#its not denied a kidney stone | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ratnasagarjewels1 · 5 months ago

Text

How April born individuals can empower their birth chart planets?

The arrival of the month of April indicates the beginning of the new life as it is yet another month of the spring season. For many people out there, the spring ushers in the recreational activities. There is no denying the fact that you can even feel the positive vibes in nature with trees, plants, animals, and insects reviving back to a new life after the end of a harsh and cold winter season. People across the globe enjoy this time by taking spring breaks for celebrating their birthdays. What present you are buying on your birthday this year? How about buying a beautiful gemstone?

For all those who are fortunate to be born in the month April, the most cherished precious stone that can suit them very well as per their birth chart is - diamonds definitely the best choice for women or men out there. Through this post, let’s try to discover more information about this most striking and dazzling precious stone.

Diamond History And Meaning

A diamond is a precious stone that is truly meant to be given to a person whom you love very deeply. In fact, you must have come across the cliché many times about this precious stone, “A Diamond is eternal”. This is because of the reason that this precious stone is considered to be the representation of the purest form of love or eternal love. It is undoubtedly the hardest substance that is found on Earth.

Generally speaking, it is definitely a precious gemstone that everyone thinks about giving to their partners on their 50th marriage anniversary and even the birthstone of the individuals who are born in the month of April. It is alleged that the diamonds were first ever found in India, roughly around 3000 years ago. However, there are evidences that prove that there could be chances that diamonds date back to as long as 6000 years ago. In Primordial India, people revered diamonds as spiritual and scared representations.

Going back to early olden times, diamonds were always used to cut in tools due to the fact that they are the hardest substance found on the Earth. Nowadays, diamonds are found almost all across the globe. During the 600 AD, diamonds were discovered in Borneo, an island to be found in the north of Australia. In the 1700s, Brazil was known to be the famous and abundant source of diamonds and in the 1800s, South Africa became the only company that used to supply a major source of diamonds across the globe. Ever since the 1970s, Australia has secured the position of the country that supplies the major source of this precious gemstone.

Where Diamond Precious Stone Is Usually Found?

Diamonds are found in roughly around 35 countries across the globe. At present, the predominant producers of diamonds across the globe are South Africa, Russia and Botswana, while Australia is known to supply the majority of the diamond that is used for industrial applications. Besides this, this precious stone is also found in countries including India, Russia, Siberia, Brazil, China, Canada and the United States.

Benefits Of Wearing Diamond Precious Stone:

Some of the benefits of wearing diamond precious stone are:

• It is known to help the wearer improve the effects of the Venus planet their birth chart.

• Diamond is considered to have a very positive and magnetic effect when it comes to love and marriage.

• It increases the sense of humbleness, authenticity, and personal magnetism in the wearer.

• Its vibes can magnify charming personality and ease disturbed married life. Many times diamonds vibes release the cause of divorce and separation.

• It saves the wearer from getting themselves involved in any sort of illegitimate associations and may diminish the probabilities of financial loss.

• This precious stone is known to cure any aliment related to ovaries, breasts, reproductive systems, kidney, diabetes, urinary tract, throat, chin, cheeks, and skin.

• It helps the wearer to embark on the right path in the course of their business.

• Diamond is said to be good for people who are planning to do something in the field of music, arts, and culture and the good position of Venus planet help the wearer to get rid of the psychological fears.

• Artists, doctors, traders, and businessmen can benefit the most when they wear diamond gemstone.

• Diamond is known to make the wearer more optimistic, have strong intuition power, tranquillity, and wealth.

How To Take Care And Clean The Diamond Precious Stone?To keep your diamond jewelry always dazzling and sparkling, you need to make sure you clean your jewelry regularly to keep away dirt, dust, lotions and skin oils. If you don’t clean your diamond jewelry regularly, then there are chances these things could clog on your diamond and make it look less sparkling. Hence, the easiest way to clean your precious stone jewelry is to add mild dish soap in the lukewarm water and soak them in it for say about 1- to 15 minutes. After that, you have to scrub it gently using a soft bristle toothbrush to remove the dirt. Apart from this, there are some other things that you need to bear in mind:• Make sure you take off your precious stone jewelry before you do any sort of workout in the gym. • Always take off your diamond jewelry before you go swimming or decide to take a shower. Water in the swimming pool or shower contains chlorine which can damage the shine of your precious stone. • Time to time you must ensure your precious stone is rightly set in the jewelry. If not, then make sure you get it set from the experienced jeweller. Otherwise, you might end up losing your precious stone.

Are you thinking of adding a new statement of jewelry in your collection? Call our expert astrologers to know more about your birth chart and the gemstone that will help you improve your planets position and bring more prosperity in our life now.

Originally Published At Ratna Sagar Jewels On July 25, 2024.

#Beautifull Gemstone Beads #Natural Gemstone Beads #Jewellary Making.

0 notes

i-am-a--lionheart · 1 year ago

Text

It's normal

Trigger: ED, IBD, Endometriosis, period, verbal abuse

I am 9 when my mother puts me on a diet.

The pre-teen fat scares her, I am 128 cm and weighing in at 29 kg. She feeds me nothing but meal-replacement shakes that are meant for teenagers.

She is a pharmacist.

I am 10 when I get my period.

My grandma is scared, but my mother says it's normal. I bleed a ton, I get nauseous. She says I don't need to go to see the gyn yet, my father agrees.

He is a doctor.

I am 13 when I pass out for the first time.

My confirmation dress is a little tight, my mother makes me fast of water and juice. I collapse on my way to dance school, on the road.

I call nobody.

I am 15 when the pain gets unbearable.

I cry a lot, I want to take pain medication. My mother denies me, thinking I will get addicted.

I steal them from her.

I am 17 when I develope an ED.

In school they bully me. I am 160 cm, weighing 55 kg. It's my weight, says my mother. I ask for carb-reduction pills, she says it's cheating.

I buy laxatives instead.

I am 18 when I begin to pass out and puke from the pain.

My periods are short, I bleed a ton, my stomach is upset all the time. We consult gyns all over our region. They say I am 'sensitive'.

They are all female.

I am 19 when I start to develop cysts.

I finally find a doctor that takes me seriously. His daughter suffers too. He sends me to the clinic. They find cysts and adhesions inside my belly.

I feel relieved.

I am 22 when I can't find help.

I am in Ireland on a mandatory exchange from my university. Health care for foreign students suck. They don't allow me to skip classes.

I write my exams, high on pills.

I am 24 when I begin to bleed from my guts.

Its in the mids of the pandemic, my mother is celebrating her birthday with her family, I am around. I cry, I am afraid, she says its nothing.

I begin to fever, she takes me to the hospital.

I am 24 when I call an ambulance.

I can't get up anymore because of the pain, I puke. In the hospital they shove me around, gynecologists, gastroenterologist, no one finds a thing until a pediatrician comes around for my roommate.

I have developed kidney-stones.

I am 25 when they put me on immunsuppressors.

I cry a lot, I talk to my mother, she is worried. My stepdad calls and is angry, tells me I shouldn't call for 'negative things' since my grandma is sick too.

She is 83 and has been an alcoholic for most of her life.

I am 25 when they find tumors in my uterus and guts.

They can't be removed they said, because it will destroy my fertilty. I don't plan on getting children with my fiancee. They say not to worry, the tumors are not cancer yet.

As if that would make things better.

I am 26 when I can't find psychotherapy.

I am not sick enough, they say, or too sick. I function too well, have been constantly working since I was 13. I try selfcare, but it barely works. But I am not alone.

My found family helps me heal.

I am 27 when I get my first full time job.

I haven't had a flare-up in 2 years, but I tell about my IBD, my Endo during the interview. My employer says my disabilities don't take from my abilities.

I think he is right.

#endowarrior #ibdawareness #ibd problems #spoonie #story of my life #journey to diagnosis #healingjourney #self reflection

1 note · View note

subir-astrologer · 2 years ago

Text

BAD VENUS / SHUKRA EFFECTS IN A HOROSCOPE. MY VIEW WITH AN INSIGHT

Let’s understand BAD VENUS AS PER KARKA / SIGNIFICATOR

Venus or Shukra in Sanskrit is the planet one would love to be at right place in their kundli / horoscope. It is all about material pleasure, love, romance, marriage, and friendship. Beauty, music, dance, drama is significance of Venus.

Anything related to luxury such as jewelry, expensive cars, beautiful home is Venus. Venus means opulence.

When afflicted, Venus produces unsatisfactory domestic conditions, anxiety in love, and difficulty with friends of through finances. Venus rules the vehicles and so vehicles will also give frequent maintenance.

It is a very strong significator of wife, marriage, and happy married life so a bad venus will also affect the marriage relationship.

In Professions venus relates to limelight or luxury such as designing, fashion designing, architecture, interior decoration, modelling, advertising, and fashion. So a person in such profession will find difficulties because of bad venus.

Good Venus makes you beautiful, nice complexion, slim body, lovely eyes, charming appearance, sharp and beautiful facial cuts, bright hair, BUT A BAD Venus will not give such beauties.

In the body, Venus represents the sexual organs, semen,

private parts, kidneys, face, eyes, neck, throat, chin, cheeks, and skin. Weak Venus causes diabetes, anaemia, stone problems, sex problems, asthma etc.

A bad venus / shukra will also give its effect in illness or disease related to organs in our body.

UNDERSTANDING BAD VENUS IMPACT FROM DESTINY LEVEL POINT OF VIEW

As per KP vedic astrology a planet gives the result of the nakshatra lord and the planet itself becomes the source of the event and the sublord denotes the quality of the event.

A single planet do not give an event, its resultant effect of group of houses and planets.

So in a horoscope the impact of the bad venus will be more prominent for those events which it signifies in the destiny level than as karka / significator.

For example in a horoscope if the 4th house sublord ( as per KP vedic astrology ) is Jupiter and its signifying good houses. Then a bad venus impact will not completely deny a luxury car, but the native may have a lesser comfort of luxury car or his luxury car may give some extra maintenance compare to other luxury cars.

If the 7th cuspal sublord ( as per KP vedic astrology ) shows good signifying houses so marital life will be good with very little difference of opinions because of BAD VENUS BUT WILL NOT GIVE DIVORCE.

NOW THE EVENTS WHICH IS SIGNIFIED BY VENUS IN THE DESTINY LEVEL, BECAUSE OF IT BEING BAD ( SIGNIFYING BAD HOUSES ) WILL GIVE BAD RESULTS / IMPACT ON THOSE EVENTS IN THE DESTINY LEVEL.

So I always say that firstly understanding astrology is very important and then only one should come to conclusions.

Still many more parameters are not taken into consideration as it will create more confusion in understanding. Although in astrology there are many variables and everyone one variable is depended on other variable for the resultant impacts.

In order to keep it simple for the reader I have sticked to the topic only to make it easier to understand.

#negative venus in horoscope #bad venus in horoscope #venus effects in horoscope #venus astrology #vedic astrology #astrology #vedic astrologer #astrologer #horoscope posts #horoscope readings

0 notes

firespirited · 1 year ago

Text

I'm very relieved to hear this and was shocked you weren't "discreetly accosted" at urgent care. I also thought you were going to die from weds onwards from the symptoms but didn't want to post speculation and scare anyone.

Nanny had multiple UTIs because she was terrified of drinking and peeing from her Lewy body dementia bringing back a childhood fear of going to the toilet from orphanage/boarding school. Each doctor's visit or hospital visit entailed a grilling and follow up with social services which was a source of great relief in an odd way.

tw: abuse

because weaponizing an ill person’s body against them by denying care, even difficult care like adult diaper changing, or expensive alternate hydration is commonplace and vile: it’s beating the shit out of someone without technically having to lift a finger and it’s also a time-honoured very effective form of torture in which you create the conditions for prisoners already weakened bodies to get sick, withhold care with intent, gaslight the prisoner into thinking it’s just nature or it’s just them instead of the jailer. You can get people to flip and flip hard while making it look natural with respiratory or kidney diseases induced by temperature, hydration and bad quarantining.

If you were legally bound to that guy in any way, he could be facing criminal charges and the hospital would have flagged son to CPS at the very least. there are certain delays in care especially if the person has a known condition that are whole black flags. If you were in a state or military prison and left to the point where you needed IV antibiotics, that’s on a level of criminal negligence that could get you released from a felony.

