her arms locked around his neck, sharp knees digging into his ribs. His body answers instinctually. Folding her close, he squeezes her small shape closer, his face in her hair, his reassurances drowned in the flood of her crying.

No—not crying.

Laughing.

Jinx's teary face is pressed against his neck. He feels the imprint of her lips. Her whole body ripples in broken burbles.

"Jinx—what—?"

Silco sits up. Jinx's laughter swells and bursts—giddy peals of gratitude.

The sound sends a dozen conflicting shocks through Silco. Simultaneously he wants to crush her in an embrace—and take her over his knee and belt her until she hollers. He can scarcely breathe; the rage building up in his bones is a whiplash so enormous it makes the near-swat on her thirteenth Name Day seem tame in comparison.

How could she be so reckless? How could she dare leave him?

Yet his instinct, deeper and more merciless than even his rage, sings with a heartsick delirium at having her back. His entire psyche is blasted open by her, this little blue meteor with not an ounce of his lifeblood, yet whose gravitational pull commands every iota of his being.

He holds Jinx for a long time, until her laughter ebbs. Dragging in a breath, Silco holds it for a moment, then loosens his embrace.

Jinx raises her head. Her face is a blotched mess of tears. Yet her expression holds a short-circuited sweetness that is entirely at odds with her doomed designs for tonight. This girl is new to him—a stranger. Someone mysterious. Someone enchanting. Someone he loves, despite all the danger she has brought upon them both.

His daughter, no matter what.

Their eyes meet. Jinx quirks a grin. "Silly."

"Child."

"That was fun, huh?"

"Speak for yourself."

He smooths the tangled hair from her forehead. It needs combing. Her luminous little face is smudged in dirt, the cheeks sticky. She needs a face-washing. Not to mention a bath, and a change of clothes. They both do. Except it is the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

Miles to go before they reach Zaun. Miles before they are anywhere close to home.

Silco doesn't care.

Home isn't far off. Home is right here.

Slowly, Silco shakes his head.

(Vander.)

(You bastard.)

(You could've warned me.)

Against his will, Silco slides out a smile. A tiny, crooked smile that barely lasts, and yet is designed to get under even the thickest skin of a runaway teenage girl, crawling around with its crazy-making warning. Jinx pretends not to see it. But her body betrays an antsy jitter. Her features reflect a shift from mischief to squinting suspicion. "What?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

"It's a night for firsts, hm?"

"I—I guess?"

"Here's a second."

To encompass your child in your arms after narrowly losing them. To know the prospect exists always. Today, tomorrow, any day in the future. Is there a more simultaneously blissful and heartbroken feeling in the world? Or a state more ordinary? Shared by thousands across Runeterra.

(That's fatherhood.)

Silco drops a kiss to Jinx's forehead. "My lovely…"

"Yeah?"

"You're grounded."

"Oh fu—"

[cool-island-songs]

I posted 274 times in 2022

That's 208 more posts than 2021!

99 posts created (36%)

175 posts reblogged (64%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fayoftheforest

@roostertuftart

@englishknightsky

@ladyfeldspar

@victimized-martyr

I tagged 257 of my posts in 2022

Only 6% of my posts had no tags

#south park - 104 posts

#tweek tweak - 50 posts

#ask game - 42 posts

#craig tucker - 42 posts

#sp creek - 39 posts

#kenny mccormick - 20 posts

#south park fanfiction - 19 posts

#ask - 18 posts

#eric cartman - 16 posts

#ask meme - 16 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#that's bogus and as a creek shipper from 2008 i don't agree? we wouldn't have creek if “likelihood of becoming canon” was what entitled ppl

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

“Told you our furniture sucked!“ - Mrs. Tweak (a queen)

195 notes - Posted February 16, 2022

#4

Kenny’s dream

223 notes - Posted June 1, 2022

#3

Wanted to share this Creek art @just5am commissioned for me from @parasiteinfestation of Creek being autistic and in love! I definitely didn't cry

244 notes - Posted November 24, 2022

#2

Craig Tucker Character Analysis: Canon Overview, Pt. 1

So, this guy right here is pretty popular, both as a fictional 4th grade student at South Park Elementary, and as a phenomenon in the South Park fandom onto whom masculine behavioral and aesthetic ideals are projected wildly. I wanted to dig into the character because it’s honestly fascinating that this fictional little space dweeb has been some kind of teen heartthrob for like 20 years. This long ass post is part 1 of my analysis of his character in the series, but it’s largely setting the stage for an analysis of fanon Craig as I’m interested in comparing the evolution of his canon characterization to his fandom reception over the years.

Part 1 here examines Craig’s initial role in the series as a troublemaker and his dynamic with Butters as playground law enforcers in the early seasons, and there will likely be 2-3 parts total for canon (part 2 has now been posted here). Hopefully, by breaking it up, people can more easily find parts they’re interested in (for instance, I’ve seen recent renewed interest in Craig and Butters as schoolyard bullies together) and nobody will think I’m all that mentally ill for dedicating so many words to this fictional gay autistic asshole. Here we go!

Craig Tucker: Troublemaker

Early on, Craig is introduced as a character with behavioral issues. In “Rainforest Shmainforest” (S03E01), Craig’s speaking debut, Mackey reveals Craig is sent to his office every day for misbehavior. Craig’s shtick in the early seasons is flipping people off and being shown waiting outside Mr. Mackey’s office, where he has likely been sent for flipping people off. This lands Craig a reputation as a troublemaker, which is why Cartman chooses him as worst-behaved kid in “Tweek vs. Craig” (S03E05). The glimpse into Craig’s home life in this episode reveals his family to be uncommunicative and not terribly emotionally involved. Also, they all flip each other off all the time:

See the full post

305 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

This is the Craig I know and love. So meta, so violent 😭

628 notes - Posted February 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[hitchhikerwithoutguide]

im going thru shit

TW for body image issues, potential eating disorder, physical and mental illness

As of writing this I'm 26 years old.

I was very active my entire youth. I was in a circus/theater/performance group from 8-12 y/o, riding horses from 10-17 y/o, pole dancing from 14-20 y/o (I started dancing less and less after moving out from my parents' place at 19/20, and by 21 y/o I was almost not dancing at all).

At 18 y/o I got mononucleosis and was out for almost two-three months IIRC, and even though I started working out again too early I managed to bounce back somewhat.

But at 21 y/o I started getting severe symptoms of ulcerative colitis in the summer (I had had minor symptoms before, not realizing what it was) which ended with me in the hospital by the winter.

I lost about 10+kg in less than two weeks and all my muscles had deteriorated. Before I still had some visible muscle evem though I had gotten softer, but after the hospitalization I lost both fat, mass and muscle. My ribs and hip bones were sticking out and I couldn't open a bottle of coca cola on my own because I was too weak. I swore to myself that I'll rather be fat than feel like this again.

But it took me many months to recover completely. For a long while I was on high doses of medication, pretty strict diet and such. Once I was free to eat as I pleased I started overeating instead. Not by a lot at first, but thus past year especially has been... a lot of overeating. Big portions, lots of snacks and soda, etc. Most of this more drastic change has been caused by a lot of work related stress. I was on sick leave due to burnout for three months, quit my job and am now studying instead. There's also been changes in my medicine for my general depression/anxiety, but I'm not too comfortable talking about that, even if they might play a big role. I can talk about my diagnoses, but not medication. I also have ADHD and have had 2 episodes of paranoia, but when I got help for the paranoia I was in the recovering stage and they couldn't diagnose it.

Two years or so ago (ca 4 years after diagnosis and hospitalization) I tried to pick up pole dancing again, but the room filled with mirrors and me not being to perform the way I used to took a much bigger toll on my self esteem than expected. I kept at it for the full 8 weeks but I often felt like crying during and when I came home.

Last time I weighed myself, maybe last year, I was at about 70kg. I'm 165cm tall. I'm certain I weigh a hell of a lot more than that today though, but I'm way too scared to find out.

I've tried exercising on my own, but I can barely keep up with the lightest workout schedule. My body is often shaking, as if I've been doing a full body workout for 2 hours, even if I haven't worked out at all. I can do maybe 5 push-ups on my knees, but the shivering makes it difficult to continue, even if it feels like I can do more my body locks up and I just can't. I don't even get sore the day after, since I can't work out to that level.

The weight that I have gained has become very visible as well. I have had huge wardrobe issues and I don't recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

I've come to hate my body more and more. I've had periods of insecurities about my body before, but never like this. Never this disgust and hatred. Endless hours have been spent looking at old pictures of myself with clearly visible muscle definition, all gone. So now I'm weak, and fat (or at the very least quite chubby).

Among all of this shit I also have ARFID. I have 5 big food groups that I cannot eat. No amount of therapy or working on it has helped for 26 years. My parents can't even remember me ever eating something from these food groups even as a very young child. So "eating right" isn't exactly easy.

It just feels like I keep making all of these excuses as to why I can't exercise. "Just go for walks!" I can't, my social phobia brought on by the paranoia makes it hard to go outside on my own, I pretty much only go for walks if I got somewhere to be or someone to walk with. This makes me feel like a whiny asshole snowflake but it is true.

I'm at a loss. I'm currently working together with my partner to try our best to make me eat as healthy as possible, and as they are in charge of 99% of cooking they are gonna count calories for me. I'm scared that if I count calories on my own it will spiral into an eating disorder. I've decided that all my breaks from studying will contain liggt exercise, like jumping jacks or mountain climbers. Maybe I'm gonna get it right this time, and get my real body back. Maybe.

