#leave disabled people alone you absolute freaks

[elessarwanderer]

I’d been thinking of starting watching Doctor Who to continue my David Tennant media run after watching Takin’ Over the Asylum (and Good Omens of course) but needed the mental push to start something new.

I had a particularly horrible evening with my disability thanks to people being Absolute Freaks and Weirdos towards me, which kinda sent me spiraling about living with a very visible disability and man sometimes it really just fucking sucks and I can’t do anything about it. Etc.

So even though David doesn’t come on as the Doctor until season two, i decided to start there since I needed a comfort character, and then I’d go back to season 1 later.

Well halfway into s2ep1 David goes on his spiel about all the people who were born sick and who deserve better than to be used as “flesh” for finding cures for humans. I mean, they eventually get healed, but as someone who has spent their entire life wrapped into the medical model of disability, the poster child for finding a cure for my condition, my fucking god did that scene make me cry.

Because David, the way he is, even as an actor, apparently serendipitously always has the right thing to say.

[kittycak3s]

I hate that I'm being made responsible for coping with and "forgiving" abusive behavior just to protect myself.

I'm tired of being fucking "understanding". I'm tired of my survival being dependent on how much I'm able to take. I'm tired of being treated like dog shit for no reason.

[flightfoot]

How Alya's mistreated by the saltdom and the writers

I've written this for the @yall-hate-kids-tourney, but figured that I'd publish it on my own tumblr as well for an easy reference point for others who want to illustrate how badly Alya's been treated - mostly by the fandom, but she's been somewhat screwed over by the writing as well. I've written it so that even people who have never heard of Miraculous before can understand my problems with the way Alya's often depicted, and I will probably use this essay for that purpose repeatedly in the future. It's over 4500 words, so buckle up!

---

The amount of hatred Alya gets in the fandom is absolutely insane. There are over 800 fics tagged with "Alya Cesaire Bashing", and that's just the ones that actually TAG it - many of them either use a a non-canonical tag or just take their demonization of her as canon. It's not just that a lot of fics bash her either, but that the fics that bash her are disproportionately popular. If you go through the "Miraculous Ladybug" tag on AO3 and sort by kudos, I'd say around a third of the top 500 most popular fics use this gross caricature of her in order to justify inflicting some sort of insane punishment on her, or at least replacing her with "better" friends and leaving her to wail in despair.

Basically, Alya is the best friend of the main character, Marinette. She's really into superheroes and aims to be a reporter someday, to the point that the first time a supervillain cropped up in the series, she immediately got out her bike and cycled after him so that she could be there when a superhero showed up to fight him (Lois Lane would be proud). She runs a blog called the "Ladyblog" which reports on what the superheroes are doing, and sometimes makes some fun videos, like about the most impressive feats of one of the superheroes. 

More relevantly though, she acts as Marinette's support a lot of the time, often being the one to push her to confess her feelings to Adrien, to help her with plans she comes up with, to talk things out with if she's having trouble processing something, and trying to act as the voice of reason if Marinette's gotten to into her own head. It can sometimes head into Black Best Friend territory of having her mostly stick around to support her bestie, but she DOES get a decent amount of screentime and focus at least.

Then the first episode of season 3 aired, and the fandom went BALLISTIC.

This character, Lila, debuted back at the end of season 1 as being this attention-seeking liar who pretended that she knew a lot more famous people than she actually did, including being best friends with Ladybug. Alya, being a naive 14-year-old, believed her and put Lila's interview on her blog. Since Marinette IS Ladybug, she knew this was not true, though she was initially more freaked out about the possibility that Adrien (the boy she has a crush on) would find her supposedly amazing life to be entrancing and that Lila would steal Adrien away from her, to the point that she actively wanted to stop Lila and Adrien from spending time together to prevent Adrien from falling for her.

Fast-forward to Chameleon, the first episode of season 3, and Lila's back and lying some more, this time about having Tinnitus (which would mean that she needs to sit at the front of class, next to Adrien). The class has a whole seating rearrangement in order to accommodate the move, and because some of them just wanted to change seats. Since Marinette was late that day, she didn't get to give input, so she wound up sitting alone at the back of the class, instead of next to Alya like she usually did. She's upset by this, but can't prove that Lila doesn't actually have the disability (she doesn't even have evidence that Lila doesn't have hearing problems, it's just that her story of how she supposedly got the disability is suspect), so she puts up with it for the class period.