[I was a very morbid 11-year-old who was being fed books about Christians who escaped USSR, Jews who escaped the holocaust and some tough sci-fi by people looking to make sense of Eastern European/Pre and mid WWII experiences who then went down the “enhanced interrogation” rabbit hole again pre-9/11 and then still didn’t connect the dots when dad would deny me painkillers or treatment with what felt like spite or at least very strong selfishness.

I’ve since worked with several people experiencing abuse of the disabled/chronically ill (including mental illness used against them) to get to a safer place so the short bursts of what might look like nonsense in your notes do make sense within a larger conversation with a lot more context. ^.^;; I’m really sorry about that. Let’s just say when the 7h migraine hit on thursday and relief flooded that you were in hospital for real REAL, there was a lot to flush and process here too.]

Now’s probably not the time to do a safety assessment of you and the son, you need to rest as much as possible and get those stones out but should you wish to stay with TG, and you’re amenable to the idea, later in the year I’d like to help you build a case with son’s school help that would grant you custody should you ever need to cut and run. You have the receipts for son and for yourself and maybe don’t know how incriminating they are at this point even under a very lax, pro-man with lots of character witnesses, WV court.

I will add that TG has not even paid a fraction of minimum wage for the amount of childcare and cleaning you have provided. Do you get 25k-30k a year? because that’s the median Au Pair’s wage on top of their own bedroom, set hours, shared food and time off. The fact that he has not bought insurance is incriminating evidence just on its own, even religious maga nuts get the ‘liberty’ christian package insurance not worth much if things get tough but signifies a *basic* investment, even in a “folks as property with a set value” way.

It can wait ... but you do have options and dang do you have receipts!!!

Adult diapers, leak pads, washable undies (washable period pads are great) easy access skirts, flushable paper for spills, a waterproof mattress cover, thrifted towels + throwaway face towels and hydrogen peroxide in the liquid form are your friend for urine and blood. You may need to sleep closer to the loo and get the stents checked out by a nurse every three days, possibly numbed locally with injections. If you need money for supplies, say the word.

I know folks are probably getting tired of this by now so you get a tag AND a cut.

But I feel like discussing this sort of thing might help people sometimes? since it's a first person account instead of listicles online.

What they did and didn't tell me about having stents.

They told me why: Facilitates drainage which takes strain (pressure) off of the kidneys and helps the antibiotics work by helping prevent pockets of infected urine reforming (that's what was making me sick, stuck urine that had built up lots of bacteria).

They told me how-ish: They go up with various catheters and things and install the stents, the stents stay in place until they are removed. Some stents have lines that exit the body to facilitate removal. Mine do not. The doc didn't want me accidentally pulling them out since the area they're in is heavily infected. They'll be removed at my first stone removal surgery in about two weeks from installation which was a couple days ago.

They did not tell me how-completely: The stents are hooked into my body meat like little fish hooks. They also didn't tell me they'd be taking urine for testing from my bladder and each kidney or that they would also be draining both kidneys during the procedure, so I did get a fluid-pressure reset.

They did not tell me basically anything about what the next two weeks will be like.

I'm on flowmax to soften my bladder so it's easier to empty. I don't think I needed that, I was peeing fine, but stents do change things.

I was worried that I might push them out while pooping but that's not likely to the point of nearly impossible. Not 100%, but nearly.

These things feel like a bad UTI and I have two of them. I got the ows, the zaps, the GOTTA GOs every few minutes. At least now I know that ALL of those pains are UTI pains, you know? I'd get some random pain sometimes and be like "what was that......" and now I know. It was UTI and pressure in my kidneys and the pain signals were traveling around the whole renal system. Because they do that.

I'm in a lot more pain now than I was with just the kidney stones. It is very, VERY atypical but my kidney stones and the pressure behind them don't hurt. Those nerves may have died off.

There's varying amounts of blood in my urine, sometimes very little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes there are clots. That's all normal but I had to ask as things were happening.

I get up every couple hours in the night and some times I don't make it to the toilet (I did all last night, so that is improving).

They also didn't warn me that just having the surgery itself might make me wet myself because the muscles hadn't all regained strength/how long it would take for the anesthesia to fully wear off.

I called the doctor's office and asked about that, too.

I'm glad I thought to have That Guy bring Depends but that's also something you'd think someone would like, mention. You know?

So that's what having stents has been like so far.

Feels like a bad UTI, though for some people they feel nothing. Need adult diapers for accidents. Need to be near a toilet at all times, and not going to get a hell of a lot of continuous sleep for a while.

I also think it's worth noting that I've had two male doctors blow me off about this and I think the only thing that went differently at the ER was that it was a female doctor.

The first male doctor said it was an anxiety attack.

The second male doctor said it was a viral stomach bug.

The female doctor listened to my symptoms and ordered a bunch of tests.

So, more personal blather about the whole situation.

While I was in the first ER I heard a man yelling and starting trouble in the waiting room. That Guy and Son got up and left as soon as the man was distracted by a security guy. I'd had told them to go home as soon as they dropped me off and I would text if I needed picked up. I knew I wasn't going home, though.

My neighbor was an elderly lady and they kept trying to figure out when she'd last pooped but she couldn't remember. Finally she called them in and was like I need to poop so they wrestled her up on a bed pan (she cried, she was in a lot of pain) and then left her alone with her curtain closed to poop. Right then the floor doctor walked in and was like HI MISS GERALDINE and whipped her curtain open to start talking to her.

...

I chewed him out. That's very atypical of me. Like, I laid into him for not asking if she was wanting to talk in that exact moment. And then I felt really bad until I realized he's probably had people a lot more angry at him than me considering a lot of the patients I could hear were elderly and some were confused, and I didn't feel bad anymore.

Since it's a university-run hospital there were sometimes pairs of nurses, and at one point a trainee came in to give me a dose of antibiotics through the IV but she hooked it into the wrong plug which depressurized the system and blood starting backing up the tube. As soon as she saw that she ran to get her trainer and they spent some time doing a full reset of the IV set up.

I wasn't worried or anything. It was my own blood and it could only go so far/only so much could be lost. At the most a cup since the saline bag was fresh and mostly full, still. So I was totally calm the whole time, which I'm sure helped.

I think the nurse in training was surprised when her trainer stepped out and I encouraged her instead of yelling at her. I praised her for not being too proud to get help when she noticed an issue, and for observing how to rectify the situation.

That Guy was like "Yesterday's nurses did NOT like me..." and I was like yeah I kind of told on you, but not out loud. He got put on the shit list FAST by staff. So for that I have a note in my account that I'm experiencing financial abuse and he exhibits controlling behavior. If there ever is a point where Son and I have to leave, I have the name of where to call. There's a facility in Next Town Over where the hospital is that will come and get us, and that would be the last time we see him.

I feel guilty for saying anything because he has paid for my existence for decades but he has also been abusive, just not physically.

They asked me if Son is safe at home alone with That Guy and I said "Safe, yes. Happy, no."

They also asked like how is Son and I said he seems to understand that his father's behavior isn't his fault but he still has had to endure it.

I also in the process learned how much money he makes (I didn't know before) and wow we should all certainly have insurance (he and Son might through his work but I have nothing and don't qualify for assistance while he claims me on his taxes as a dependent) and have had medical care all this time and there's no reason at all to be doing the whole -pointedly look at the food receipt every grocery trip, look up at the sky angrily, shake his head, shove it in his pocked, huff, and walk away- thing. Also explains why his work friends keep suggesting burger joints that end up costing like $80 for the whole family....

30 notes · View notes

multiversecarnavep · 3 years ago

Text

Howard's first appearance in comics is when he is abruptly abducted from his home planet by an unseen force and randomly dropped into the Florida Everglades by the demon-lord Thog the Nether-Spawn. He meets the Man-Thing, who had been attacked by Korrek of Katharta, and the three of them are confronted by warriors of the Congress of Realities.[22] He then meets Dakimh the Enchanter and Dakimh banishes the warriors and transports Howard, Man-Thing, and Korrek to his castle, where they are joined by Jennifer Kale. They then travel to the realm of Therea and destroy Thog the Nether-Spawn. Howard then accidentally falls off the inter-dimensional stepping stones that the group were traveling on[23] and materializes in Cleveland, Ohio, where he battles Garko the Man-Frog.[24] Howard is arrested at this time for disturbing the peace and is mistaken for a mutant during a strip search, but is released because the police fear he has mutant abilities. Howard also briefly encounters and kills a vampiric cow named Bessie the Hellcow.[25]

Howard makes friends with an artists' model named Beverly Switzler and a bizarre series of encounters follow. He battles Pro-Rata, the cosmic accountant, then meets Spider-Man at the end of the battle.[26][27] He battles Turnip-Man and the Kidney Lady,[28] who would become a semi-recurring character over the years,[citation needed] then learns the fictional martial art of "Quack-Fu".[29] Howard then encounters the Winky Man, who is actually the sleepwalking alter-ego of Beverly's artist friend, Paul Same,[30] who would become a series regular and later become the pair's roommate.[citation needed] Howard also briefly becomes a wrestler.[31]

Howard and Beverly hit the road, seeking shelter in a gothic mansion where they battle a girl named Patsy and her giant, animated-to-life gingerbread man.[32][33] They eventually end up in New York City, where Howard is nominated for President of the United States by the All-Night Party[33] and he later battles the Band of the Bland, alongside the Defenders.[34] A doctored-photo scandal leads him to Canada where he defeats a supervillain, the Beaver, who caused the scandal. The Beaver falls to his death in a battle with Howard.[35] Howard then suffers a nervous breakdown and flees Bev and their situation on a bus. Unfortunately, the bus' passengers are all believers in various weird cults, and try to interest Howard in them. His seatmates are Winda Wester and the Kidney Lady, a woman who believes that the soul of a person lives in their kidneys and attempts to stop anything she sees as "anti-kidney health." After the bus crashes, Howard and Winda are sent to a mental institution. There he meets Daimon Hellstrom, and is briefly possessed by Hellstrom's demonic soul, becoming the new Son of Satan.[36] Beverly and Paul manage to get them both back to Cleveland. Later, while on the S. S. Damned, a cruise ship returning from scenic Bagmom, Howard and Beverly are taken captive by Lester Verde. Verde had known Beverly in college and had a crush on her and had assumed the identity of the supervillain Doctor Bong,[37] who illegally marries Beverly against her will and transforms Howard into a human.[38][39]

After escaping back to New York and being restored to his natural form, Howard is hired as a dishwasher by Beverly's uncle, Lee Switzler. Howard is later reunited with Dakihm the Enchanter, the Man-Thing, Korrek and Jennifer Kale, and they all battle the demon Bzzk'Joh. Korrek pilots the ship the Epoch Weasel and drops Howard back off at Cleveland before he and their allies fly away.[40][41] Howard finally meets up with the cruise ship that rescued Paul and Winda from Doctor Bong, and finds that Paul and Winda have befriended socialite Iris Raritan.