[vividaway]

my thoughts, and reiterations about gabbie from twitter.

i'm saying this as a fan of gabbie, AND as someone who's been in bipolar psychosis before: hate her all you want. But whats happening with Gabbie Hanna right now has NOTHING to do with drama, NOTHING to do with attention, and NOTHING to do with her music. people spreading that rumor are genuinely bordering on ableism and refuse to do their own research. 1. gabbie's been diagnosed for a little under a year, so she's still trying to find stability.

2. gabbie is PERSONALLY anti-pharma (she gets paranoid about what she's putting into her body, but has no opinions about others who medicate)

3. gabbie's album came out a month ago, and she was one of the first female independent artists to hit the top of the rock charts. gabbie doesn't NEED drama for her music to succeed, nor would this benefit her in any way HAD it been staged.

4. gabbie's BIGGEST, BIGGEST fear is (in her own words) "to go crazy, and not realize it". anyone who's up to date on her tiktoks knows EXACTLY why that statement is beyond terrifying, and how it BEYOND applies to this situation. 5. the argument that "gabbie has done this before" is just plain wrong. gabbie has published a MULTITUDE of videos about the depressive side of her bipolar, but she has ALWAYS gone offline when she got manic.

6. the argument that "gabbie admitted that she's just trolling" is also incorrect. in 2020-2021 gabbie started posting tiktoks (which are now viral) which were taken as her being in a manic state. gabbie tried to tell people a MULTITUDE of times that she wasn't manic, and people refused to listen. this is different from gabbie saying she isnt manic NOW, because gabbie wasnt in PSYCHOSIS in 2020-2021 like she is now. she wasnt DELUSIONAL in 2020-2021 like she is now.

the tiktoks in question were the ones of her in the car, shouting. her "i'm back, bitches" tiktok, and her tiktok where she was dressed like this:

---

i want to include some words copied DIRECTLY from twitter, because they are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

the gabbie hanna thing is making me realize how many of y'all have zero understanding of mental health beyond depression and anxiety (if even that) "if she wanted help she would get it" during a psychotic episode/hallucinations you don't think anything is wrong and often refuse

mental illness is considered an illness for a reason. it’s suddenly no longer offered sympathy when it does not present in a way that’s acceptable or pretty and “quirky”. gabbie hanna is literally not well, hold her accountable when she’s in the headspace to realize her wrongs

“hold gabbie hanna accountable” you cannot hold someone going through actual fcking psychosis accountable for anything. this is not just mania. this is a psychotic break. she is entirely disconnected from reality.

every time gabbie hanna starts trending, it reminds me how most people only care about mental health if it's romanticizable, and not self-destructve and ugly like a lot of issues are

fun fact, you can be worried for gabbie hanna's mental state atm and still be pissed that she's saying racist shit like this isn't mutually exclusive. is she saying terrible things because of her psychotic episode? yeah most likely. am i still upset she's saying these terrible things? obviously. am i still worried for her health and hope someone helps her quickly? she's still human, of course i want her to get help

yeah, regardless of how you feel about gabbie hanna and all the shit she's done in the past, can we please stop saying that people reveal their true, "deep down" feelings when they're manic? it's inaccurate and unhelpful

the way y’all are talking about gabbie hanna rn proves that the majority of you really have no clue what real, severe mental/psychotic breaks look like. y’all are so “mental health awareness!” until said mental health manifests in a way that makes you uncomfortable……

The thing some of y’all need to remember about this gabbie hanna situation is that even bad people deserve mental healthcare. Let her come through the other side of this episode before you expect her to address it and apologize. It might be a while. Be patient.

the gabbie hanna situation is a good reminder that we as a society lack the proper skills and resources to support people in psychosis (as it appears she is in) if you find yourself helping someone experiencing psychosis, here are some tips:

-do NOT try to rationalize delusions/beliefs. you’re not gonna convince them, and it’ll strain your ability to communicate -speak in calm and short sentences. don’t freak out. don’t laugh at them -empathize and validate their emotions. psychosis can be absolutely terrifying

-if possible, pull them aside to a safe, comfortable place. offer water/snacks/etc -discuss resources. offer to take them to the ER or call a crisis support line for them. however, if they refuse treatment do NOT threaten or coerce. only call 911 if they are in immediate danger

-they may refuse help at the moment. allow them to do so. they still have autonomy. tell them that the offer stands and that if they ever change their mind you are there for them. coercion and threatening may ruin your chance at helping them, paranoia is common with psychosis

-lastly, remember that people in psychosis are MUCH more likely to be a victim of violence than the other way around. they are in an extremely vulnerable state that is easily taken advantage of

on calling 911: -it’s not helpful, and can be harmful, if you call 911 on someone in psychosis with no risk of harm to themselves or others -determining level of risk as a layperson is hard. if there is not immediate danger (i.e. standing on the edge of the roof) a crisis line

may be more suitable. they may tell you to call 911 -just bc you call 911 doesn’t automatically mean the person will be involuntarily hospitalized. there are people in ERs who are trained in determining risk of harm -IT IS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY! when in doubt, call 911

resources available: -911 -988 (a US national hotline for mental health crises) -local community mental health centers -local crisis hotlines -ERs. if you live by a psych ER that’s even better -mental health crisis centers (if there are any around) -their therapist/psychiatrist

[championofnyx]

Misperception of Issues and Lack of Treatment Part 3: The Exceptions That Make the Rule

In season three, episode 21, we see Gar and Vic talking about Vic’s new found controle over his post-metron cleanse technological implants and mentioned that he and Megan have been talking about the stages of grieve, personally about the life he once thought he would live and the body he had lost, and were he was in this journey, implying ongoing conversation throughout this process. In season four we see him fully accepting his new situation, a new member of the justice league, and having matured enough to actively help his friends in their own journeys to self acceptance, both as a supporter and as an advice giver. 

While Vic’s treatment was delicately integrated through dialogue, we got to see more of Gar’s throughout season four. Coming to terms with the death of several loved ones, including his mother, the doom patrol, Wally, and Conner assisted through therapy, medication, a support animal, and his friends capping off a season long downward spirit further into a depressive episode. Vic and Gar received a level of support that was either nonexistent or short lived in the cases of Mary and Brion, so why were their needs properly addressed? 

On average ~50% of patients that suffer from various mental illnesses feel involved in their treatment decisions, including a diagnosis. ~55% feel they were given time to express their needs and ask about treatment, and ~20% believe that they didn’t receive the treatment needed. These statistics are pulled from sample ages of 5-32, the age group of both characters, Kalder being the older at 26 and the youngest being Cass or Tara (I think) at 16 with its current audience being pulled from around this age group, accounting for five years older and younger. 

Positive reputation of addressing and managing mental illness: therapy, actively engaging with your road to healing, medication when needed are all shown, both in the case of Gar and Vic, but it would be accurate to portray mental health struggles as something that is always addressed, diagnosed, and treated properly. It’s important to show that there are gaps within our real world health system reflected in the media, and even more for us, the audience, to understand that the actions of these characters made in moments of vulnerability and instability can be explained, if not always excused. 

This being said, why were Vic and Gar’s struggles noticed by others? There wasn’t a change in behavior that implied self-healing. With Mary, she stopped forming into Sergeant Marvel, Brion tempered his anger, allowing those around them to believe that the issue had been properly addressed and didn’t require further involvement. Vic wasn’t adjusting, he continued self-isolation even after a change in environment (moving to the hub) and Gar’s downward spiral never gave a momentary glimpse that it was taking an upward trajectory. In simpler terms, they were constantly fighting their problems, which made them easier to recognize, much as it is in the real world. Going through phases of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mental health can be viewed as dramatized or not something deserving of proper treatment because it’s not ‘as bad as others have it’ while those who show consistent, and after downward trending, mental states are viewed as ‘deserving’ of treatment. Of course, this is not every case, but there is a strong correlation between the display of symptoms and treatment. 

Young Justice is attempting to accurately describe mental illness in hopes that members of its audience who have experienced similar struggles are able to relate, as well as hopefully give others the courage to seek help if it’s not being provided to them. But it would be inaccurate to display everyone’s journey to recovery as a linear progress that was helped and supported by everyone around them. So instead of showing one happy ending narrative of mental illness that is only achievable in preferable circumstances, the writers have instead decided to provide several. 

All this to be said, the fallen heroes previously mentioned fell not because of some inherent moral corruption, but rather as a result of manipulation that could have only occurred due to a lack of treatment and support. If you feel a connection or sympathy to them, you are not an inherently bad human because neither of them are inherently bad humans. Their stories were written to be compelling to audiences, as all characters should be, so don’t feel wrong for being compelled. 

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

please. i can’t do this alone.

Titans 3.01

thoughts! thoughts! thoughts! some red hot thoughts!

SPOILERS ahead.

1. one episode in, and this season already looks set to give me everything i want. its abandonment of plot and storytelling conventions as it goes from one point to the next at breakneck speed; its cheerful bastardisation of iconic storylines from the comics; the ‘as-you-know-bob’ clunky exposition on one end and extremely restrained, subtle explorations of complex character dynamics on the other; endless shots of neon bleeding into black and blue corridors, shadows and silhouettes; my delight in seeing it celebrate and deconstruct the dark nolan-y batman aesthetic at the same time; my bafflement that it’s so fucking goddamn obsessed with the batfam when it’s supposed to be about the TITANS; kory just... saving every overburdened, clunky scene that she’s in by her sparkling charisma. just... *chef’s kiss*. muah. my show is back, in all its glory.

MY SHOW IS BACK, Y’ALL!

1.5. i mean... this show is so artful and weird and not afraid to go absolutely bonkers in exploring its characters’ psyche, but can just about barely stage a passable comic book fight when every tom dick and harry and their new streaming services can deliver ones that are far more exciting. i love this show with every atom of my body.