Then lunch time rolls around and Marinette tells Alya and Alya's boyfriend, Nino, that Lila's a lying liar who lies. Alya asks why Marinette hates her so much, since she barely knows Lila (this isn't the first time that Marinette's nitpicked at Lila's stories, but she's never actually managed to prove that Lila's lying, Lila's good at coming up with explanations for any hole Marinette exposes in her tales). Marinette tells her how, after Lila first arrived at school, she followed her and Adrien, eavesdropped on them, and then saw Ladybug show up and tear into Lila for not knowing her. (Presumably that's what she says, the episode skipped past her actual recounting of what she saw). Alya and Nino are more concerned with the fact that she stalked Lila and Adrien, with Alya also being skeptical that what she heard might have been out-of-context, given how common out-of-context eavesdropping is in fiction for causing issues, with Alya saying, "A good reporter always verifies her sources. Can you prove she doesn't actually know Ladybug?"

Since Marinette can't actually prove anything without revealing that she's Ladybug, she decides that the sane and reasonable thing to do is to throw a wadded up napkin at Lila while she's eating lunch, and when she catches it (Lila's pretending to have a sprained wrist), to loudly declare that she obviously doesn't have a sprained wrist. Lila quickly pretends that catching it did actually hurt, the classmates Lila was sitting with scold Marinette for hurting her, and then Marinette goes off to seethe in a bathroom, where Lila finds her and threatens to turn her friends against her if she continues trying to expose her lies. 

Then at the end of the episode, Adrien goes to sit with Marinette at the back of the class to keep her company, the teacher thinks that Marinette ALSO has hearing issues so she's brought back to the front (and away from Adrien again), Lila pretends that her hearing has been fixed so she can sit at the back with Adrien, and Alya spots that Marinette looks miserable about sitting alone at the front, so she chooses to sit next to Marinette to keep her company and everyone ends up going back to their old places, except that Lila's sitting at the back of the class now.

And that's it. That is, for the most part, what kicked off the entire Alya hatred and demonization onslaught. While there ARE more things that happening in following episodes, they have a pretty small effect on the demonization Alya's put through, almost all of it is derived from Chameleon and hasn't changed much since then.

So for starters, in fanfics Alya is often made to ditch Marinette constantly to hang out with Lila instead. This never happens. She's often exasperated when Marinette starts talking about how Lila is awful and points out that she doesn't have proof of that, but she doesn't avoid Marinette, and the closest she ever comes to hanging out with Lila outside of class events is when she called Lila over to babysit hers and Nino's younger siblings when Marinette canceled at the last minute.

But most Alya-bashing fics don't just leave it there. Oh no. If you look through a bunch of the most popular Miraculous fics, you'll see Alya made out to be some sort of ringleader for the class in bullying Marinette, hitting her, pinching her, poisoning her, destroying her things, saying nasty, heinous things to her, the works, and inciting the rest of the class to do the same, sometimes to the point that even LILA is shocked at her cruelty. Usually in these cases, Chloe, who is canonically the class bully (and Marinette's bully in particular) is inexplicably Marinette's primary protector against the eeeeeevil Alya, becoming Marinette's best friend and support and basically taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits, despite the fact that canonically, Chloe's as susceptible to Lila's lies as anyone else, and that in season 5 Chloe actually became Lila's partner in crime in trying to hurt Marinette in particular. (I don't like how Chloe's treated in canon, but that's a different story).

I've never even seen any justification given for why Alya's so frequently made to be outright violent or cruel towards Marinette, it's just widely accepted in fiction now, even with nothing pointing to her ever being malicious like that. There ARE other things Alya canonically does that I see her taken to task over though, but that fall apart when you examine them.

One of the biggest offenders is criticism towards Alya over how she handles babysitting. In Christmaster, Alya and Nino pick up Nino's little brother after Marinette babysits him for them while they're on a date, in Timetagger, Marinette's slated to babysit for them while they're on a date but cancels at the last minute, so they call Lila over instead, and then in Simple Man, Marinette books herself to babysit Alya's and Nino's younger siblings and the daughter of one's of her mom's friends, a little girl named Manon, all at the same time.