Howard is later kidnapped by the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime. Winda is abandoned by Paul and Iris and Paul is shot and left in a coma.[42][43] After defeating the Circus of Crime, Howard is plagued by pessimistic dreams and goes his way alone, just as he had at the series' beginning.[44]

Writer Bill Mantlo, beginning with issue #30, returned the series to its former status quo, bringing Beverly back into the picture and having her divorce Doctor Bong. Howard's creator Steve Gerber, who left the series after issue #27, originally intended for Beverly and Bong's marriage to be lasting and for Beverly to be written out of the series from that point on. Howard and Beverly's friend Paul, who had ended up in a coma after he had previously been shot by the Ringmaster, awakens from his coma and is released from the hospital. Beverly's uncle Lee brings everyone back to Cleveland and employs Howard as a cab driver, while Paul, back to being a somnambulist after his release from the hospital, becomes Winda's boyfriend. Howard dons a suit of "Iron Duck" armor made by Claude Starkowitz, a man who has delusions of being related to Tony Stark and dreams of being the personal armorer to Iron Man, and battles Doctor Bong in the final issue of the original 70s Howard the Duck series (issue #31).[45][46] Howard later encounters Dracula[47] and even once returns to Duckworld.[48] At the end of the nine-issue magazine series, Howard leaves Beverly (at her request) and is later offered a genetically-constructed female duck mate, whom he does not take to.[49]

On a later occasion, She-Hulk accidentally pulls Howard though a cosmic wormhole along with theoretical physicist Brent Wilcox and they are able to prevent other universes from crowding out Earth-616. During this time, Howard meets a character called the Critic, travels to a dimension known as the Baloneyverse and again battles a group called the Band of the Bland, whom he had previously battled with the Defenders.[50][51][52]

In an encounter with Peter Parker and Ben Reilly (the then-current Spider-Man), Howard gets a rematch with the Circus of Crime and the Circus is defeated. During the fight, Howard and Beverly get stuck in a warehouse full of anthropomorphic ducks, briefly meeting the Savage Dragon and Destroyer Duck. Parker and Reilly leave the warehouse believing that they have the correct versions of Howard and Beverly with them. However, in the Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck companion story that takes place simultaneously and that was written by Gerber, it is explained that the version of Howard and Beverly that left the warehouse with Parker and Reilly are simply clones taken by mistake and that the real Howard and Beverly actually left the scene with Savage Dragon and Destroyer Duck .[53]

The sorceress Jennifer Kale, in a weekly attempt to return Howard to his home world, inadvertently teleports Devil Dinosaur and Moon-Boy into her New York apartment. The disoriented dinosaur attempts to eat Howard, but spits him out when shot with John Blaze's hellfire gun. Devil Dinosaur and Moon-Boy then rampage through the city before being subdued by Ghost Rider (Daniel Ketch). Howard says that he relates to the pair being trapped in a world they never made before wandering off.[54][55]

Heroes RebornEdit

After a brief series of adventures with Generation X,[56] Howard gets a job as a department store Santa Claus, which gets him dragged to the North Pole where the real Santa Claus has sold out to HYDRA.[57] Howard goes through several dimensions, apparently through the power of Man-Thing, who can now talk but does not understand this new, unknown ability, and lands on a version of Duckworld where his parents are essentially Ward and June Cleaver, he has a sister named Princess, and he is regarded as a hero because his activities on Earth-616 were recognized by Duckworld's version of Reed Richards. This origin traces the source of these dimensions to be projections from Franklin's mind. Throughout the course of the adventure, Howard has a romance with Tana Nile, culminating in a kiss, after which he apologizes and tells her of his attachment to Beverly.[58][59][60] When Franklin understands that he has shaped all of these worlds, the group finds themselves back in the Man-Thing's swamp. While Man-Thing becomes a self-appointed guardian to Franklin Richards, Howard goes off on his own and is captured by the Cult of Entropy, who wrap him in swaddling clothes.[61] Although last seen in the swamp, Howard states that he was thrown into baggage and transported on a plane. The cult wants Howard because he has part of the Nexus of All Realities, which shattered during Heroes Reborn, inside of him. Man-Thing then enters Howard's mouth, and Howard vomits him back out with the fragment, but Man-Thing is left desiccated and practically dead.[62] Howard then encounters Namor, who thought he had slain Man-Thing, but Howard explains that he would not be lugging his friend's body around if that were the case. Howard sets the Man-Thing down in the water, and he revives during Howard's conversation with Namor. Once he sees that the Man-Thing is alive and well, he bids Namor farewell and says that he is returning to Cleveland.[63]

Years later, back with Beverly, he undergoes further shapeshifting experiences after an accident at a chemical facility of Doctor Bong's. Beverly is hired by Bong's Globally Branded Content Corporation, which manufactures boy bands from protein vats based on the sexual arousal of a focus group of gay men. Attempting to destroy an escapee whom Beverly has taken in, Bong inadvertently knocks Howard into a vat, which changes him, unstably, into a rat.[64] When Howard later showers, he changes his form multiple times before again permanently returning to the form of the giant rat. Verde then goes to the press and claims that his building was attacked by Osama el-Barka ("Osama the Duck" in Arabic). Howard and Beverly are sent back on the road after the junkyard office where they are living is destroyed by a S.W.A.T. team.[65] Denied admittance to every possible shelter due to lack of funds, the pair and their dog find a sign for the Boarding House of Mystery, but are taken to the police station for questioning and strip searches by Suzy Pazuzu, with whom Beverly had attended high school. One of the officers on the case is the same beat cop who mistook Howard for a mutant many years before. Suzy is the inheritor of the doucheblade, which starts to take her over when she wears an enchanted bracelet. In a skirmish, the bracelet is caught by Howard causing him to be the wielder of the doucheblade. The doucheblade causes its holder to grow enormous bare breasts and armor in a parody of Witchblade, and, possessed by this, Howard kills the male lover of a businessman who works with Verde as he and Verde break into Suzy's house.[66]

Arriving at the Boarding House of Mystery, Howard and Beverly encounter Cain and Abel, the latter with a rock stuck in his head that allows him only moments of lucidity. There, they are granted their every wish, including Howard's return to his true form, and Beverly never being poor again, and meet parodies of John Constantine, Wesley Dodds, the Endless, Spider Jerusalem, and Gerber's own Nevada (called Utah), all characters from DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. The downside to the House is that everyone staying there gets their every wish; so Che Guevara can have his revolution, but someone else can easily slaughter him.[67] One tenant, a writer named Mr. Gommorah (a parody of Spider Jerusalem), later takes Beverly and Howard to be on the Iprah show with the topic "Why Women Give It to Men Who Don't Get It", guest starring Dr. Phlip.

Upon leaving the House of Mystery, Howard is once again transformed into an anthropomorphic mouse. It is revealed that Iprah has been merged with an experiment by the Angel Gabriel called Deuteronomy, intended to replace God, because God has been spending all his time in a bar in Hell since 1938. Deuteronomy is a creature half-id and half-superego, while Iprah is an all-ego promoter of self-indulgent pop psychology. Considering her dangerous, Gabriel sends the cherub Thrasher to resurrect Sigmund Freud, whose cigar blasts out half of Thrasher's brains (being immortal, this just makes him act drunk). Iprah destroys Freud, but Howard blasts her with the cigar, separating her from Deuteronomy. Puffing on the cigar, Howard disintegrates and arrives in Hell.[68] He is eventually freed by Yah, a being who claims to be "God".[69]

Civil WarEdit

Sometime later, Howard attempts to register under the Superhero Registration Act during the superhero Civil War, but learns his socially disrupted life has created so many bureaucratic headaches that the government's official policy is that Howard does not exist. This lack of government oversight delights him: "For the rest of my life, no more parking tickets, or taxes, or jury duty. Heck, I couldn't even vote if I wanted to!" In this story, Howard says he was pressured to give up his cigars.[70]

After he defeats the supervillain M.O.D.O.T.’s (Mobile Organism Designed Only for Talking) scheme to control the public through mass media, his attorney, Jennifer Walters, successfully restores his citizenship, including all relevant responsibilities.[71]

Secret InvasionEdit

Howard the Duck is briefly seen as part of the superpowered army gathered to battle invading Skrull forces.[72] He is seen armed with a pistol and wearing a Skrull's hand around his neck.[73] He is later seen kicking a Skrull during interrogation after the invasion.[74] Brian Michael Bendis has commented when asked of Howard: "That character has shown up in six issues I've done, and I've never typed the words Howard the Duck."[75]

Marvel Zombies 5Edit

Main article: Marvel Zombies 5

In Marvel Zombies 5, Howard the Duck of Earth-616 teams up with Machine Man to travel across the multiverse fighting zombies.[76]

Fear ItselfEdit

During the Fear Itself storyline, Howard forms a team called the Fearsome Four with She-Hulk, Frankenstein's Monster and Nighthawk to stop the Man-Thing when he goes on a rampage in Manhattan, due to the fear and chaos he senses on the citizens. They later discover a plot by Psycho-Man to use the Man-Thing's volatile empathy to create a weapon.[77]

Spider-Man: Back in QuackEdit

Howard and Beverly are brainwashed and forced to work for Save Our Offspring From Indecency (S.O.O.F.I.) as Cynical Duck and Swizzle. They promote S.O.O.F.I. at a public speech held for them by J. Jonah Jameson. Spider-Man later interrupts a S.O.O.F.I. indoctrination at the New York Public Library, and Beverly and the other S.O.O.F.I.s see Spidey as a semi-demonic figure and attack him. Spidey escapes with Howard and breaks his brainwashing when Beverly is threatened. Howard quickly explains S.O.O.F.I.'s goals to Spider-Man. As Spider-Man publicly announces his long-standing support for S.O.O.F.I., Howard confronts Bev as she stands beside the Supreme S.O.O.F.I. Howard is able to break through to Beverly, reminding her of their past together. The Supreme S.O.O.F.I. orders the S.O.O.F.I.s to throw the pair into the special Blanditron at Guantanamo Bay, but Beverly keeps them at bay with a whip. Spidey attacks the S.O.O.F.I.s and unmasks the Supreme S.O.O.F.I., while the others escape through their teleporter. Howard states that he believes S.O.O.F.I. will lay low for a while after such a defeat and he also hopes that the group's Florida Everglades base might lead them to meet up with the Man-Thing.[78]

The Ducky DozenEdit

Because of his experience with zombie-infested worlds and his leadership of Machine Man, Howard is chosen as the leader of, as he dubs them, the Ducky Dozen. The team is composed of him, several Golden Age heroes, Dum-Dum Dugan, and Battlestar, who is also a veteran of a zombie incident. Upon entering Earth-12591, the Ducky Dozen fight hordes of zombie Nazis and Asgardians, but suffer grave losses as the team's members are either killed or zombified during the battle. After successfully accomplishing their mission, Howard, Dugan, Taxi Taylor and Battlestar are the only members to survive and return to Earth-616 along with the Riveter, the only survivor of Earth-12591's resistance team, the Suffragists.[79][80]

Wolverine and the X-MenEdit

Howard later teams up with his friend Doop to battle the Robo-Barbarians in Dimension ZZZ. They beat the horde back with nothing but a broken sword, a rubber chicken with nails in it and a gun that shoots bees.[81]

Original SinEdit

After the death of Uatu the Watcher and the activation of the secrets buried in his eye, Howard discovers that he has the potential to be the most intelligent being in Duckworld. After evading a squirrel while driving, he is thrown flying from his vehicle but uses his intellect to calculate a way to land safely in a nearby dumpster.[82]

Back to New YorkEdit

Howard returns to his business as a private eye, working in the same building as She-Hulk, in Brooklyn. One of his first new clients is Jonathan Richards, who hires Howard to retrieve a necklace stolen by the Black Cat. With the help of Tara Tam, his new friend and assistant, Howard manages to recover the necklace. However, on his way to give it back to Richards, he finds himself kidnapped by the Collector and allied with the Guardians of the Galaxy to escape the villain, who was attempting to add Howard to his collection of rare space objects and entities. Upon returning to Earth, Howard is robbed by May Parker, Spider-Man's aunt, and later re-encounters the Ringmaster, who is revealed to have brainwashed the elderly into committing robberies. After recovering the necklace for a third time, Howard is approached by Richards in the middle of his fight against the Ringmaster and Richards reveals himself to be Talos the Untamed, who reveals that the necklace was part of a marginally powerful item known as the Abundant Glove. With help from Doctor Strange, Howard and Tara locate the final piece of the Abundant Glove, but are unable to put it back together when Talos grabs it and proceeds to use it to wreak havoc on the city. Talos is confronted by numerous heroes while Howard and Tara take cover. Howard is able to point out that Tara, who is revealed to possess shapeshifting powers similar to that of a Skrull, could help him defeat Talos. Tara used her powers to impersonate Skrull Emperor Kl'rt (the Super-Skrull), distracting Talos long enough for Howard to snatch the Abundant Glove from his hand. Talos is later apprehended by the Fantastic Four and everything returns to normal.[83]

Afterwards, with the help of new arrival Gwenpool, Howard prevented HYDRA from infecting the world with a deadly virus.[84] He also has a crossover event with The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.[85] Howard the Duck is shown to be living in the She-Hulk's apartment building when Patsy Walker moved out.[86]

Civil War IIEdit

During the Civil War II storyline, Howard the Duck is among the building tenants that learn from Patsy Walker what happened to She-Hulk following the fight against Thanos.[87]

War of the RealmsEdit

Howards last name, Duckson, is revealed in War of the Realms: War Scrolls #1.