(there’s something to be said about rooting for the underdog as well. a pleasure in finding something to love about what other people dismiss. but! enough navel gazing! i have fictional characters’ navels to look at! metaphorically! and maybe literally!)

2. i expected jason’s death to come about pretty early in the season as soon as i heard rumours that red hood was showing up, but for it to happen in the first five minutes of the first episode... that’s a record. 

(well. “happen.” still don’t know what exactly went down there.)

2.25. GOD. jason is such a tortured and tragic character in this show, used and passed around by people with alleged good intentions, never really fitting in anywhere. he’s veritably bleeding vulnerability and the need to belong, the need to be known, and yet the tragedy is that his death proves that nobody in his life knew anything about him at all; that they only saw the flimsy walls he put up to protect his soft core, and thought that that was all there was. that they say they loved him, but blame him for his own death. 

dick is flabbergasted that jason can read, though we know from last season, from what jason revealed to rose, that he has a love for plays and music. barbara is quick to dismiss his actions as ‘impulsive’. bruce has no idea that his supposed son was building his own little chemistry lab right under his nose, and beyond that, no idea that jason needed structure, stability and validation beyond being left alone in a huge house with a treasure trove of dangerous weapons. kory thought his decision to fight the joker was from not learning and growing when the guy tried to kill himself last season and nobody apart from dick even tried to talk to him about it! did you consider that he might still be suicidal? especially after the titans admitted to having “given up” on him because he was just “too hard”?

2.5. the one thing that’s been consistent across all three seasons (so far) of the show is the unreliable narrator trope. there’s a reason why the characters’ dismissals of jason’s actions as impulsive is so repetitive; why jason’s death is a mystery dick feels compelled to solve. it’s a flailing attempt to know his brother much too late--but with red hood, maybe he gets a second chance, just like he got one with the titans. this is what jason’s arc has been building up to. this is ‘death in the family’ but more fucked up in some ways. it didn’t linger on the death because the death wasn’t the point. the joker isn’t the point. everything that came before it is.

this way it will also make perfect sense that the red hood’s main enemy becomes the titans rather than batman.

2.75. goodness knows what’s going on with jason’s little chemistry project. at first i thought he was immunising himself to joker gas or something, but maybe it’s what passes for lazarus pit juice in this universe? 

anyway, it’s pretty impressive that jason learnt all of that from a college chemistry textbook. STOP BRINGING UP THAT HE READ SOMETHING, DICK--

2.8. i’m glad that dick doesn’t immediately sink into self-loathing and guilt and tries to investigate jason’s death while also acknowledging how he failed him. it’s like he actually learned something from the last two years! 

anyway. more about dick later. 

3. oh how i love titans!bruce. a lot of characters had a lot of Opinions on his reaction to jason’s death in this episode, but again, i ask you to consider that they’re unreliable narrators, and this universe’s bruce is a product of how it shaped him. bruce wayne has become a phantom to himself--an artifice borne out of vigorous discipline and crushing self-denial. 

bruce has been batman for a very long time, and without a robin for much longer. (dick must be... in his early thirties? so he was robin for about, say, 10-12 years according to the timeline of the show. that still makes bruce pretty old when he took on his first robin.) things have... calcified (possibly parts of his brain). the personal cost and the collateral from the mission he’s taken up for most of his life is too much to countenance; it has to be a war, and war requires sacrifice. 

on some level bruce knows that’s a lie. he’s so goddamned alone. what’s he going to do? sit down and cry? who’s going to listen to him now? oh, is he going to just stop being batman? who’s going to stop gotham from consuming herself then? he’ll just have to forge ahead, do better next time, maybe he’ll be firmer with them, or kinder with them, or notice more things, or train them harder, or spend more time--

3.25. don’t get me wrong: titans!bruce is an asshole and a half. his roster of potential robins was honestly bone-chilling. the fact that there’s a twisted root of compassion makes it more disturbing. 

3.5. alfred’s dead! it must’ve been pretty recent, because i could’ve sworn that dick tried to call alfred in the very first episode of season 1, or at least considered calling him... 

what a devastating double-blow for bruce then, losing his father-figure and his, uh.... son-figure so close together.

4. i don’t know about barbara yet. i mean, i like her, but she had so much clunky expository dialogue to deliver this episode, and for an episode that was named after her, she only showed up halfway through it. but i like the weight of history behind her interactions with both bruce and dick and her compassion to bruce before he cruelly crossed a line. i also like the implication that she and dick have been in touch recently, and that she didn’t immediately try to guilt-trip dick about some perceived abandonment. it’d be too repetitive.

4.5. there’s also a sense that she ran interference for dick a lot whenever there was something Too Big and Emotional for him to confront directly, and i like and appreciate that character beat.

5. dick, my man! it really does feel like a substantial length of time has passed between the end of s2 and the beginning of s3... kory’s got a new costume, they’ve become celebrities in SF, working missions together, and dick’s actually smiling! genuinely enjoying his work and having fun with it for possibly the first time in the entire series! it’s really a far cry from the fractured, dysfunctional mess that they were at the end of the last season.

i just hope this doesn’t mean that they’ve magically reached a resolution off-screen to all of their fucked-upness from last season, and that the repercussions--for gar in particular--are actually addressed on screen. 

5.25. i mentioned this briefly above, but it really is so refreshing that dick doesn’t wallow in guilt and self-loathing after jason’s death; he acknowledges his and the titans’ failure, is able to admit to barbara honestly that he’s not doing great, and is actively trying to reach out to bruce to make sure he’s ok, is trying to investigate what made jason seek out the joker on his own, and is probably the only person not immediately buying that it was jason’s recklessness that got him killed. i love that dick is finally beginning to trust his instincts or just employ them at all after years of guilt and paranoia and self-loathing. we love some positive character growth!

5.5. another thing i love? the bruce-dick interactions on this show. every scene they’re in together is so fraught with tension, both of them holding themselves back, their emotions on a whipcord-tight leash. dick wants to reach out to bruce, is even somewhat familiar with this brand of denial in the wake of grief, but wants barbara to make the first move because he genuinely does not know how to get bruce to open up. his instincts are right, and wonderful, and genuine, but his expression has been smothered by years of trauma, emotional and physical self-discipline, and what i suspect is poorly treated mental illness. 

it takes a lot for him to finally explode at bruce at the end of the episode--in a way he hasn’t done even when his only opinion of bruce was ‘fuck him’--and it’s all the more startling for how subdued he’s been through the episode, how much he’s been holding back his emotions for bruce’s sake. love it.

5.75. it sort of hurts my heart to see the flying graysons poster in jason’s room. there are a few implications:

a) jason settled into dick’s old room despite living in a giant mansion with dozens of other rooms he could’ve used

b) he didn’t take down dick’s poster--not when he moved in and was idolising him, not when he moved out of the titans and was sort of hating him. i wonder if the reminder of what dick was before robin--that he was forged out of unspeakable tragedy--gave jason the connection to dick that he so desperately wanted in real life

c) dick moved right back into the room and slept on the bed that was now jason’s. grief can be so quiet and piecemeal sometimes.

6. i spy the beginnings of actual arcs for both gar and kory! i just hope that with the move to gotham their stories don’t fall to the wayside...

6.5. i’ve known tim drake for less than ten minutes but if anything were to happen to him i’d kill everybody 

7. this review has gone on for too long and i am tiRED. however, before i leave: i miss some of the dedication-to-aesthetic that titans season 1 used to have. remember how the first few episodes didn’t really feel like a superhero show but something out of gothic horror? there was something gorgeous and raw about that, about open landscapes and the road and creepy buildings looming up at the end of it. moving to titans tower in s2 really ruined a lot of that for me, given its ripped-from-architectural-digest aesthetic, all smooth and clean and artificial. 

i hope that we really explore gotham’s hellscape in interesting and innovative ways instead of camping out in the batcave all the time and indulging in the show’s unending love for long corridors, neon backlights and silhouettes.

8.....

9.  wait, fuck, HOW CAN I FORGET ABOUT HOT PSYCHIATRIST GUY (TM)??? NONE of you prepared me for his return! NONE OF YOU! i gasped! i got up and did a happy dance! 

listen, titans writers, if you’ve had a peek at my titans s3 wishlist, please go ahead and give the other items on the list a go too, thankyouverymuch.

[chronically-autistic-dinosaur]

I’m straight up not even editing these because they deserve to have their usernames shown. There’s a few with decency and common sense, but to blame a 23 year old’s career choice as the reason for his mental health issues is 💩.

1. NO ONE knows what he’s going through. Only Shawn does. Just because he appears ok on stage or in his IG photos, doesn’t mean he’s ok. It’s easy to fake being ok and happy. I can look happy in the outside, yet be fighting demons inside.

2. Saying this is a PR stunt is 💩. What does Shawn gain by faking being mentally ill? Something he has publicly spoken out about in the past?

3. He’s not being an “entitled rock star.” He’s taking care of himself. Something any NORMAL should do. He’s still a human being. He still goes through stuff. Being a musician does not change that.

4. Yes, it sucks that people bought tickets for tonight’s show and upcoming shows and now they may not be able to go to a new date. But good God, you make it seem like it’s all Shawn’s fault that he had a mental health breakdown. It’s not like he planned for this to happen. Get your parties out of a knot and have some sympathy for once.

5. His breakup with Camilla might be a part of this. But let’s not blame it entirely on that. Maybe he hasn’t quite gotten over the breakup and performing certain songs brings up memories. I don’t know. I’m not Shawn.