Young biochemist Dr. Theodore "Ted" Sallis, a native of Omaha, Nebraska,[28] is working in the Everglades as part of Dr. Wilma Calvin's Project: Gladiator team, which includes Dr. Barbara Morse and her fiancé Dr. Paul Allen, and an assistant named Jim. A Dr. Wendell is later cited as being on the staff after Dr. Calvin is shot.[29] The group is attempting to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum that had created Captain America.[30] Web of Spider-Man (vol. 2) #6 revealed that Sallis at one point treated and worked alongside Dr. Curtis Connors shortly after Connors' arm was amputated, driving the research that would eventually transform Connors into the Lizard.

Though warned that the technological terrorist group Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) has been operating in the area, Sallis breaches security by bringing with him his lover, Ellen Brandt (referred to here as "Miss Brandt", but later retconned to be his wife). He destroys his notes to his formula, which he has memorized. Later, he is ambushed by two thugs and learns that Brandt has betrayed him. Fleeing with the only sample of his serum, he injects himself with it in hopes of saving himself. However, he crashes his car into the swamp where scientific and, as Man-Thing #1 later explained, magical forces combine to instantly transform him into a slow-moving plant-matter creature with large, solid red eyes.[31] Unable to speak, and with dim memories, he attacks the ambushers and Brandt, burning and scarring part of her face with an acid that he now secretes in the presence of negative emotions. The Man-Thing then wanders away into the swamp.[32]

Sallis' mind was apparently extinguished, although on rare occasions he could briefly return to consciousness within his monstrous form, as in Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #41 (June 1980), The Defenders (vol 1) #98 (August 1981), and Peter Parker: Spider-Man Annual '99, and even to his human form, as in Adventure into Fear #13 (April 1973), Marvel Two-in-One #1 (January 1974), Marvel Comics Presents #164 (October 1994), and Man-Thing (vol. 3) #5 and 7-8 (April 1998, June–July 1998).

Under writer Steve Gerber, the Man-Thing encounters the sorceress Jennifer Kale, with whom he briefly shared a psychic link and who knew his true identity, in a story arc in Fear #11-13 – the final issue of which established that the swamp had mystical properties as the Nexus of Realities. Through an interdimensional portal in Fear #19, he meets Howard the Duck, who becomes stranded in this reality. The Man-Thing became the guardian of the Nexus, and found himself facing demons, ghosts and time-traveling warriors, while continuing to encounter such non-supernatural antagonists as rapacious land developers, fascist vigilantes and common criminals. He formed a bond with young radio DJ Richard Rory and nurse Ruth Hart. Issue #12's "Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man", about an crazed writer named Brian Lazarus, spawned Gerber's posthumously published 2012 sequel, "The Screenplay of the Living Dead Man", in the three-issue miniseries The Infernal Man-Thing.

In Man-Thing (vol. 2) #1-11 (November 1979 – July 1981), writer Chris Claremont introduced himself as a character in the final issue, as Gerber had in the finale of the first series. Additionally, Claremont temporarily became the Man-Thing after being stabbed to death. His and other characters' deaths were later resolved with the intervention of the War Is Hell series lead, John Kowalski, now an aspect of Marvel Comics' manifestation of Death. In Man-Thing (vol. 3) #1-8 (December 1997 – July 1998), Ellen Brandt Sallis returns to the Citrusville area and encounters a little boy, Job Burke, who is actually the Sallises' son, who had been put up for adoption. Following this series, the story continued in Strange Tales (vol. 4) #1-2, and was projected to continue in the unpublished issues #3-4. Summaries based on DeMatteis' unillustrated scripts appear on the K'Ad-mon and Ellen Brandt pages in Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe.[21][22]

During the "Civil War" storyline, two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents unsuccessfully attempt to register the Man-Thing under the Superhuman Registration Act.[33]

The Man-Thing later appears as a member of the Legion of Monsters alongside Morbius, the Living Vampire, the Werewolf by Night, the Manphibian, and N'Kantu, the Living Mummy.[34] He later gains the ability to speak comprehensibly through the use of the "Universal Language".[35] Phil Coulson subsequently recruits the Man-Thing for his incarnation of the Howling Commandos.[36]

As part of the All-New, All-Different Marvel branding, the Man-Thing appears as a member of S.T.A.K.E.'s Howling Commandos.[37]

During the "Empyre" storyline, Man-Thing falls under the control of the Cotati led by Ventri that were operating in the Savage Land.[38] Doctor Voodoo takes control of Man-Thing to free Matthew and Black Knight. As Matthew and Black Knight fight the Cotati, a Doctor Voodoo-controlled Man-Thing fights the Cotati's control and defeats Ventri.[39] As Doctor Voodoo exits Man-Thing to assist Scarlet Witch after Ka-Zar was stabbed by a Cotati using Black Knight's Ebony Blade, Man-Thing continued the fight against the Cotati. When the Cotati were defeated, Man-Thing takes his leave after being thanked by Black Knight. Ventri claims that what they learned from Man-Thing's energy has been sent to Quoi to fuel the Cotati's invasion.[40]

13 notes · View notes

finnishhymn · 3 years ago

Text

2021 has not been kind to me. It’s been a rough year and my battle really isn’t over. I debated over and over again if I wanted to post this. The older I get, the less I care to put my personal business out there.

My problems started in September 2020. I woke up with a sharp pain in my back. It never went away. Several doctors visits later, I was getting nowhere and no answers. I was denied a CT scan by my insurance and told to live with it because I’m fine. At this point I can’t stand up straight, walking is difficult, it keeps me up at night. I’m definitely not ok.

January rolls around and I decide enough is enough. I set out to get a new doctor and that it was time to lose weight. I was 210 pounds at this point. I find a new doctor and have my first appointment in April. I also have a consultation with a chiropractor at this time. My doctor thinks I have a pinched nerve, the chiropractor agrees and also that my hips are tilted.

I continue seeing the chiropractor for 8 weeks. Some days I’m feeling better and thinking it’s helping but other days it comes right back. By this time it’s June and I’m having a follow up with my doctor. She wants me to try physical therapy instead. She hands me a referral and tells me to try that instead for 6 weeks.

June 28th I walk into work, slip on some oil in the shop, and slam my head into the concrete floor. I black out and am taken to the hospital by ambulance.

The next 5 weeks are filled with head pain, dizziness, and uncaring worker’s comp “doctors”. I couldn’t look at screens for long without it hurting. I slept a lot. I developed a head tremor where my head shook side to side uncontrollably. I suffered memory loss among other things.

My wonderful neurologist insisted that all these things were not related to my head injury. At my last appointment on September 11th he told me he didn’t know why my head was hurting, “maybe it’s the weather,” he said, before throwing my work release papers back at me. I didn’t get a chance to say or ask anything before he shut the door in my face.

He also had put me on medication that gave me the most amazing mood swings. Fits of rage, uncontrollable crying, etc. But hey it made me drop another 10 pounds so that’s all that matters right?

September 30th I see my doctor, a real doctor that gives a shit, again. I told her all about what’s been happening. She says I have a kidney stone. When I went by ambulance to the hospital, they did a CT scan of basically my entire upper body. Anyway she said it wasn’t large enough to really worry about, but told me what to watch for. She told me she wants me to go back to physical therapy and see if we can finally get this back pain gone for good.

October 5th I have my first physical therapy appointment. The therapist is cool. She thinks the back pain is because of my hip. Ok that makes sense. So we start doing exercises to strengthen my hips and legs. She also green lights all exercise. I’m thinking, “Sweet! I’m gonna do so much activities!”

October 21st I go to the ER with severe abdominal pain and a fever of 103 that won’t break. I’m in a ton of pain and hallucinating. I’m thinking it’s my kidney stone. They do a CT Scan, check for pneumonia, and Covid of course.

It’s not the stone. Turns out I had a massive infection in my abdomen that made its way into my bloodstream. I’m admitted to the hospital. I’m told if I had waited another day I would’ve died. I’m seen by a GI doctor and she tells me something is going on but I’m so full of infection she can’t see. She tells me I need to have a colonoscopy in 8 weeks. After 5 days in the hospital I’m released and I see both my regular doctor and the GI doctor for a follow up.

December 14th I have an endoscopy and a colonoscopy done at the hospital. When I woke up from the procedure the doctor tells me everything looks healthy and normal in my digestive tract. She says she took biopsies and will call me when those results come in. A week later I’m told all that came back normal too.

So here we are going in 2022 and I have less answers and more questions. Every time I try to chase a problem, something else pops up. I’m still having head pain. I can’t remember how to spell certain words. My once fantastic memory has huge holes. I have anxiety all the time and find myself panicking at random times. Usually when I get the next hospital bill. Oh and I still have back pain. But hey I’ve lost over 60 pounds, so….yay?

4 notes · View notes

prorevenge · 6 years ago

Text

Destroy my childhood, ruin my chance at college, and laugh when I said I was homeless? Lol cool, I'll ruin your life.

Long story. TL;DR at the end.

BACKSTORY: My mother was a really shitty person. I have 4 other siblings. One older sister, 3 way younger, 3 different dads. Before I was born (im a male btw), my oldest sister was taken away from my mother when she was a few months old because she tried to stab/slice the father of my sister WHILE HE WAS HOLDING HER. She lost custody and the dude left her. Older sister goes to live with her fathers family in a different city. CUE LIL OL ME COMING INTO THIS SEXY WORLD. My dad went to jail 2-3 years after I was born for a while, I rarely saw him. He's an alcoholic if that matters. She was a single mother but she made it work and she worked hard. One of the bigger problems was that she took out all her agression and hatred of my father on me as well as work stress and etc. She dealt with sexual abuse growing up which I'm sure definitely affected her relationships and how she treated me as well. Anyways...

Cue me being abused from the age of 4-5 to about 17. Every day was hell. She was extremely strict and her perspective was warped. She was also pretty big in stature and had alot of strength. Examples of her being shitty: I've gotten beaten up badly once because HER room was dirty. The dishes weren't washed and I got beaten soon as I got home, even if there werent dishes when I left to school. If i walked too loud, id get my ass beat. She broke my nose for looking at her the wrong way on my 10th birthday when she brought me a cake I was allergic too(It had peanuts, she knows im slightly allergic but feigned ignorance..) It was more or less every day or every other day. She used her fists/elbows/extension cords/hangers/chairs/canes/bats/etc. Whatever she could find I was getting beaten with. I couldn't ever escape to my room for long because she would always call me every few minutes to get her things or to yell at me. She never drank or did drugs or anything. Whenever she was upset and I happened to be in front of her she'd kick me down the stairs to make me hurry up. She's put a knife to my neck before and had to be forcibly stopped by her bf of the time. Burned my christmas presents from other people (she didnt get me anything that year) and just other really shitty things. The only thing I will say, she tried really hard to make up for it with video games and electronics and etc. It didn't make a difference to me though, it never helped.

She controlled most aspects of my life. I got by with little petty revenges. Peeing in the lipton iced tea she drank. Rubbing her forks and spoons between ny buttcheeks before i served her dinner. Ignoring her screams for help when she had kidney stones (how tf am i supposed to help anyways??) But by the time i got to highschool I turned to alcohol. I resented her and the negative atmosphere affected who I was as a person. I started to be cold and uncaring. Calculated. She started kicking me out every few months telling me to find somewhere else to live by age 15. She sent me away to a different country for a year and tried to keep my passport but I made it back to the US with the help of the embassy and my step father (she'd already left by that time and found some other dude). I came back senior year with no credits for the prior grade which ended with me getting a GED. I spent most of the time i could with my best friend and started working shitty jobs. I was terrible at saving as i had accumulated loads of shitty habits while growing up so it didnt make much difference. She eventually told me that If i went to college, I would ALWAYS have a place to live until I finished. Cue my first 2 semesters at a 2 year college, I maintained a 3.7ish gpa. My teachers loved me and it was my escape. Towards the end of my 2nd semester during finals, i came home late one night around 10pm and my mother yanks the door open screaming in my face asking when I'll move out. I'm slightly drunk and decide to completely ignore her and walk to my room. If I opened my mouth, that day would be the day I blew up and cursed her out. I've rarely ever raised my voice at her because it never ended well. Now at this point im 19 and I've been doing school full time with no savings. Im also fairly fit and could easily take my mom at this point (Never laid a hand on her or any woman, i hate violence). I get to my room, she rips my door open, and starts yelling. I say nothing and stare at her. She walks away and called the police on me saying she thought id murder her and my younger siblings. I don't know where the fuck she got that idea from as she's the one who's nearly killed me many times.

I packed everything into a duffle bag and left 5 minutes afterwards. I failed all of my finals because I couldnt make it to my school. Things kinda spiraled and the next 2-3 years were me on and off homeless. I survived the best I could in a big city with no college degree and made alot of shitty choices due to my shitty habits. Eventually i found a profitable hobby that gave me meaning and through that i started to work my way up. Got my own apartment, had a full time job, and did my hobby on the side. I hadn't kept up contact with my mother at all but my younger sister who was old enough to have a phone found me on social media so i saw photos and such, she didn't have it anywhere near as bad but she did get beaten occasionally. My mother reached out via email all smiles asking how I've been. Now guys, ive always been envious of the relationship most ppl have with their moms so I gave her a chance and gave her a call. We talked for a few minutes and everything was civil and seemed like things would go okay but then...

She asked me what I've been up to the last few years and I told her honestly, that I was homeless for a while and struggled alot after what she did to me but I worked my way out of it. SHE LITERALLY LAUGHS. She laughed for a few seconds in a very condescending kinda chuckle and then said "I never did a thing to you so you don't know what abuse is! its your own damn fault you were homeless. So how about yo-" but by that point I hung up. I was speechless and fuming. I don't know what abuse is? OKAY BITCH. IVE SPENT TOO FUCKING LONG LETTING YOU DESTROY MY SANITY. NOW IS THE TIME.

There was a few things my mother didn't know. One, I knew for a fact that current well paying job she had was gotten on lies as she never got her college degree and lied about it on her resume. Two, I had access to all of her email accounts and cloud storage accounts since I was the one that set them up when I was younger and she never changes her passwords. Lastly, she DEFINITELY wasn't aware that from 13yrs old and onto the last time she hit me I took photos of ALL my bruises/marks/wounds/bloody noses saving them to my computer and then google drive. ON TOP OF THAT, my little sister had been sending me photos via social media of the bruises she got from my mom.

The first thing I did was compile ALL of those photos/videos into one folder. I then reached out to CPS in my city and explained that my siblings were being abused, how I was abused in the past, and that I had mountains of proof. Since ive called the cops on my mother before AND the thing that happened with my older sister, there was immediately a home visit. They arrived almost a day later with the police and coincidentally my mother was literally in the process of beating my younger sister when they were knocking. Cue an Emergency removal of all my siblings from the house and my mother getting arrested though she was released hours later. (I was getting a day to day play by play because my mothers best friend is a blabber mouth and everything my mother said she told her son who relayed it to me without either of their knowledge.) I sent CPS all the evidence and there's a legit case against my mother now. The next day I emailed and then called up her job to inform them that she had lied about having a very necessary college degree as well current events in her life which sparked a background check. She was fired days later. Say adios to 75k and a blacklist in the only industry you know how to work. I then spitefully deleted every cloud account and email address I ever made for her, which was all of them which im sure will make keeping up with alot bills and etc nearly impossible. I then anonymously reported her to the IRS because of the tax fraud she committed for years by claiming people's children that weren't hers with ALOT of detailed information since I lived with her while she did it.

So now, my mother lost all her kids and her job. Im meeting with a caseworker from CPS next week to talk more about what happens moving forward but I do know they're NOT going back. Idk how she's gonna pay her mortgage now and survive. I'm sure she's gonna get a call from the IRS who'll be looking for a few thousand dollars she owes them. She also has to go back to court in a few months, not exactly sure what she was charged with but ill update when I find out how everything turns out.

Side Note: She isn't aware im the cause of any of this. I plan on keeping tabs on her and waiting until it seems like she's close to death before I tell her it was all me and I peed in her lipton.

TL;DR - My mother abuses me badly for most of my life as well as my younger siblings. I have to drop out of college and support myself after she drove me to homelessness. She proceeds to laugh at me about me being homeless and denys abuse. So I ruined her life by getting my younger siblings removed and her arrested, making her lose her job, reported her to the IRS, and essentially set her up so that the remainder of her life is full of disaster and hardships.

(source) (story by howbout_that_lipton)

#prorevenge #by howbout_that_lipton #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10 #updated

2K notes · View notes

tanadrin · 5 years ago

Text

Reordberend

(part 29 of 30; first; previous; next)

Leofe woke perhaps an hour later; Katherine heard her roll over, then a groggy question emerged from the bed behind her.

“What are you doing?”

Katherine finished tying her hair back; it was shorter now, but still too long for this. But she didn’t have time to cut it. She felt with her fingers down the back of her neck, trying to figure out where to press the awl. It was a shitty substitute for a proper neural probe, but it was all she could find at short notice in the hall.

“I’m just--shit!” She pushed it home, and there was a dull thud inside her skull as the emergency reboot protocol started. She pulled her hand back; her fingertips were covered in blood. Nothing for that now, unfortunately. “Just rebooting my cybernetics.”

“Isn’t that a bad idea?”

“Yes. It’s a very bad idea. It’s the sort of thing you only do in life or death situations.” Katherine stood up, and went over to the door, where Hraefn’s shield was leaning against the wall, next to one of her hunting spears. Leofe’s eyes went wide.

“Katherine, what are you doing?”

“I’m going--I’m going after the dragon. I talked to Eadwig. The bird I gave him, do you remember? I took it from the corpse of the second dragon. It’s likely… it’s likely it was a lot less damaged than its brother. And I think, whatever it is, the dragon has some way of tracking it, and wants it back. I think whatever tracking device it has built into it was meant to help recover the memory core, and I think I fucked up by removing it. And I got people killed. And I’m so, so sorry Leofe. I want you to know that. And I want you to tell the others. I’m going to go down to the Lower Settlement, and take the bird back. Then I’m going to go find the dragon. If I can’t find a way to reattach it, I’ll just have to find a way to kill it.”

“Now wait, you can’t--” Leofe tried to sit up, and that’s when she realized Katherine had tied both her hands to the bedpost.

“I’m sorry. You can’t stop me. Stubborn, remember? You can yell, but I don’t think anyone will hear you from outside the hall. And by the time someone comes looking for you, I’ll be in the hills.”

Katherine hefted Hraefn’s shield, then picked up the spear. Leofe’s eyes were wide; funny, Katherine thought she’d be more pissed than surprised at this point.

“Listen, you can’t--”

“Shh. Leofe. I caused this mess. I came here, I disrupted your people’s existence, I got some of them killed. Before anybody else dies, I have to do everything in my power to make that right.”

“You’ll be killed!”

Katherine looked down at the ground.

“Then I’ll be killed. But at least I tried. Please tell the others I’m sorry. If you can get a message to the outside world--have somebody tell my parents I’m sorry, too.”

“Katherine! Don’t you dare leave without untying me!”

Katherine pulled her hood close about her face, and strode out of the room.

“Katherine!”

* * *

She slipped out of High Settlement and made the two-hour walk to the Lower Settlement in the dark. Eadwig’s house was easy enough to find; the bird was still sitting on a workbench, next to his stoneworking tools. She slipped it into her pocket, and was gone before anyone noticed her. From there, it was another two hour walk back up the valley, and when she was almost at the place where the path turned off toward High Settlement, she turned left instead of right, and headed up into the hills.

It was only then, stepping off the road, that something turned over in her brain, the adrenaline began to fade or whatever, and she started to feel her hands shake. She really should have eaten breakfast. Her mother always said it was important. Don’t go to school without breakfast, dear. Don’t go slaying dragons on an empty stomach.

The little observer inside her head, the little voice that was always watching her actions and critiquing what she did and telling her what she could do better, was screaming at her now, asking her if she was crazy, if she was suicidal, if she was stupid. She ignored it. She might be crazy. She certainly didn’t want to die. There were, in fact, few things in this existence that scared her more than the possibility of it ending, of plunging headlong into the great void of nonexistence, of contemplating what it would be like to be one with Unbeing, to be not, to become nothing. There were times when the certain knowledge of her one day death filled her with an icy cold terror. Today wasn’t one of those days, which was funny. Because she was pretty sure she was going to die.

She should turn back. It was the only reasonable course of action. But the one thing that scared her more than dying at this point was what would happen to the others if she failed. If she couldn’t reattach the bird to the thing, or at least get her to recognize she had given it back, it might keep looking. It might stomp all up and down the Valleys, until it had ground every village to dust, and it might keep going until it broke down. And she couldn’t have that on her conscience. She couldn’t be the one that destroyed them.

So she kept climbing into the hills. As she climbed, she did her best to hack together a self-diagnostic. Already, her head was starting to hurt in an ominous way. But if she had any chance of surviving this, she needed every edge she could get, and barely-functioning cybernetics was better than nothing.

She needed three things, she decided. She needed a way to mute pain signals. A headache was fine. Even a bad one she could live with. But burns, broken bones, anything truly incapacitating, needed to be reduced or eliminated. She also needed to get every last ounce of strength out of her muscles, even if she risked damaging them. She knew if you pushed your muscles too hard you could damage them, and that could cause kidney failure, but it would take a lot longer for kidney failure to kill her than a laser borer, or getting crushed to death. And the other thing she needed was better reflexes. That was probably gonna be the least likely to get working, because it involved core neurological function, which seemed to be exactly the part of her neural lace that was most damaged. But she had to do her best.

Finally she cape to the top of a ridgeline, and leaned against an outcropping to catch her breath. Damn, she thought. I wonder what my friends would say if they could see me now. She’d like to think they’d think she was a badass. They’d probably side with Leofe, though. If anything, she probably looked a bit ridiculous in the heavy coat, with the hunting spear and the shield. Like a squat black shrub with delusions of martial grandeur. She made a mental note, for if she survived this. Tell Hraefn to make her a bitchin’ suit of armor. Something with pauldrons and spikes. Something you could airbrush onto the side of a van.

She thought of a large green pyramid on the ground. The emergency startup sequence for her prosthetics engaged, and her headache got a lot worse. She gritted her teeth. “Neural lace console mode,” she said. A flashing indicator appeared to the left of her vision, and a shimmering, ghostly outline of a keyboard in the air in front of her. She raised her hand and made typing motions.

God, she felt like a dumbass. At least none of the others could see her right now.

Katherine was no programmer, and she was no neurologist. She did remember a few commands from the user manual of the salvaged dragon. Dampening pain signals only took about a dozen keystrokes. A loud warning tone sounded in her ears--well, probably her auditory cortex--warning that what she was about to do overrode almost every safety built into the lace, and its warranty. She hit confirm. Then she did the same thing with the musculoskeletal support system. More loud, horrible warning tones, this time with messages that featured the word “DEATH” in flashing letters. Literally, neon-green flashing letters. Yes, yes. Get on with it. She tried get into the actual neurological support system, but this time a big yellow ACCESS DENIED message stopped her cold.

“What the fuck?”

User access to the neurological support system is denied. Please consult a medical professional if you desire to… god dammit. Okay, so that option was out. She had her wits. She had a weapon. She had a shield. And she had every last ounce of physical strength she’d be able to muster. God, she hoped it was enough.

* * *

An hour later, she crested another ridgeline, and she saw it, hunkered down in a hollow below her. The dragon.

She exhaled slowly. She wasn’t sure what she had imagined. Lying on the valley floor, half buried by the landslide, they had looked so mechanical. Inert. Obviously the work of human hands; and, if she was honest with herself, she had thought that the People’s insistence on calling them “dragons” was kind of stupid. But now she could see why they did. This thing--hunched on four enormous legs, curled around an enormous stone outcropping like a beast of mythology--did not look like a machine any longer. The hundreds of metal plates that formed its skin slid neatly over one another as its head swung one way and the other; the instruments and receivers along its back bristles, like spines or the outlines of skeletal wings, and, yes, there was a furious red glow from deep within its belly. It was enormous--easily two hundred meters long. It moved forward slowly, almost glacially, testing the ground with each foot.