6. None of us are privy to the contract he signed. It’s quite possible it says he can cancel, postpone, etc tour dates when he wants for any reason at all. Also just because he was able to heavily tour prior to COVID (2-3 days with 1 day off) doesn’t mean he’s able to do that now. Maybe he thought he could. Don’t blame him for that. He’s not being “a baby.”

7. Not to armchair diagnose, but Shawn’s 23. The prime age for most mental disorders (aside from anxiety disorders) to manifest. He could have undiagnosed bipolar disorder. But yes, let’s belittle the guy for taking time for himself and getting his mental health in order. Wouldn’t want him to get the help he needs if he is in fact bipolar, right? Personally, I’d rather he did.

Anxiety and anxiety disorders are a disease and are just as serious as any physical illness. If he had come out and said he had COVID, comments would be different. But because it’s a mental illness and YOU can’t see it, you don’t think it’s serious or real and that he’s just trying to get out of touring. Like holy 💩 people.

Obviously he is going through some stuff. Would you rather wake up tomorrow and read that Shawn Mendes killed himself due to mental illness? Then you’d really be wishing he had taken time off for himself. Get your heads out of your butts and stop thinking about yourself.

SHAWN’S health takes priority over everything. HIS mental well-being supersedes you seeing him in concert. Let him heal. Let him get the help he needs-whether that’s therapy or medication or whatever. But don’t sit behind your computer screen and judge a 23 year old for making a decision that MOST won’t. He could’ve continued touring just to please you. He would have continued to deteriorate until it was too late and you all would have been like “oh noes. Why didn’t he take a break? We wouldn’t have been mad. His health is important.” Just stfu and gtfo.

I have anxiety to the point where I have to be medicated and I barely leave my house. I’ve had to miss work because of it. I’ve left my bosses and coworkers without a courtesy clerk because of my anxiety. Believe me when I say that it sucks. I can’t imagine being an artist and bouncing around from city to city and how mentally draining the whole touring process must be.

I’m not even a diehard fan. I know a handful of songs...and only 3 from beginning to end. Don’t come at me and say that I’m just defending him because I’m a big fan. No no no. I’m defending him because he’s human. I’m defending him because he is going through stuff…he has an anxiety disorder. How do we know he didn’t have some sort of psychotic episode? I’m defending him because I HAVE BEEN WHERE HE’S BEEN. I HAVE STOOD WHERE HE’S STOOD. I‘VE HIT MY BREAKING POINT. I’m defending him because until you have had to deal with an anxiety disorder (and not just run of the mill anxiety), you have NO right to judge someone.

Okay. I think I’m done now 😅😂

[codename-adler]

Dear Tumblr toxicity,

Hi. Adler here. We need to talk.

- TW: mental health issues, depression, bipolar disorder, self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, coming out, xenophobia, islamophobia, racism, implied sexual content, rape, non-con, addictions, abuse, parental negligence, depictions of violence, swearing (please message me kindly if I forget anything)

- What prompted this message: The release of Skam France S7 teaser (emphasis on teaser, will get into that below)

- Where I’m coming from: I will talk from the pov of a white, cis and queer 22-years-old woman (she/her); this is the pov that affects my experiences and the opinions I will share below; but my message comes from a place of deep hurt, and love

- What this is about: My goal is to share a recurring experience that has hurt me in order to spread a message of awareness, maturity, peace and love

- Central content: Skam France, Skam Wtfock, and Skam/remakes in general

From now on I will assume people have enough information for me to talk about the topics without explaining every plotline/character. There are plenty of wiki pages to help you out and I will gladly answer any (respectful) questions asked if a plothole bothers your comprehension of my message. I’m only making these assumptions in order to alleviate the text.

January 9th, 2021.

The francetv slash YouTube channel releases an unexpected teaser video for an equally unexpected seventh season Skam France. The video features Tiffany, a white, cis female teenager, going into labour from denial pregnancy just after winning what appears to be a gymnastics championship. Overall, the video and its release are very dramatic.

The character of Tiffany, also called Tiff, was previously seen on season 6 of Skam France as a bully who persecuted the main character, Lola, both at school and on social media. Outside of this characterization, nothing is known about her. It is majorly accepted that Tiff is not a liked character; she rather poses as one of the antagonists of Lola’s arc.

Now you know the details of what happened, in the most objectively possible way. 

Now I’ll speak for myself.

Before I went digging around for people’s reaction, here is what I initially thought of this video.

1) Shock: I thought Skam France was over, so... Big, big shock.

2) Excitement: I hold this web series very close to my heart. It has gotten me through depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, coming out to my best friend. To see this new development? It couldn’t bring me more joy.

3) Curiosity: I recognized Tiff immediately. I was intrigued as to what would happen to her to set off a new season in true Skam Fr fashion. As soon as she started gripping her stomach, I knew she was pregnant and wasn’t aware of it. Big, big surprise here again.

4) Numbness/Overthinking: As I stared at my screen, motionless, my mind went off. What did it mean? How did she not know? Who is the father? Do we know him? Will the baby survive? Where are the other characters? Will Lamifex be present? What? How? When? Why? Who?

5) Disappointment: No, I did not like Tiff one bit in S6. Yes, I sincerely wished for a season on either Jo (ambiguous and funny teenage girl, cis + white), Sekou (seemingly neurodivergent teenage boy, cis + black), and my favorite, Max (mysterious and grave teenage boy, trans + white) So why Tiff? It felt to me like a missed opportunity, but I did not lose hope.

So, these were the five stages of my emotional process. And then I made the terrible mistake to go look for the fans’ reaction. I didn’t even look at the YT comments, I didn’t go on Instagram, I went directly here on Tumblr. Why? I’m still asking myself that. From S1 to S6 of Skam Fr, I kept my love for the show to myself and only looked at ig and video edits. I tried once, and only once, to look it up on Tumblr, and was greeted by fervent agressivity, disrespect and hate. Why did I ever forget that after watching the S7 teaser? I still don’t know.

The reactions on this platform were wild. People are furious (I get that). People are disappointed (I get that). People are anxious (I get that). People are also verbally agressive, insensitive, hateful, disrespectful and bullies. I don’t get that.

Comments along the lines of “What she gonna do with a fucking baby?”, “Are we gonna watch the baby do nothing all fucking season?”, “Wowwww, teenage pregnancy, so new and relatable!” (note the sarcasm made in the comment here), “Who gives a shit about Tiff?”, etc. 

And then all the mistakes Skam Fr ever made flooded back onto the feed. The wlw misrepresentation, the whitewashing, the overdramatization, the dubious sex scenes between minors, all of it.

Let’s take a break here. Do I condone these mistakes? Nope. Am I a white-bully apologist? Nope. Did I forget every horrible action Tiff has made in the past? Nope. She manipulated a whole school against Lola, she profited from Lola’s mother’s death, she bullied her, harrassed her, pushed her deeper into mental distress. Tiff was a despicable character that I never once liked. The way she was played by the actress made it clear that Tiff was not intended to be a good guy. If I could replace her as the main of S7, I would, in a heartbeat. I’d choose, as I said, Jo, Sekou or Max.

Skam France deeply lacks diversity and made mistakes when attempting to diverse the issues represented. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact. 

Poc representation is very, very low. Only one season has a woc of Islam beliefs as mc (Imane, S4) with poc entourage/family. Only 2 other characters not related to Imane were poc (Sekou and Sarah, S1-S2). These 2 characters were very in the background and served to further the mc’s plotline, they had no real content. (I am not a poc, and so my opinion does not matter here. If you are not poc, your “opinions” don’t matter here, this point is not for you to debate. These are facts.)

While I do not particularly find the wlw representation bad, I do understand how it hurts/bothers other queer women. From my perspective, the bar was very low regarding my expectations of the Lola/Maya pair (none of them died *yay* they had a happy ending *yay* they were not typically overfeminized or overmasculinized *yay* Lola  and Maya were respectful of each other, understood each other, accepted each other with all their flaws and their beauty *yay* I truly believed in their love and it gave me confidence and hope *yay* I ould really go on but this is not my main point so I’ll stop here) Regardless of my opinion on Mayla, I understand that to some queer women, it was bothering/hurtful. (If you are anything other than a woman / wlw, this point is not for you to debate. Keep your “opinions” to yourself, it does not matter here. These are facts.)

Like every remake of the original Skam where the S4 was given to Sana/Imane, the Muslim community was not represented at its best, at its most beautiful and respectfully. The character of Imane, although she is my favorite girl of the series, was not portrayed in a way that respected the majority of the Muslim community. (If you are anything other than Muslim, this point is not for you to debate. Our opinions do not matter here. These are facts.)

And so the same goes for the portrayal of sexual assault and child pronography in S2, of mental illness and homophobia in S3, of disabilities in S5, of addiction, transphobia, self-harm and neurodivergence in S6. Again, if you are not part of these communities, your opinions do not matter on these issues. These are facts that are not up for debate.

In other words, Skam France, as well as the original Skam, Skam Wtfock, Skam España, and probably all the others I haven’t watched in their entirety, are NOT perfect shows. They (maybe) tried their best to portray issues of the younger generations that are ugly, shameful, taboo, hard-to-swallow-pills. Of course they made mistakes. Of course they have to be held accountable. Of course they can and should do better. Of course it must be spoken about.

Here is my problem.

The so-called “fans” shamelessly SHITTING on the WHOLE show because of ONE TEASER TRAILER. (btw, this is where I get angry)

I am not talking about the fans making fun of the show and this season’s premise like “Better MCs than Tiff for S7: a romance between the car that almost hit Lucas S3 and the car that hit Arthur S5, or the school’s nurse, or Imane’s dad, or Elu’s rabbit” (that shit’s funny and I’d watch all of these).Or the joke about Wtfock and Skam Fr shaking hands while signing the same contract to disappoint the fans with white MCs (it’s funny cuz it’s trueeeee).