Well then. Maybe she could sneak up on it. Niiiice and easy. After all, somebody had to do maintenance on this thing, right? It was designed with that in mind? Maybe it would let her climb right up on top of it, find a nice hatch she could pop open, and she could drop down inside, plug her brain into a control panel, and press the “off” button. Yeah. That sounded like a great plan.

Katherine took a step forward. She looked down. Something was glowing inside her coat. She pulled it out; it was the bird. The flaw in the middle, that seemed to be where the homing device was. It glowed with a sharp, almost radioactive blue light. Katherine looked down at the dragon.

Well, shit. Its head, if that was what you wanted to call it, was looking right at her. She slipped the bird back into her coat and picked up her spear. She waited to see what it would do next. Metal plates began to slide past each other, and something not unlike a maw began to gape. And there was a grim red light shining from within it.

“Ohhhh fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfff-” Katherine took of sprinting down the ridgeline, as an enormous blast of something hit the spot where she had been standing a moment ago. There was a spray of rocks and dirt, and the force of the blast knocked her forward, but she did not fall. She glanced back over her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of glowing red rocks.

“Whyyy,” she screamed down at the beast. “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT. I’m trying to give this BACK to you!” She fished around inside her coat, and then held up the bird, so it could see it.

“Here it is! Take it! Take it and go! Leave these nice people alone!”

The dragon looked at her dully. She had a thought, an insane one perhaps, but she was having an insane kind of morning. She stood up, reared back, and pitched the bird as hard as she could down toward the dragon. It arced through the air, and fell hilariously short, skipping down the slope until it came to rest about half way between her and it.

“There! All yours!” she yelled. The dragon did not look at it, though it glowed as brightly as before. It just started opening its maw again.

“God DAMMIT,” Katherine screamed. She jumped down the slope, just as the boring laser blasted another Katherine-sized hole in the landscape, and slid down the scree toward the bird. She stumbled, fell, rolled, and tried to stand before falling again. The dragon’s head was tracking her, but it was slow. She could hear the machinery inside it whirring from where she was. She finally got close enough to the bird to pick it up, and took of running parallel to the dragon again, hoping she could move faster than its head could turn. Another hideous glare lit up the landscape around her; another blast hurled fragments of rock into the air.

Katherine needed to think, and she couldn’t do that very well while running. And her headache was getting worse and worse and worse and the last thing she needed was a critical failure of her cybernetics while eighteen hundred tons of pain had her classified as Threat Numero Uno. There was a larger stone outcropping ahead; she skidded to a halt behind that, and considered her options.

One, try to get closer. Running directly at it was suicide, but if she could get on its back, she was pretty sure it could not reach her. Maybe then she could get inside. Maybe. Two, try to get away. Ha ha, fat chance, and that didn’t solve her original problem. Three, try to… she looked down at the spear in her hand. Poke it? She considered throwing it away, but she couldn’t bring herself to. God you’re an idiot, Katherine, she thought to herself.

She had to get closer. She glanced around the side of the outcropping. The dragon was opening its jaw again. She took off running. It was a good thing, too; the outcropping exploded into fragments and the borer tore into the side of the mountain like it wasn’t even there. Some big chunks of rock hit Katherine on the back and head while she ran, but they weren’t big enough to knock her down, and the pain suppression was doing its job.

Now she ran down the slope, at a forty-five degree angle toward the base of the monster. Its feet were massive, nearly the size of one of the houses in the village, and the nearest one began rising in the air as she approached, as the creature took another slow step toward her. Crunch. It smashed the earth flat below it as it came down, but Katherine saw what she needed in the glow of another laser blast: an access ladder, reaching down to ground level.

It took a good seven or eight seconds at least between laser blasts. If she could escape one more, she could probably run straight at it and close the distance in that time. She began running parallel to the thing again, this time in the opposite direction; it fired, she pivoted ninety degrees, and fell flat on her face.

She scrambled to her feet; its mouth was already open again. A wild, elemental terror filled her body, and she sprinted blindly; there was another explosion, and she felt something go into her right leg. She stumbled again, but did not fall; but now her right leg was only halfheartedly obeying her commands.

Nothing for it, she thought. Just fucking run.

She made it to the leg just as it was rising into the air again, and leapt up to grab the handhold; the dragon froze, its leg in the air, as if confused, and Katherine scrambled up onto the ladder, and started climbing as quickly as she could with her shield and spear. She remembered where the access hatch had been on the other one: middle of the back, high up, near where the neck met the shoulder-ish part. The dragon’s head swung right, then left; haha fucker, she thought. Can’t laser me now. What she had not counted on was that the motion of the thing’s body made it extremely difficult to keep her grip; even as she came to the almost-flat part of the back, she had to cling to the ladder to keep from being flung off.

Finally, she found the hatch and the access panel. She used the end of the spear to pop it open, and found the neural interface on the first try. Then she saw the readout on the panel.

THREAT ELIMINATION MODE ACTIVE - DO NOT ATTEMPT ACCESS

Katherine froze. She’d heard stories--back before these things were more strictly regulated--of security protocols that could fry neural laces, even induce crippling brain damage. It wasn’t hard, if you had complete, unfettered access to someone’s brain and you were an epic asshole, to do them real harm, or just straight up kill them. That kind of thing was usually banned now. But it hadn’t always been. Katherine frowned. She tapped the physical interface of the control panel.

“DO NOT ATTEMPT ACCESS!” flashed more brightly.

“Fuck you,” she whispered to herself. She tapped it again, to see if she could get some sort of override input to come up.

PROXIMITY DEFENSE SYSTEM ENGAGED

A smaller hatch opened nearby, and something popped up out of it. Something that looked suspiciously like a miniature version of a laser borer. It swiveled to face Katherine.

“Oh come on!”

She let go of her handhold, sliding back down the side of the dragon as a second laser sliced the air above her. The dragon bucked, and she went flying off the side. There was a crunch, and a sharp pain signal, quickly muted, in her left arm. She groaned, and rolled over; the shield was still strapped to it, but her left forearm was definitely broken. She looked down at her leg. Her calf was sliced open, a deep, jagged cut. Her spear had fallen to the ground perhaps twenty feet away, and the dragon was turning, slowly, to face her.

I tried, she thought to herself. I really tried. At least it will be a quick death. The bird will probably be destroyed. I don’t know what the dragon will do after that. And I don’t know what idiot designed this thing, and what stupid fucking regulatory agency got bribed to approve it, but perhaps maybe then it will back off. And I can’t say I didn’t try.

She swallowed a lump in her throat. Fuck, was this really how it was going to end? She had survived the water and the ice and the darkness and all the rest, just to die in a flash of fire? The jaws of the dragon opened; a red glow filled the air.

It wasn’t even really a conscious decision at this point. Pure instinct. She curled herself up behind her shield, and did her best to make herself as small as possible. There was a terrific noise, a sensation of terrible heat and then--nothing. She looked up. She was alive. She looked down at her shield. It was glowing red-hot in the middle, and there was an awful stench of burned meat where the back of her hand was touching it; she flung it away, and looked up at the dragon.

The mirror finish had reflected enough of the laser to score a deep gash in it, running from the side of its head, back through its shoulder, deep into the machinery of its belly. Its jaw was shattered, hanging limply, even as its head swung left and right, like it was trying to make sense of what had happened.

“FUCK YOU YOU OVERGROWN POSTHOLE DIGGER!” Katherine screamed. She ran over to her spear and snatched it up. She could see, as the beast moved now, the way the machinery in its belly held it up, pistons moving back and forth to balance it, what looked like a supply of hydraulic fluid to move its legs. Most of it was solid metal, nothing she could do anything about, but there was one spot, exposed by the blast of the laser, still glowing from its heat, where she could see what looked like an important tank of something made out of plastic. And maybe, just maybe, she could immobilize it if she could cut it open.

“Okay, asshole,” she said to herself. “One last go.” She broke into a run straight toward the dragon. Its head swung in an arc directly down toward her, as if trying to flatten her into the stones; she turned, avoided it, but her foot caught a rock and she stumbled--but did not fall. As she came up underneath it, it began to move its legs apart, bringing its body down as if to flatten her; but this worked to Katherine’s favor, dropping her target until it was almost directly above her head. She leapt directly up, using every ounce of her cybernetically enhanced strength, and drove the spear home as hard as it could. For a brief moment, she thought it would bounce harmlessly off; but it caught some imperfection in the molded surface, and sank deep inside. The pressurized tank exploded, and a reeking, slick, chemical solution gushed out, drenching her from head to toe.

She fell to the ground, as the dragon loomed over her, and staggered. Something was terribly wrong now; her eyes were burning, and her nose, and the headache from her neural lace felt like it was going split her skull open. She watched the dragon flail for a moment, then slow--then still.

Oh God, she thought. Was it enough? Is it over? Are they safe?

#tanadrin's fiction

8 notes · View notes

fursasaida · 5 years ago

Link

I had come to Washington to witness either the birth of an ideology or what may turn out to be the passing of a kidney stone through the Republican Party. There was a new movement afoot: National Conservatives, they called themselves, and they were gathering here, at the Ritz-Carlton, at 22nd Street and M. Disparate tribes had posted up for the potlatch: reformacons, blood-and-soilers, curious liberal nationalists, “Austrians,” repentant neocons, evangelical Christians, corporate raiders, cattle ranchers, Silicon Valley dissidents, Buckleyites, Straussians, Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Tories, dark-web spiders, tradcons, Lone Conservatives, Fed-Socs, Young Republicans, Reaganites in amber. Most straddled more than one category.

They were here because of one undeniable fact: Donald Trump was going to die. Trump might be ejected from office or lose the election or win the election—but he was, also, definitely going to die. And Trumpism needed to survive. It was just getting started. If Trumpism were snuffed out with Trump, Republicans would fall back into march with the party lemmings in hock to their donors (hardly any Republican voters agreed with the donors about anything, as Trump had intuited), who would connive with liberals to contaminate the country with more immigration, more Big Tech treason, more “free” trade, more endless wars, more slouching toward nihilism. The ancien régime was threatening to reconstitute itself.

Someone had to stand up for Trumpism in the noble abstract. Someone philosophical, who knew how to extract timelessness from the tawdriness. Trump the Man might be crude and venal, but Trump the Spirit had opened a trapdoor in history. Some political-theological exegesis would be required to unspool the nature of the accomplishment. The old world of the Cold War and the American Empire was over; an older world of nations—a community of nations! A brotherhood!—was struggling to be reborn. Orbán, Bolsanaro, Bibi, Boris—all were wise to it, while liberal professors sat on panels about “Hungary’s Wrong Turn” or “Israel’s Self-Implosion” or “The Brexit Backwash,” as if History were a hedgerow only they were privileged to prune. Had they no eyes? China was about to decide whether it preferred curtailing its exports or eating grass. Germany was primed to be pastoralized at last, once Detroit patented the right car battery. It was house-hunting season in the West Bank—did you know a good broker? American industry was at a halftime pause, waiting for Clint Eastwood’s voice-over to resume. Was there room at Guantánamo for the executive board of Google? The drugs needed to flow back out—a new Opium War!—and the jobs needed to flow back in—full employment! A few good NatCons could keep the Republican zombie-archy at bay. Fox News might well fall into conniptions at the notion, but what was needed was “class warfare”—or perhaps more precisely, a war within the elites—to ensure that the future remained Trumpian and did not revert to the globalist highway to nowhere. [...]

The high degree of bonhomie in the ballroom was hard to deny. Conservatives in their comfort zones can establish an instant rapport. Aloofness is rapidly abandoned as a hindrance to the assembly of a highly charged emotional grid. The speed of social fusion exceeds its own object, so that everyone already seems prepared to bleed for they know not yet what.