I am not talking about the fans criticizing the producers’ choice of Tiff as MC. There is a difference between shitting on issues and adressing/discussing them. I WANT to talk about how this season’s issue would have been so much better if a woc, specifically a black woman, had been the MC, because black women and doctors are a whole different level of issue than white women and doctors. Add on top of that an unplanned teenage pregnancy? It would have been IMMACULATE. I WANT to talk which wlw couple was better represented, Mayla or Croana/Crisana, and why is that. I WANT to talk about disabilities in black and poc communities. I WANT to talk about headcanons, AUs, to rectify the missed marks. I WANT to talk about our takes on seasons about Max, Sekou and Jo, instead of Tiff’s.

I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR SHITTY, NEGATIVE, UNHELPFUL, HURTFUL COMMENTS.

Just because the protagonist is white, doesn’t give you ANY right to dismiss the issue that is unplanned teenage pregnancy. This is a problem that affects countries WORLDWIDE. Do you know how many deaths are related to minors giving birth? Do you know how many babies die at birth from these pregnancies? Do you have any idea the trauma it puts you through, to go into labor without even knowing you were pregnant in the first place, and then giving birth, and then having to care for a defensless human being? The dilemma of keeping it, or giving it away? The fear that lives in every person able to give birth, that one day they’ll become pregnant, because society turns sych a shameful look to that? No matter your ethnicity, your gender identity, your sexuality, your political stance or whatever shit you bring up to justify your disgraceful and downright degrading comments, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT A MINOR GIVING BIRTH IS NOT AN ISSUE. 

You think the topic has been covered plenty before? Yeah, because shows like “16 and pregnant” and “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant!” are such good examples and show the reality with such an objective point of view! 

Bullshit. Teenage pregnancy is still a taboo, it still kills, and people are still morons about it. 

“Well I guess everybody is secretly pregnant now!” No, Jessica, but you wouldn’t know about it, would you? Because I wouldn’t tell you shit if you were my “friend” and I was going through it. The whole message of all the Skams is not that it presents super relatable issues of teenagers, although it is a big topic of the show. They present some issues that affect the youth in an authentic light, but that’s not it.

Tous les gens que tu rencontres mènent un combat dont tu ignores tout. 

Sois indulgente. Toujours. x x x

//

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

Be kind. Always. x x x

THAT’S THE MESSAGE. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SHOW.

And you all missed it.

All of you making dead baby jokes and death threats, degrading people who give birth, shaming teenagers for their pregnancies... Listen to yourselves.

“Well she deserves it, she was such a bitch!” No, Michael, you shit stick. Let’s rewind a bit for you, yeah? It was a GOD DAMN TEASER. We literally know nothing! Nothing at all! Why are y’all getting mad when we saw 3:25 minutes representing a whole ass season! Listen to yourselves. Y’all judge so fast for people pretending to love Skam and its authenticity and its motto.

You say Tiff is irredeemable?

Emma cheated on her boyfriend.

Manon lied and manipulated her friends.

Lucas was homophobic and prejudiced agaisnt mentally ill people.

Imane was homophobic too and went behind her friends’ back to get what she wanted.

Arthur cheated on his girlfriend too.

Lola dragged Elliot down with her in her addiction, lied, was verbally abusive, etc.

ALL THE MAINS ARE PROBLEMATIC.

Any guess why?

BECAUSE THEY ARE TEENAGERS. THEY ARE STILL GROWING AND LEARNING.

Yet we still loved them all. 

So don’t you dare tell me that Tiff deserves this, that her baby deserves to die, that teenage motherhood is irrelevant. Motherhood is not a curse in the first place, nor is it something to wish to inflict upon anyone. Motherhood is different for every single person and nobody except the person living with it can have an opinion on that. We don’t even know if the baby survived, for God’s sake!

There is no excuse for this kind of behavior..

It makes me so angry. Women are discriminated against in a fandom I thought was safe, again and again and again. 

I have to stop here because, well, this is just too much. There is much wrong with Skam (the original AND all the remakes), but there is even more wrong with the fans. I’m done.

You don’t support the show anymore? Fine, then don’t watch it! If I really am wrong, the number of viewers will go down and the show will die, just like you wished. There is no need to be vicious about it. 

I hope y’all are proud of your misogyny. 

Sincerely,

Adler.

[manicr]

Daredevil #35 review

I’m generally unimpressed by this run from my Bullseye-centric perspective.

The Zdarsky run has had its strengths and weaknesses as whole, but nowhere are the latter as apparent as in the character of Bullseye.  The grand finale of issue #35 really hammers that home.

Elektra, Typhoid Mary and Daredevil all fight the Bullseye clones, as it is revealed that the original is very much in a psychotic break from reality and generally in a altered state of mind: disorganized, delusional and not quite coherent. Together they beat him and the clones are killed. OG Bullseye is subsequently arrested.

On paper this is a functional story line if leaning on tropes and the stigma on mental illness: aka bad guy does bad things ‘cuz crazy. However in execution it all falls apart from the writing to the art from Landini & Mobili. The fight scenes, which take center stage in this issue, are chaotic and without impact. It does not feel like a deadly fight between the Bullsyes and Elektra & Typhoid. The lines feels dry and generic, it could have been any crook that the ladies were fighting, not Bullseye who has such an integral relationship with Elektra. Sure, with the clones its hand waved that they are easily used by Bullseye and not quite as personality driven, but even Bullseye himself barely feels like the real deal.

Even as the climax of the issue -- Bullseye wanting to reenact his murder of Elektra via proxy of dressed up bystanders - feels detached from emotional stakes. I think there the art is the biggest issue, the framing, expressions and composition feel too zoomed out and unemotional. The same is the issue of Matt’s quite needless rescue/attack on Bullseye. The emotional stake is just not there.

DD #169, which features a similar story in the sense of Bullseye being in the middle of an episode and killing indiscriminately, highlights how well such a story can be managed, and how much it can engage the reader in Bullseye’s state of mind and the fear he causes in others, as well as to understand that the hero needs to adjust their behavior to deal with him.

The ending tapers off into a bizarre standoff with the cops with Iron-Man and Spider-Man coming in to support DDs release, as if his legal state was somehow up to them. Then the scene with Kingpin and Typhoid Mary, which at least attempts to achieve some pathos with a proposal, however even then there’s that detached quality.

I can’t say that it was a horrible issue. It was mostly one that just felt like it happened and that was all there was to it.  2/5 stars.

[mental-mona]

So You've Just Been Diagnosed With a Chronic Illness - an Orientation

So you've just been diagnosed with a chronic illness, huh? Welcome to the club; there are a lot of us here! I wouldn't presume to guess what your exact illness is, but most of us have some kind of fatigue and physical and/or mental pain going on, so that seems like a safe bet. Since you're new here, I thought I'd give you some idea of what to expect and what to do as you battle your illness.

First and foremost, accept it. Life is not going to be the way it was before. You will always either have some kind of symptom or be on the lookout for signs of a flare/episode. I'm not going to tell you to "suck it up, buttercup" because that would be neither useful nor fair, but you do need to grieve your past life in your own way and then look toward your future life with this condition. It really is a process of grief - the whole idea of the 5 stages of grief is nonsense, but whatever grief looks like to you, this will be a form of it. You had this whole, lovely, capable life before, and now…what? You have no idea, and it's scary, and most likely right now life is pain. It's a tangible loss, and that fact shouldn't be denied. You need to mourn for the life you had, but you also need to accept that this is your new reality and not keep trying to do things you can't or shouldn't. It's frustrating as hell, but sometimes you'll find yourself simply unable to do something that you used to do without thinking twice about it. Feel that frustration, then accept it and learn to work with it. Your job depends on computers but your wrists are killing you? This is why wrist braces and ergonomic mouse pads exist. Can't see the screen in its default state, or its default state is so bright that it gives you a headache? This is why it's possible to mess with the brightness and contrast settings on your computer. Whatever your problem is, there's probably a workaround or something that will at least temporarily relieve the symptoms. You've got this.

Ok, so whatever you have isn't curable, it can't be treated well enough that you'll have an overall good quality of life, and/or it's degenerative? When you've reached a point where it becomes clear that basic workarounds aren't going to cut it, it's time for some planning. Do you need someone to help you with your job? Transportation? Basic tasks? Who do you think should help you, and how? Obviously you don't want to think about being debilitated, but I'm afraid you're going to have to swallow your pride here lest you find yourself stuck without a way to get to a doctor appointment, or worse, stuck in bed with no one to feed you and help you get to the bathroom without falling over. Again, the goal is to accept your illness and work with it. I'd give you more concrete suggestions, but I don't know your precise condition nor would I presume to ask.

Ok, now let's discuss how to live within your new, more limited reality until you adjust to whatever its default state ends up being. The first thing you need to do is find a doctor who specializes in whatever system of your body is a problem, preferably one with specific expertise on your condition. There may be paperwork to fill out before your initial visit - pages and pages of it - but hopefully the results will be worth it. You need to develop a working rapport with your doctor; don't forget that unless you live in an area with really crappy healthcare or you have really crappy insurance, you can always "fire" your current doc and find someone you like better. There is no good reason to put up with a doctor who doesn't listen to you and/or has a God complex if you don't absolutely have to.

Once you've found a specialist whom you feel listens to you and whom you can work with, it's time to discuss what you want to tackle first. Which symptom(s) you find most bothersome may determine which medication or therapy the doctor tries with you first. Then it's time for an unpleasantly prolonged game of "Symptom or Side Effect?" as your body keeps doing weird new things and you keep talking to your doctor. That patient information they give out with every drug they dispense at the pharmacy is your friend; at the bare minimum look at the parts about side effects so that you can at least make an educated guess in the game, and if it seems like the med is doing something nasty to you then your doctor can change it. Unfortunately there is no magic pill that will fix all of your issues with no side effects; the question is more the pro/con ratio. The med's doing wonders for one symptom but now you can't pee? Nope, sorry, that's not acceptable. (Yes, side effects can be that weird; let's just say that that example was not pulled from thin air.) The med doesn't seem to be doing anything particularly bad, but doesn't seem to be doing anything particularly good either? Also not acceptable. The med's making your illness better but now you're always tired? Up to you whether that's acceptable; if it is, great, and if not, hopefully your doctor will have something else up their sleeve.

Depending on your illness, until you and your doctor get your symptoms under control and figure out what normal looks like for you, you may unfortunately find yourself spending a lot of time in the ER as well as the doctor's office. There may be no help for it; some diseases cause emergencies when they're out of control, plus it can take time to learn to differentiate between "normal" pain and "something's really wrong" pain. If either of those is the case for you, life is going to be really hard for a while. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but there's simply no sense in sugarcoating it. You may become a bit of a hypochondriac, but your body and/or brain doing all sorts of weird new things is bound to have that effect on you. Eventually you'll learn what "normal" looks and feels like, and until then all of your "but this shouldn't be…what if…?"s are understandable.

Now let's talk about something really evil that happens to the members of this club: the societal expectation that you will either die or permanently get better, and if you claim to be able to do x one day but not another day then you're malingering. This is total malarkey and we both know it, but it apparently seems to be a common attitude toward the disabled and chronically ill. You may have gotten it so much that you've internalized it; if that's the case, mentally take a step back and remind yourself that you are not faking, you are not just looking for attention, and that your energy and ability levels vary day by day and you simply have to work with that or suffer even worse consequences later. Read about spoon theory for more on the whole energy thing, and I've posted a few other compositions (which I will soon be editing and reposting) for you to read and share with your loved ones if you so choose.

Speaking of loved ones, now is the time to refine communication with them regarding your needs. If they're micromanaging you with "Should you really be eating that? Have you taken your meds today? No, you know you can't do that. You know you need to do this symptom-relief thing" type things, that's probably getting really annoying. Remember, their hearts are in the right place, and they may even be right about whatever they're saying. However, tone and expression matter; there's a world of difference between "I seem to recall the doctor saying that you shouldn't eat that" and "Don't eat that;" between "Have you taken your meds?" and "Consider this a reminder to take your meds if you haven't yet;" between "Do this to relieve your symptoms" and an implicit "we know x works for you" along with an explicit "Have you tried x to relieve your symptoms today?" Basically, the difference is command vs. suggestion. Most people respond much better to suggestions and relatively hands-off reminders than they do to commands and reminders that seem to come with the assumption that you're a forgetful idiot. It's a thin line and a hard one to walk, but if you give them some feedback eventually your loved ones should get the hang of it. (Also, if you really are going against doctors' orders, then perhaps you actually do need to listen to the annoying things your loved ones are saying!) As for all the "Hey, I read this article about something resembling your condition; could you have the rare thing I just read about/could this new treatment I just read about help you" nuisances directed at you, they are actually expressions of love and concern. If they're really annoying then tell everyone to just buzz off, but your better bet is to smile, glance at the article or whatever to see if there really is something of value there, and if there isn't then just quietly get rid of the article and dismiss the advice.

Anyway, that pretty much concludes your orientation; if you have any more questions feel free to ask someone in the chronic illness club or consider joining a support group for your specific condition, and good luck!

[green-blooded]

This is another Stargate Atlantis post about Michael Kenmore, please forgive me.

But I had the impression while watching the series that his physical health was pretty seriously deteriorating along with his mental health. Infection seems to back that up a little, even though they don’t mention Michael being sick.

Anyway. I wanted to do a little timeline in pictures to analyze his deterioration. 

Some notes:

- I will take what’s on screen as canon and not take production issues into account... yes, some of the changes might just be different makeup choices, but it’s in canon now!

- I’m new here. I don’t now how other people analyze these episodes. I’m just going off of what I thought while I was watching.

The end of season 2, when he’s just starting to recover from the retrovirus. These day for night shots are terrible, but this is just the early stage of what we’ll see in the beginning of season 3, so...

The beginning of Season 3, before Misbegotten, is probably the healthiest we ever see Michael after the retrovirus. He seems to be thinking clearly and his facial features are much more Wraith than they will be after the second round of the retrovirus. Both of his pit organs are intact, he still has slit pupils, his hair is its natural color, and his teeth are relatively sharp. He’s still able to feed.

After the second round of the retrovirus in Misbegotten, there are some changes by the end of season 3 in Vengeance. The decline in his mental faculties has clearly started, given that he has the technical know-how to protect himself, but instead creates hybrids with iratus bugs. Physically, his right pit organ is mostly closed and his left is shallower, and the texture of his skin is less waxy/smooth the way a Wraith’s skin is. He still has slit pupils and his natural hair color, and we can assume he can still feed.

By the end of Season 4, he’s been experimenting on himself (it’s not clear how far back he started). Most notibly, he can no longer feed. He also has rounded pupils and brown hair. He has increasingly visible veins under his skin. I don’t have a good shot of it, but his teeth seem to be flat rather than sharp by now.

By his last episode at the end of season 5, while he can still come up with brilliant plans, he makes glaring mistakes. Keeping Ronon alive and guarded by one person, keeping the jumper next to the gate, stopping to take a souvineer from Ronon before leaving? His plan with Teyla and her baby has always been a little nebulous and irrational, but it’s peak nonsensical in this episode. Physically, he looks drawn and pale, his skin almost translucent. He’s still a strong fighter, but he’s undergone serious mental and phyiscal changes over the last few years; changes which are known to be deadly to Wraith even when they’re not experiments that someone is doing to themselves like he did.

My thoughts about this: 

The first “treatment” with the retrovirus caused some seroius physical changes and possibly some mental changes, but he was still rational and hadn’t lost much of his Wraith ability.

The second “treatment” did a lot more damage. Some of his psychological changes are from the betrayal by both the Wraith and the SGA crew, but I believe that there was probably physical damage to his brain. This is supported by Teyla sensing him differently than she usually senses Wraith. There is also some other physical damage to his pit organs, which would likely damage his sense of sight.

The experiments he does to himself further strip him of his Wraith abilities, more than just taking away his ability to feed. His pupils change shape possibly resulting in further loss of his sight. Although he’s still stronger than the average Human, he reacts more to a single gunshot wound than an average Wraith. He starts to become increasibly pale and veiny in a way that doesn’t seem congruent with the paleness of Wraith since he seems to have Human-ish melanin (evidenced by his hair color change), so may point to a illness similar to what’s happening to Todd and his crew in Infection. 

This may also help explain why his plan in The Prodigal seems a little desperate. If he’s sick, he might believe that Torrin might hold the key to figuring out how to fix this issue with his hybridization. Also, he’s extremely defensive about being “weakened” and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s because he knows his health is deteriorating.

[neon-nightmare-zone]

Living with Narcolepsy [2]

This post is going to be all I know about treating narcolepsy and being as functional as possible. It’s really difficult to be functional in the traditional sense if your narcolepsy is severe - working a 9 to 5 job just isn’t realistic for some people. That said, with appropriate treatment, accommodations, and determination, you can really do whatever you want. Get a PhD in math and a PhD in neuroscience. Whatever you want.

Life-style Adjustments

There are a number of life-style adjustments that can drastically help manage the symptoms of narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is characterized by REM sleep dysfunction, which leads to dysregulation of sleep-wake cycles. Someone with narcolepsy may not necessarily sleep more hours than the average person. It can help someone with narcolepsy to keep a schedule that allows them to take regular naps. Most narcolepsy resources recommend a nap time of 20-30 minutes, with longer naps leading to more unproductive sleep. Personally, I have found this advice to be ineffective as I cannot wake up after I fall asleep. Instead, keeping a schedule where I work at home and can sleep whenever I need to is optimal. I go from having severe excessive daytime fatigue (EDS) to having moderate EDS. This advice may not be practical for someone who has to work a regular schedule. People with narcolepsy, especially severe presentations of such, cannot sleep on a regular schedule on a fundamental level. This makes a lot of types of employment problematic. I begin having hallucinations and dangerous sleep attacks (unplanned attacks of fatigue that make things like driving dangerous) within two weeks of needing to keep a regular schedule of ~20 hours a week, and this was when I was younger and more functional.

Sleep hygiene is good to practice. Keep a separate space for sleeping where you do not engage in complex mental activity. The thing is, because of the sleep state dysregulation inherent to narcolepsy, the common tips for other sleep disorders don’t really apply. Keeping a consistent sleep schedule can drastically upset a narcoleptic’s functioning if they don’t need to do it. I work my own hours, and if I keep a set schedule without needing to then I become more ill because my body does not naturally sleep in regular time intervals and forcing it to conform makes things worse.

Comorbidity

Many disorders are triggered by a lack of sleep. For instance, I have a disorder called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. When I am having trouble with POTS, I am prone to passing out or feeling ill. Lack of sleep is a common trigger for POTS episodes. In someone with narcolepsy, it is easy to trigger other conditions that are sensitive to sleep regulation. I have more severe episodes of POTS when I treat my narcolepsy because I am intensifying the chronic state of sleep deprivation that I live in when I sleep less than my disorder naturally demands of me.