#this is the only useful piece of writing about the contemporary right i've read in months #2 #3 #4 #5 #nationalism #trump

3 notes · View notes

buddeysystem · 5 years ago

Note

Just a little HC for you, with your stupid kidney stone! Way later after they took the Blood Oath picture on the Speaking Rock, I believe they held each other for a while. They looked at each other's faces, each line and wrinkle that wasn't there years and years ago. Rhett touched Link's graying hair and whispered, "Look how far we've come." Link closed his eyes to soak in the sheer love, love denied for so long.

oh wow its crying time huH

#this makes me So Soft #its like the song laughter lines by bastille #except theyve been with each ofher the entire time #g od #ask #anon #anon u r my fav person thank u for the headcanon

6 notes · View notes

chuffyfan87 · 5 years ago

Text

Hiding. Part 25b

"That one never stays still. Especially in the middle of the night. The other one spends most of its time sleeping unless it's mealtimes."

“Definitely Charlie the other one, then?” Megan laughed gently.

"So that makes me the night time livewire?"

“Yes.”

Duffy stuck out her tongue childishly.

“You’re such a child.” Megan teased.

"I'm almost 40!" Duffy retorted pulling a horrified face.

“That’s true. Getting old now, Duffy.”

"Thanks! Oh well, could be worse, I suppose... Charlie's 50 next year!" Duffy giggled.

“I bet he’s looking forward to that.”

"He thinks I haven't realised."

“That he’s 50?”

"He thinks he can keep it a secret." Duffy smiled. "Thinks I'm too distracted by my own upcoming birthday."

Megan rubbed Duffy’s stomach for a second before she removed her hand. “Are you planning anything for either birthdays?”

"Commiserating over several glasses of wine and whisky?" Duffy shrugged with a giggle.

“And then getting up to mischief no doubt?” Megan laughed.

"Me and Charlie? Never!" Duffy giggled.

Megan smiled. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

"That would be lovely. Thanks."

Megan got up and went to the kitchen. She got distracted by Emily though. Emily was so adorable!

Hearing cooing noises from the hallway Duffy got up and went through to pick up Emily from her pram.

Megan smiled at Emily, who grumbled. She was grumpy when she first woke.

Duffy attempted to soothe the little girl but she was having none of it. She hadn't planned to be out so long so had very few supplies with her.

“Are you grumpy? I’m sure Auntie Megan has a bit of chocolate somewhere.”

"Megan! She's only just started weaning!"

“I’m sure a little bit of chocolate won’t hurt her. A tiny piece?”

"She probably wants a bottle but I left the formula at home."

“Then I’m sure a tiny piece of chocolate will fill that belly up.” She tickled Emily’s belly.

Duffy held Emily out towards Megan. "Can you hold her while I check the bag again?"

“Of course.” Megan took Emily and began to head in the direction of the kitchen.

Duffy bent to dig around in the bag not paying attention to what Megan was up to.

Emily was still grumbling, she was hungry.

Duffy had just laid her hands on a spare bottle when Emily suddenly quietened. She headed through to the kitchen.

Megan was giving her a smashed up strawberry. “I know you said no to chocolate so strawberry instead?”

Duffy smiled indulgently as she rolled her eyes. "I think we'll let daddy change that nappy later, what you think Emily?"

Emily giggled softly and opened her mouth for more.

"I'll go warm this up while she's finishing that."

“Sorry; I couldn’t resist.” Megan fed Emily another mouthful of the strawberry.

"I remember you letting Peter have a biscuit when I had to bring him into work."

Megan laughed, “Sorry. I can’t resist.”

"You weren't the worst - I caught one of the junior nurses trying to feed him a Pot Noodle!"

“A pot noodle?” Megan replied, surely Duffy wasn't being serious.

"Yeh." She sighed as she tested the temperature of the milk on her wrist.

“Do you want me to feed her?” Megan offered.

"You sure?"

“Of course. It’s the least Auntie Megan can do.”

Duffy handed Megan the bottle and lent back against the worktop.

“Why don’t you sit down?” She moved Emily into a more comfortable position, checked the bottle once more and ran the teat along Emily’s lip.

"I'm fine." Duffy replied, forcing a smile.

“No you’re not, what’s wrong?” Megan was another person who could read Duffy like a book. Emily took the bottle.

"Its nothing."

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

"It was just a light knock." Duffy insisted.

“On your face?”

"No." Her cheekbone was already starting to swell and go a purplish colour so she knew there was no point denying that she'd taken quite a smack there.

“Duffy? Please don’t lie.”

"I caught the pram when he hit me." Duffy mumbled.

“Your stomach?” Megan asked, fearing the answer.

"The back of my hip. I was focusing on not dropping Emily and ended up knocking into the handle.

“Duffy! I think we need to go to the hospital!”

"I'm fine. It's only a bruise."

“Please?” Megan begged. “Duffy, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to you or the twins.”

"Charlie will freak out if you bring me into the department." Duffy sighed. "Its bad enough that I'm gunna have to figure out how to explain this." She gestured to her cheek.

“You need to tell him at some point!”

"He'll go mad. There's a restraining order in place."

“You need to call the police!”

"He just wanted to talk." Duffy sighed. "I thought it would be OK."

“Don’t let him get away with this, Duffy. Please.”

Duffy looked reluctant but nodded. "Where do you want to go first?" She asked with a sigh.

“The hospital.”

About half an hour later the taxi pulled up in the hospital carpark.

Duffy got up from her seat and began to manoeuvre Emily's pram out of the taxi.

“Let me help.” Megan fussed and took hold of the pram.

"I'm perfectly capable." Duffy muttered. She rolled her eyes as they made their way into the department. She sighed as she saw that there was a queue at reception.

“Would you like me to go and find Charlie?” Megan asked.

"No!" Duffy whispered harshly as she attempted to hide her face from the passing members of staff.

“Go and wait in his office?” Megan suggested.

"No, I'll wait in line just like everyone else. No special treatment."

“Ok, alright.” Megan smiled sadly.

They were almost at the front of the queue when Duffy heard a voice say her name.

“Duffy?”

"Oh hi Max." She smiled politely. Her hair purposely swept down across the side of her face.

He frowned, “What’s wrong? Is it the babies?” He asked.

"Oh no, nothing major. Just a minor mishap. I'll be fine."

“Come on, let me see?” He encouraged her gently.

"I haven't even given my name in at the desk yet nevermind been triaged."

“I don’t care. Come on, please?”

She sighed and swept back her hair, tucking it behind her ear. "I caught it on a cupboard door." She lied.

Megan sighed, “Someone got a little handy with their fists more like. Not for the first time, either.” She replied. Max gently touched Duffy’s cheek.

"Megan!" She winced at Max's prodding.

“Sorry.” He gently touched her cheek again, “Charlie didn’t...?”

“Of course it wasn’t Charlie!” Megan replied, horrified at the suggestion.

"This is why I didn't want to come." Duffy muttered.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Max asked as he gently tried to move her in the direction of cubicles.

"No."

“Duffy!” Megan said sternly.

"Fine! I caught the back of my hip on the handle of the pram. It was just a light knock. It's nothing."

Finding the first free cubicle, Max made Duffy sit down as Megan left to take Emily into Charlie's office. “Are you in any pain or discomfort?”

"It aches a bit."

“Your hip? Can I see?”

She attempted to twist to show him where she'd struck the handle but it was proving awkward.

“Awkward position?”

She sighed as she realised she'd have to stand lent over the bed and pull down her leggings. Today just got better and better!

Realising the position Duffy had to get into, Max laughed. “Let’s make sure Charlie doesn’t walk in otherwise I might get a smack for taking advantage of his pregnant partner.”

Despite everything she couldn't help but giggle.

She had a lovely giggle! He checked her side, “Is that tender?” He pressed around her hipbone.

She shook her head. She squealed as he poked a particular spot.

“You’re sensitive there?” He asked, “Sorry.”

She bit her lip and nodded. A panicked look was building in her eyes.

“What’s wrong? You think it could be your kidneys?”

"That's where things started going wrong last time."

“Ok, don’t panic.” He smiled reassuringly, “I’m going to take some blood, test your kidney function ok?”

She sat back on the bed and offered out her arm. The crook of her elbow was bruised and a closer inspection revealed puncture marks from numerous previous blood tests. "Good luck." She sighed.

“Dodgy veins?”

"Too many blood tests."

“Can I see your other arm? See if I’ll have any luck?”

She held out the other arm and it was clear that it was in a similar state.

Max rolled his eyes playfully, “Looks like I’ll be spending some time with you today! Be like trying to get blood out of a stone.”

Duffy considered making a suggestion that would make things easier in some respects but more complicated in others.

“What’s on your mind?” Max queried.

"Charlie would be able to do it first time."

“Charlie would? Special talent of his?” Max nodded, “Alright, would you like me to go and get him for you?”

"He doesn't know I'm here." She admitted.

“Ah.” He paused, “I’ll break the news to him gently.” There was no need for Max to because Charlie had already been told Duffy was here by Megan.

Max opened the curtains just as Charlie arrived in the cubicle area.

#chuffy #charlie and duffy #charlie fairhead #lisa duffin

2 notes · View notes

tessatechaitea · 5 years ago

Text

Team Titans #23

Redwing must have been furious when she didn't make the Birds of Prey roster.

The good news is that I'm almost done reading all of the Team Titans comic books I own. The gooder news is that I'm almost done reading all of the New Titans comic books I own! The most goodest news of all is that I'm still alive somehow. Although that's only good news in the sense that, by being alive, I can appreciate being alive. The news that I were dead would be just fine with me as well because I wouldn't have to hear it. The good news about the bad news of my death is that none of you would hear of it either! You'd all just believe that I got bored of writing comic book reviews and went off to live on a beautiful tropic island full of kittens. After I finish reading Team Titans and New Titans, I'll have to dig out another old series to reread. I'm excited to find out what it will be! I was on Twitter earlier and was perplexed by this person's response to a Tom King tweet. If a smarter reader than me could explain what he meant, I'd truly appreciate it!

My current theories: 1. He's just a Trumpist and knows Tom King isn't a white supremacist asshole so he simply assumes this tweet is somehow mocking Trump. 2. The Tweet didn't delve inside the mind of the protagonist thus relying too much on the reader using their own mind to form conclusions of the protagonist's intent, making it a 'difficult' read. 3. The person replying probably just responds this way to all of Tom King's tweets because Batman isn't punching enough villains these days.

This issue begins with Jensen practicing some of his beat poetry.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Audience nods smartly while puffing nonchalantly on long cigarettes.

Redwing has transformed into a woman with the head of a bird and huge talons on her hands. If any of these Team Titans had a romantic interest in her, they'd probably be thinking, "Did her anus, vagina, and urethra just merge into a cloaca?" But apparently none of them do have that kind of interest because none of them are currently throwing up the way I am after having that thought. But now I'm also thinking of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's sex talk. "Let's kiss cloacae, baby!" While everybody tries to pretend Redwing is still the same person she's always been (except grosser), Chimera reminds the Team Titans that other totally-not-monsters-just-because-they-look-like-human/animal-hybrid creatures are trying to kill them. For some reason, Redwing attacks the other Team Titans. Maybe she's just trying to get them to admit that they all think she's a monster now. If that was her plan, it works because Lapidus is all, "If you're intent on proving you're as much a monster inside as well as out, then you'll have to go through me!" Idiot! You're not supposed to say she looks like a monster to her face! You're supposed to act more like her brother Prester Jon and avoid eye contact and tugging at the inside of your shirt collar and mumbling things like, "Yikes!" At least that allows you to deny your true feelings when she confronts you about why you're acting so weird.

Me at prom.

Sometimes I completely understand that I'm reviewing comic books that never wanted me as an audience. I don't care what young person is infatuated with what other young person, or how much bullshit drama one member of the team can create for no reason at all. If I was, I would be a fan of the Legion of Super-heroes. So if I hate this comic book with such passion that I've certainly spontaneously created at least five kidney stones within me, it really shouldn't reflect on the comic book at all. I'm sure somebody cares that Killowat has a crush on Mirage but he's also a racist piece of shit. I'm sure somebody cares that Terra has littered the Troy Family Farm with stone dildos because Changeling won't fuck her. I'm sure somebody cares that Prestor Jon has an issue with his sister because she doesn't look as human as she used to (while it's okay for him to look like Stretch Armstrong). But that someone is not me. I don't think it ever was me. Half the comic books I own were purchased because of simple momentum. I bought the first issue and felt compelled to buy the second issue and, well, fuck it? Why not just keep buying them no matter how terrible they were?! I know that doesn't say anything positive about my decision making but then I've also never claimed to be good at making decisions. The fact that I read every comic book of The New 52 for six or seven years proves that! Prester Jon refers to Qurac as "hell on Earth" which Chimera has opinions on.