Medication

There are a number of medications for narcolepsy, but no cure. Narcolepsy appears to involve a destruction of hypocretin-producing brain cells. This causes an inability to regulate sleep cycles. We have three main types of sleep states (some scientists divide these different stages down further than this): light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep. Someone with narcolepsy does not cycle through the different sleep states for the correct length of time or for the correct proportion of time relative to the other stages of sleep. This means that curing the excessive daytime fatigue element of narcolepsy, which is the most disabling element of narcolepsy, will eventually cause some degree of illness if time isn’t taken to rest because the body will become even more sleep deprived by cutting out the ineffective sleep it is attempting to enter. It’s helpful to not take medication on days where it isn’t necessary in order to catch up on sleep.

My personal take on the stimulant medications commonly prescribed or tried for narcolepsy:

Provigil: I didn’t really like this one; it gave me weird side effects. I kept getting a sudden flu-like illness when I would use it, and could never tolerate it for more than a couple days.

Ritalin: I love ritalin. This is what I use. Don’t hang out around drug addicts or mention you have it or they WILL try to steal it. I hate druggies so much. Ritalin is a pretty standard stimulant and can be helpful for people who keep a fragmented sleep schedule. Personally, if I try to keep a regular schedule even with stimulants, within a month I become so fatigued that I will uncontrollably fall asleep even with the stimulants. What I like about ritalin is that the short acting form of it lasts for around 4-6 hours, so it doesn’t keep you awake for too long. The more stimulated I am, the more ill I become because of my comorbid POTS diagnosis. That fucking POTS diagnosis. It haunts me like an evil demon at all times and in many forms.

Adderall: A lot of people like adderall. It provoked POTS episodes for me, so I didn’t like it much, but contrary to what you would expect some people respond better to adderall than to ritalin (or vice versa.) They affect neurotransmitters in different ways so they have a different side effect profile, and one may agree with someone else more than the other.

Caffeine: I fall asleep when I take this and never found it to be helpful. Some people do find caffeine, especially as an adjunct to their medication, to be helpful. Personally, I feel it’s healthiest to take as few stimulants as possible and to work on finding a way to live a life that follows my sleep schedule. The sleep schedule thing isn’t realistic for most people though.

PhenylPiracetam: This was a bit too strong, and provoked autonomic nervous system activation because it lasts for over 8 hours. I could see this being pretty good as an alternative medicine supplement for someone who doesn’t have POTS especially.

[eternallovers65]

I was watching ikon tv on YouTube again and that made me look at a bunch of old clips from kpop, and I just want to say FUCK THE BIG 3 SO MUCH OR ANY OTHER COMPANY THAT TREATS IDOLS LIKE SHIT

JYPE

Blatantly favoritism over Twice and Stray Kids, which leads to overworking them, and zero to nonexistent comebacks to got7 and day6 (idk about itzy bc I'm not a fan). For example in 2018, Twice had 6 comebacks (japanese/singles included) and in both 2017/19 they had 5 (japanese/singles included) Stray Kids on the year they debuted, 2018, had 4 and in 2019 they had 5 (japanese/singles included).

This situation got so bad that during a vlive Jeongyeon cried because of how overworked she was. She, Mina and Jisung had to take a break from promotion, I know that those breaks were in different eras but I think that there's a link on why only members of the most overworked groups needed a break.

Also Got7 has like zero promotion, when they had the world tour ahgases were the ones to promote then, because jype didn't bought ads. The boys songs were refused so many times, Mark's schedule were canceled so he couldn't meet his family. They refused to give a solo career to Yugyeom and Mark, when they failed to protect the boys from the sasaengs which lead them moving out so many times and on why Jackson got injured.

Edit: I am more than glad to say that today, 10th of January, all members of Got7 are leaving Jype. #Got7forever💚 I love you boys, thank you for 7 years of happiness, and I'll proudly continue to support all of you

How they forced that visual and hairstyle on Jeongyeon, even tho she didn't wanted it, she said during a vlive that she wanted to grow her hair but the company used to cut shorter everytime. They are extremely strict with the weight and the food, a few artists like Sunmi already said that. Somi has told some stories about how they had to sneak food and hide eating in the bathroom, and when Momo was forced to lose 7kg in seven days only to appear in a showcase.

The famous situation flag situation with Tzuyu. She was 16 when that happened, she introduced herself as Taiwanese and held the Taiwan flag as well. Which lead to many to many chinese users saying she was a pro-independence activist, she was barred from the Chinese television and suspended of all her activities in China. 2 months later, on the day of the election in Taiwan, Jype posted a video of her reading an apology saying that there's only one China and she is extremely proud to be Chinese. She was 16 at the time, and you can see during the video that she is so scared, sad and clearly hesitating on saying what she's reading, the whole video just has this weird, forced vibes. The 3 presidential candidates said that video was too cruel for a 16 year old girl and that she didn't need to apologize.

YG

I will never forgive yg for disbanding 2ne1, for not helping G-Dragon when he was accused of plagiarism and started suffering from depression but had to continue with the promotion. Same thing with Top that was diagnosed with social anxiety and depression, and suffered a overdose because of the marijuana scandal but yg had also nothing to say.

For releasing Hanbin in a DAY because of false accusations, while it took them WEEKS to release s***gri and only after he released a statement saying that he was leaving bigbang. And for not telling the public or for not defending Jennie during that time everyone were saying she was lazy when in fact she had an ankle injury, but still continued the promotions.

SM

Whether we like to admit or not, SM is probably the best company in the kpop history if we're talking about success, they have a formula that works over and over again, it's a pattern, we can especially see it in Suju, Shinee, Exo and Nct. But omg they have zero compassion for their idols.

Starting from the training, we all know the training for the debut is really difficult, but a lot of people say that between all the companies SM is the worst one, they are extremely strictly and controlling , especially the managers who abuse the power. They have this curated-ness that is quite toxic, and leads to an incredibly perfectionistic and controlling management system. Kai used to practice 8 hours a day so that everything was perfect, like surely work it out bc Kai is one of the best dancers in the industry, but still that's a lot of hours you're basically overworking yourself (I think)

As a result, many idols have even more outstandingly brutal beauty standards than there already are in the kpop industry generally. especially intense weight-loss standards, Taeyeon already said this, during the first 5 years of GG she was constantly battling with eating disorders. Baekhyun has this diet where, instead of eating the food he only chews and then spits out, Sehun in 2017 (I think) had this stage on the Exo tour and he said that he spend an entire month on diet, so he could do that stage. Taemin said on a few episodes of Mtopia that he was on a diet, but you can clearly see that he was extremely thin. Also they have a part in their contracts about plastic surgery, you can see that almost every SM artist has done it a double eyelid surgery.

The blatantly favoritism over Korean idols and the mistreats that happens with idols that aren't Korean (especially with they're chinese), as we saw many times already with examples like Tao, Kris, Luhan, Lay, Winwin, Ten and Lucas before they joined WayV. Or favoritism with certain members of groups, like Taeyong in Nct, of course that favoritism is a part of their formula but still pretty fucked up.

They have such a questionable promotion, like I already read once about. They said that SM promotes the new groups so they can form a better fan base and that way no longer will need the promotion, but still this is extremely bad. Like with BoA, Tvxq or Suju who are still relevant but we barely hear news about them because SM doesn't promote then, and I can already see this with Exo especially in their latest comeback.

They manage mental health horrifically. Like with Taeyeon in 2014/15 when a member (bc SM treated Jessica as garbage) of her group had to leave, which lead to the midia saying it was her fault alongside with the hate she received at that time because of her relationship with Baekhyun, that lead to her depression and eating disorders. Same thing happened with Baek, although he didn't receive the same amount of hate, he still had to suffer with his relationship being in the spotlight while 3 members of his group left, because AGAIN SM treated them as fucking garbage.

For stop carrying about f(x), as a result lead to a witch hunt on Victoria saying that it was her fault for that happening, for Sulli who was suffering from a mental illness but never received a break nor the protection from the media that used to say that she was a bad example. For Jonghyun who was also suffering from depression but never got any help or a break.

And our latest examples Irene and Chanyeol. I don't approve Irene's actions, but the fact that the media is so ruthless with her it's ridiculous and even more ridiculous of SM to not defend their idol, especially when there's so many other celebrities that are WAY worse than her. And for Chanyeol, who was accused of cheating on his girlfriend 10 times, but SM had nothing to say or to defend his image. It took the fans for that to happen, the fans were the ones to find out that was a fake and cover up scandal so the news about the government crisis were not to be seen.

They are so bad at dealing with idol apologies, like why did Taeyong in 2016 had to apologize for something he didn’t do, but they never had anyone apologize for their racist or the cultural appropriation that the idols have done many times already in a lot of mvs????

That's why I hate the kpop industry and the media so fucking much, bc they're ruthless and assholes who are putting so much pressure on the idols, who in the end of the day are humans and are deserving of things like love, privacy and a break to take care of themselves. I truly adore kpop and the dramas, but I'd stop watching and listening with all of my heart if it means that they would stop treating humans beings as fucking trash! They deserve so much more!

Thank you for coming to my ted talk!

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hello lovely!! I’m a sucker for Sherlock comforting John after nightmares or just ptsd episodes, and was curious if you know of any? And/or any fics where johns old shoulder injury is bothering him and Sherlock helps :) I just need all the caring fluff ☺️

Hey Nonny!

Ahhhh!! Yes, I have quite a few Nightmares/PTSD fics, and I’m going to use this opportunity to update my past lists since I have a nice collection of more! As for the shoulder injury, I believe Maintenance and Repair by patternofdefiance has Sherlock doing that, but I can’t recall. I’ll start a separate list offline for Shoulder Injuries perhaps. Hmm. Actually, you might find some good Caring Sherlock fics on these lists:

John Whump / Sherlock Takes Care of John

John Whump / Sherlock Takes Care of John Pt. 2

John Whump / Sherlock Takes Care of John Pt. 3

Scars

Scars Pt. 2

Now, for the main event!! Hope you enjoy, and as always, Loves, add your own!

NIGHTMARES, PTSD, PANIC ATTACKS & MENTAL/EMOTIONAL TURMOIL Pt. 3

See also:

Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, & Mental / Emotional Turmoil

Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attack, & Mental / Emotional Turmoil Pt. 2

NIGHTMARES

Study in John by chappysmom (K+, 2,158 w., 1 Ch. || Post-ASiP, POV John, Introspection, Friendship, Nightmares, Caring Sherlock, John’s Limp) – After the events of "A Study in Pink," John lies on the couch in Baker Street and thinks about the whirlwind events of the day. What is he getting himself into?

Sleepless nights by El loopy (T, 5,467 w., 3 Ch. || Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares/Insomnia, Panic Attack, Worried Sherlock) – Sherlock has a nightmare and John wants to know what it was about. Set during season 1. Three-shot.

What Did I Do Wrong? by Starlight05 (T, 7,880 w. || Hurt Comfort, Angst, John Whump, Hospitalization, Worried Sherlock, Emotional Turmoil, Nightmares, Sherlock Being Dumb) - After John almost dies on a case, Sherlock disappears. So John is left to figure out what he can do to get his best friend back. Meanwhile Sherlock, guilt-ridden and willingly alone, is doing everything he can to stay away.

Lunar Landscapes by J_Baillier (M, 57,046 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || S3/TAB Fix-It, Slow Burn Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Drugs, Pain, Medical, Injury, Sherlock Whump, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Romance, Secrets, Tragedy, Trauma, BAMF John, Doctor!John, Drug Addict Sherlock, Injured Sherlock, Grieving John, Idiots In Love, Protective John, POV John Watson, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock is a Mess, Medical Realism) – An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

Just To Hold You Close by sussexbound (E, 70,841 w., 18 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock POV, ASD Sherlock, PTSD John, Demisexual Sherlock, Bisexual John, Cuddling/Snuggling, Platonic Cuddling, Enthusiastic Consent, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Sexual Tension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddle Negotiations, For a Case Until It Isn’t, Hair Petting, Sexual Negotiation, Anxiety, Trust Issues, Slow Burn, Panic Attacks, Frottage, Hand/Blow Jobs, Referenced Self Harm / Abuse / Suicidal Ideation, First Kiss/Time, Anal) – When a woman is murdered and the last person to see her alive is recently invalided army vet turned reluctant (and prickly) professional cuddler, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is pulled into a world of intimacy and intrigue he never could have imagined. John is a conundrum and mystery: frank yet reserved, tender yet angry, open yet afraid. Sherlock is instantly drawn into his orbit, and begins to feel and desire things he never has before.

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Asexual Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Flashbacks, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock, Case Fic, Sherlock’s Past, Awkward Conversations, Anxious Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court.

PTSD / EMOTIONAL TURMOIL

A Room of One's Own by whitchry9 (K+, 2,174 w., 5 Ch. || S2 Timeline, Hurt/Comfort, Supernatural, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Coma, John Whump, Worried Sherlock, POV John, Angst, Friendship/Bromance, Hospital) – When a severe head injury lands John in a coma, somehow he ends up in Sherlock's mind palace. It's actually pretty nice there, and John is entertaining the notion of staying there, rather than returning to his broken body. But Sherlock isn't taking it as well, and John can feel him breaking around him.

Museums and Laboratories by RhododendronPonticum (T, 3,004 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Angst, Obsessive Sherlock, Anxious Sherlock, Anxiety/Panic Attack, Separation Anxiety, Doctor John, Co-Dependent Sherlock) – If Sherlock's kitchen was his laboratory, then his bedroom was his museum.

A Home for Us by sussexbound (M, 30,581 w., 12 Ch. || Scars, Bedsharing, Grief, Doctor John, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TRF, Implied/Referenced Torture, Sherlock POV, Pining Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation, Heavy Emotions, Clingy Sherlock, Hallucinations, Disassociation, Emotional Turmoil) – He has been on the road for two years, and he is exhausted. He’s almost accepted that he will never see London (John) again—almost. But then there are nights like tonight, where he is weak, and all he can think of is the warmth of the flat they once shared, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the teasing smile playing at the corner of John’s lips, the boxes of half-eaten Chinese takeaway balanced precariously in their laps. He aches at the memory of it, at the realisation that it is something he may never experience again.

Impossible to Feign by achray (M, 49,204 w., 12 Ch. || TRF Rewrite / Reverse Reichenbach, Suicidal Ideations / Discussions, Drug Use/Abuse, Mutual Pining, Friends With Benefits, John Accepts his Sexuality, Anxious Sherlock, Meddling Mycroft, Depression, Hallucinations, Secret Agent John, BAMF John, Reunion, Make-Up Sex, Ambiguous Ending) – Sherlock leant forward, his long fingers curving round to grip John’s.“I won’t let him win,” he said, eyes hard. “I will do whatever it takes to get you out.”

Anchor Point by trickybonmot (E, 49,856 w., 80 Ch. || Truman Show AU || Psychological Drama, Suspense, Slow Burn, Dark Characters / Fic, Alternating First/Third Person, Protective John, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Tender Moments, Love Confessions, Hand/Blow Jobs, Cuddling, Jealous John, First Kiss/Time) – The world tunes in nightly for Sherlock, the ultimate in reality TV: Sherlock Holmes, a real person with a legendary name, unknowingly lives out his life in a staged setting contrived by his brother. Things get complicated when a retired army doctor joins the show to play the part of Sherlock's closest friend. This fic borrows its concept from the 1998 film, the Truman Show. However, you don't need to have any knowledge of the movie to enjoy this story.

Lunar Landscapes by J_Baillier (M, 57,046 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || S3/TAB Fix-It, Slow Burn Angst, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Confessions, Drugs, Pain, Medical, Injury, Sherlock Whump, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Romance, Secrets,  Tragedy, Trauma, BAMF John, Doctor!John, Drug Addict Sherlock, Injured Sherlock, Grieving John, Idiots In Love, Protective John, POV John Watson, PTSD Sherlock, Sherlock is a Mess, Medical Realism) – An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

Repairing the Broken Things by BakerTumblings (M, 75,252 w., 15 Ch. || S4 Compliant, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Hospitals, Big Brother Mycroft, Misunderstandings, Realizations, Severe Accident, John Whump, Pneumonia, Medical Procedures, Bed Sharing, First Time, Healing, Happy Ending) – "I'm calling today to notify you that there's been an accident."

Not Broken, Just Bent by Schmiezi (E, 87,585 w., 43 Ch. || Pining, Love Confessions, Rape/Sexual Assault, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Villain!Mary, Suicidal Ideations, Main Character Death, Sherlock First Person POV, Parentlock, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Love Making, Possessiveness, Depression, PTSD, Kidnapping, Virgin Sherlock, Eventual Happy Ending) – "For a second, I allow myself to remember teaching John how to waltz. There is a special room in my mind palace for it. A big one, with a proper parquet dance floor. For a second, I go there. I remember holding him, closer than the World Dance Council asks for, excusing it with the fact that we are training for a wedding, not for a competition. For a second, I feel his hand on mine again, smell his sweat, hear the song we used. For a second, I allow myself to love him deeply. For a second, only a second, that love reflects on my face." Fix-it for S3, starting at the end of TSoT. Evil Mary.

Just To Hold You Close by sussexbound (E, 70,841 w., 18 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock POV, ASD Sherlock, PTSD John, Demisexual Sherlock, Bisexual John, Cuddling/Snuggling, Platonic Cuddling, Enthusiastic Consent, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Sexual Tension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddle Negotiations, For a Case Until It Isn’t, Hair Petting, Sexual Negotiation, Anxiety, Trust Issues, Slow Burn, Panic Attacks, Frottage, Hand/Blow Jobs, Referenced Self Harm / Abuse / Suicidal Ideation, First Kiss/Time, Anal) – When a woman is murdered and the last person to see her alive is recently invalided army vet turned reluctant (and prickly) professional cuddler, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is pulled into a world of intimacy and intrigue he never could have imagined. John is a conundrum and mystery: frank yet reserved, tender yet angry, open yet afraid. Sherlock is instantly drawn into his orbit, and begins to feel and desire things he never has before.

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Asexual Sherlock, POV Sherlock, Flashbacks, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock, Case Fic, Sherlock’s Past, Awkward Conversations, Anxious Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series

Northwest Passage by Kryptaria (E, 95,157 w., 27 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Canadian AU ||  BAMF!John, Canadian John, PTSD, Anal / Oral Sex, Rimming, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Drug Rehab, Falling in Love, Pining Sherlock, Love Confessions, Sherlock’s Violin, Panic Attacks, Switching, Anxious / Protective Sherlock, Hugs for Comfort, Suicide Mentions, Healing Each Other) – Seven years ago, Captain John Watson of the Canadian Forces Medical Service withdrew from society, seeking a simple, isolated life in the distant northern wilderness of Canada. Though he survives from one day to the next, he doesn't truly live until someone from his dark past calls in a favor and turns his world upside-down with the introduction of Sherlock Holmes." Part 1 of Tales from the Northwest

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court.