"Hell! What a western concept! But, I mean, you're right and I'm going to go along with that characterization so I don't even know why I pointed that out!" I didn't say she had strong opinions on it.

Chimera mentions that she last met the Team Titans in Team Titans Annual #1. Fuck! I didn't review that issue! I'm sure I own it but it might be stored with all of the Bloodlines Annuals. Well, I guess I can review it whenever I find it during my reread of all of my thousands of comic books from the last forty years!

It's true that I never expected Peter David's Aquaman but I certainly wasn't waiting for it.

Prester Jon tries to discover what caused Redwing's transformation (as well as that of the human/animal hybrids outside) while a young Quraci girl looks at Redwing and cries. I think it's supposed to be touching how the little girl can't communicate but she can feel emotions. Although it would be better if she could communicate because, for some reason, she knows the entire backstory as to how and why people became mutant animal monsters. Something about how aliens crashed in the desert and Circe saw they could be used to make human/animal hybrids but some of the aliens died in the desert and when Cheshire nuked Qurac, the aliens were atomized and everybody breathed in cremated alien space DNA. It's totally the kind of thing a little girl would know all about. Chimera shows Killowat and Terra that the Americans have come to Qurac to save the oil and not the people. That sets off Killowat's Angry Right Wing Logic Centers.

Oh? Is criticizing America's foreign policy of protecting investments considered politically correct? Although doesn't this anger and argument seem tame from a 2019 perspective?

Anybody who begins an argument with "I refuse to believe" is a person with whom I immediately stop arguing. It's a great opening tactic because I appreciate your desire to not waste my time by immediately revealing that you won't be listening to facts and evidence. Also, "I refuse to believe America would rape a country of its resources at the expense of saving the people" may as well be a declaration that you spent most of your time in history class yelling, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah! I can't hear you!" Not that America's public educational system was particularly great at exposing America's imperialistic abuse! There's definitely a reason right wing thinkers believe college educations turn people into leftists. Because it does! Leftists are just rational people who aren't viewing the world through the lens of preconceived opinions! College educations are less about broad generalizations and more about trying to put history in as much context as possible. Patriots are often as blind as people of faith. One of the conditions of being faithful is to not question your faith. It's right there in the word! So any examination of your faith is questioning that which you shouldn't question. Being a patriot is the exact same thing. If you question our government, you're against our government. There's no belief in trying to improve our government because it's an acceptance of flaws in the United States. Of course now that's simply become a way to not ever question anything a Republican does because obviously everything any Democrat does is completely wrong. It's believing in tribe over anything else. I am not a Democrat because I believe whatever the fuck every Democrat believes. Hell, I'm not even technically a Democrat! I am liberal, sure. But I don't support any idea or belief from what would be considered my tribe. And neither are a lot of liberals which is why you have trouble with Democratic voter turnout. Every Republican nominee is practically interchangeable. As long as they spout the handful of talking points important to the accepted base (2nd amendment, anti-abortion, Christian values, white supremacy...I mean states rights!), they'll do. But Democrats have the constant fight over whether a candidate will lose voters if they move left away from center while hardly ever acknowledging how many votes they'll gain as they move left. I've always said they should abandon all those assholes at the center. If you're only voting Democrat because you support their social views but don't want higher taxes maybe you're actually a Republican. Because if the Democratic party moves further left and you abandon it because of taxes to side with the gun toting fetuses who support locking up refugees on our southern border, who the fuck wants you at that party anyway?! Back to the comic book, the Team Titans speculate that the cremated alien DNA has combined with the tainted oil in Qurac and the metagenes in certain individuals to transform them into monsters. So now they've got to destroy all of America's profits by making sure the oil isn't sold all over the world. Killowat is all, "I can't believe we're going to save the world at the risk of America's profits!" I mean, he doesn't say that explicitly. But I can read between his racist and xenophobic lines.

Finally an argument that wins him over!

Look, I get being resistant to truth! Whenever I brush my teeth, I can't help thinking about the Barney song where they mime brushing with huge toothbrushes and sing, "While I'm brushing my teeth and having so much fun, I never let the water run!" And then I just let the water run! I know, I know. I'm a fucking monster! Terra and Killowat solve the problem by putting the contaminated oil back into the ground. That seems scientifically sound enough that I won't bother questioning it like a college-educated leftist. But Killowat assures Chimera that she hasn't won the argument even though her argument was simply, "Maybe you should question your government sometimes, idiot." Meanwhile the animal people attack the other Titans upstairs. The Titans can't kill them because they were once people (although I guess if they had always been sentient monster people, it would have been okay to kill them? Sometimes I'm not entirely sure of comic book superhero rules). They solve their problem by sending them into a Fairy Land via one of Chimera's portals. She was hesitant to do it earlier because she didn't know if what transformed them was catching. But now that Prester Jon somehow did science and figured out what happened, everybody agrees it's okay to banish them to a world where they'll never see their loved ones again and nobody will work out how to save them and they'll probably just turn on each other when they get hungry. Superman throwing every villain into the Phantom Zone has left a terrible example for young heroes to follow!

Oh the 90s! When every time anybody said anything, you had to wait a few seconds to see whether or not they really believed what they just said!

Later Killowat acts like a total jerk. But he acts like a different kind of total jerk than he usually acts like. So after he's done, he says, "Whoa! What just happened?! Is that shadowy person on the ground hiding behind the tree controlling me?! And who might it be?! ZERO HOUR!" Team Titans #23 Rating: B-. They sure used to pack a lot of story and words into comic books, didn't they?! And for only $1.95! That's two dollars less than the crappy comics DC puts out today that have four less pages and far less story every month! And it's three dollars less than Marvel books! No wonder Marvel is more popular. People probably look at the price and think, "Whoa! I'm getting a whole dollar more quality out of this comic book than that stupid DC comic book!" It also might help that Marvel doesn't mind having synopses of the story to help new readers or old readers whose memories aren't that great anymore. DC refuses to do the same, instead relying on the writer wasting two or three pages of actual story where characters think about what happened in the previous issue. A lot of DC books suck in collected formats!

#Team Titans #Teen Titans #DC Comics #DC #Comic Book Review

2 notes · View notes

antiquechampagne · 6 years ago

Text

Chapter 26 - Escape

Nothingness. A great endless expanse. In that Nothingness, Warmth grew, overwhelming the Nothing, becoming the Warmth. Time, place, form... they did not exist in this pure pulsing Warmth. Light soon appeared, condensing out of the Warmth, giving the world direction. The Light grew and merged with the Warmth. This place was so familiar, an incubator for the Self as it grew into being.

Something called across the void.

“Payne” something called through the Warmth. The word was known, familiar. The Self found itself drawn to it, pulled out of the Warmth and into the Light. The Self ran, until it encountered a barrier, the Warmth coalescing, barring the way to the Light.

“PAYNE?!” The voice, growing urgently with alarm, sent the Self into a frenzy. It threw itSelf against the barrier frantically. Bright cracks spread like a web across the Warmth’s barrier. When the pieces fell away, the Self fell through, consumed by the Light.

Payne blinked, controlling the only part of her body she could. Therefore, she blinked with purpose. She could not see. That would come later. Each blink brought a bit more of herself back under her own control, slowly driving the Hunger out.

“Are you in there, Payne? What’s going on…”

Payne instantly recognized Hancock’s voice, steeped in confusion and distress. She fought even more for control of her disobeying body. Soon she could see, her vision clouded, red and muddy. She could taste the coppery remnants of the warm blood that dripped from her open mouth, whispering decadent memories of a once beating meal. A crumpled corpse lay dropped at her feet, the head nearly ripped from its body.

Hancock stood before her, defensively holding his knife out to her. Numerous angry bleeding defensive slashes laced across his hands and upper arms. A line even snaked across his cheek, dangerously close to one eye. He jabbed a stimpak into his thigh, still holding his weapon up with his other hand, as he slowly backed away. The Hunger pulled Payne forward, closing the distance between them.

His thinly veiled fear and confusion triggered Payne to seize control of her muscles, freezing them where she stood. It took all of her power to keep herself in place. The Hunger roiled inside her, furious at being denied its next meal.

“Payne?”

“MORE” The Hunger had forced the word from her frozen throat.

Hancock pulled out the flask from the interior of his coat, tossing it to her. Payne snatched it in midair with one white knuckled hand. She gagged as she drained the flask, the Hunger raging against the cold dead blood. She forced her shoulders to down, her posture starting to resemble a more human stance. Even so, Hancock continued to step back.

“Be careful.” Payne warned, voice was still gruff but returning to normal.

Mid-step, his elbow bumped into the butcher’s prone body, throwing the gory balancing act perched on the table off kilter. As the butcher fell to the floor with a meaty thump, the unconscious victim awoke, eyes blazing open and mouth screaming. Startled, Hancock slipped on the blood-covered floor, landing prone as the Hunger ripped control from Payne’s grip, fueled purely by predatory instinct. Vaulting over Hancock, Payne hunched over the raider on the table, ripping into this exposed neck. Within seconds Hancock recovered to his feet, the attack was over. Payne felt the Hunger finally retreat, sated.

Payne slowly sat up, staring down in front of her at the gruesome remnants of the prone man on the table. Somehow this was more palatable than seeing Hancock’s reaction. That she couldn’t take. Without saying a word, she slid off the table opposite Hancock. In front of her was a doorway, open to the fire escape.

Escape.

That seemed as good of an idea as any at this point. She silently slipped out, leaving the Hancock in the room alone save for corpses. Out on the rusted scaffolding, Payne figured she could kill two birds with one stone: avoiding both Hancock’s response to her monstrous fuck up and allowing him the space to feel safe leaving. She wiped her face as she leaned wearily on the apartment’s façade.

Payne couldn’t hide her disbelief when Hancock stepped through the doorway a few moments later to join her.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked. She still didn’t have the courage to look him in the face.

“It’s pretty hard to ask questions if the other person runs away. What happened to you in there? Because it looked like you weren’t… you… for a while.” Without drawing attention to his actions, he smoothly sheath his knife.

Payne was confused. This wasn’t how people should reacted to seeing her lose control like that… though normally no one was left breathing by the time she came back from falling over the edge. Her hand idly rubbed her back, the incision made by the raider barely registering under her fingertips.

“The bitch with the stealth-boy. We must have passed right by her… she got me right in the kidney. I guess I bled out in seconds.”

Hancock’s eyes narrowed. “You bled out? You mean you died?”

Payne shrugged. “I’m not really sure, maybe.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know… all I know is the basic upshot seems to be; if my heart stops, I wake up on a pile of bodies. I don’t really know what goes on in between. This is something I try to avoid, to be honest.”

“But you’re here now?”

Payne nodded. Hancock went silent. Payne kept waiting for him to turn and leave her out on the fire escape.

“Look. Personally, I’m more of a live and let live kinda guy. Kill all the raiders you want, whatever. They deserve it in my book.” He let out a little huff through his nasal cavity. “But I have a town full of people to keep safe.”

Here it comes. Thought Payne. Her shoulders tensed and jaw set, ready for the blow. Why didn’t he just leave, it would be so much easier.

“So…You tell me everything.” He looked at her squarely in the face. “Start to finish. I need to know what is going on with you, and how to deal if shit hits the fan. Or…” he crossed his arms “You’re fired. You are no longer welcome in Goodneighbor. You get your stuff and get out.”

As he spoke, Payne finally looked at him, her eyes wide. He was giving her an ultimatum. This she was not expecting. Her mind went blank as it scrambled to come up with some kind of response.

“That might take a while.” Payne eventually muttered.

“It’s not like I have anywhere better to be, so start spilling.”

#antique champagne #fallout #fallout 4 #fanfic #fan fic #hancock #blood #vampire #ao3

3 notes · View notes