Alya receives heavy criticism for not paying Marinette for her babysitting, for having Marinette babysit for her secretly behind her parents' back without their knowledge, and for pressuring Marinette to babysit for her even though Marinette's so busy.

A few problems with this.

1. We see babysitting happen several times, sometimes with Alya helping Marinette with babysitting Manon and sometimes with Marinette just babysitting Manon without anyone else's involvement. At no point is payment brought up, and yet the absence of such a discussion is only ever used to demonize Alya.

2. There is no evidence that the babysitting Marinette does for Alya's sake is done behind her parents' back, the only thing pointing to that is a lack of Alya ever flat-out saying that she has her parents' permission to have Marinette babysit for her, but there's no evidence of sneaking around. MARINETTE, however, DOES canonically ditch her babysitting duties by having Alya babysit for her without the parent's knowledge. In Prime Queen, Marinette accidentally double books herself to do an interview as Ladybug at the same time that she's supposed to be babysitting Manon, so she calls Alya over to watch the interview with her, lies to her that she's just gonna go downstairs for a few minutes to talk with her parents and for Alya to please watch over Manon while she does that, and then leaves to do the interview while Alya watches over Manon the whole time. Nadja definitely didn't know that this happened, because she was surprised and worried when Alya and Manon called in during the interview with Marinette nowhere to be seen. In addition to this, in Simpleman, Marinette foists off all the children she's babysitting onto her grandpa against his will so that she can run off and help with Adrien's photoshoot after he calls her. The people demonizing Alya for supposedly having Marinette babysit for her secretly are not upset about the examples of Marinette canonically doing these things.

3. Of the three times that Marinette has, to date, been scheduled to babysit for Alya's sake (Christmaster, Timetagger, and Simpleman), for Christmaster she spent the next several hours after finishing with babysitting making Adrien's 50th birthday present (he's currently 14 years old), so I wouldn't say she was pressed for time, for Timetagger, she literally called Alya at the last minute to say she was too busy to babysit and Alya said it was no biggie and made other arrangements, and for Simpleman, Alya offered to cancel her date and take care of her younger siblings herself the instant she saw that Marinette was already babysitting Manon, and Marinette told her to go ahead and go on her date and that she'd look after her siblings.

So clearly, the people clutching their pearls about how horribly irresponsibly Alya is handling babysitting and how she's wronging Marinette in the process don't actually care about babysitting ethics here, because otherwise, Marinette would be getting the brunt of the hatred, not Alya. Despite this, I've seen a fair number of posts in the past tearing into Alya's babysitting for the reasons I already gave, and a bunch of fics that make it so that Alya pressures and guilt-trips Marinette into babysitting for her when she's struggling to keep up with all her work, only to have her parents find out and be horrified by how Alya's lied to them about who's been doing the babysitting and that Alya's been getting an increased allowance because of that, so they pay Marinette out of Alya's allowance and ground her, take away privileges, just have this be used as an excuse to punish Alya for supposedly wronging Marinette.

And then there's the subcategory of Alya demonization towards her for putting up Lila's interview on her blog without verifying that Lila was telling the truth. Admittedly, this was foolish, but she's 14. Retractions exist for a reason. And yet, fics frequently have her reputation be completely destroyed because she put up one interview that had a false statement by the interviewee in it, and sometimes even to be completely blacklisted from ever being a journalist in the future, things that are completely insane and would have even the most storied and well-respected of reporters be unable to ever get a job. 

She also frequently gets demonized and bashed for "believing Lila over Marinette". My major issue with this: what she's specifically believing Lila over Marinette for is on the topic of "is Lila an awful person". I don't think it's unreasonable to have a higher standard of proof for believing that someone is an awful person than for believing that your friend might just have some biased interpretations. Alya thinks that Marinette doesn't like Lila mostly because Lila has hit on Adrien, Marinette's crush, before. This isn't unreasonable considering that Marinette's first reaction to Lila is to freak out about her stealing Adrien away, and that when this other girl, Kagami, started hanging out with Adrien, she freaked out about that too. Specifically, she called a meeting of all her female friends to try and stop Kagami and Adrien from going away together to London for the weekend in Backwarder, helped Chloe in trying to get Kagami covered in food at a fancy red carpet movie opening in order to drive her away and steal her seat next to Adrien for the movie, and when she and Kagami were paired up for a "friend-making game" where the goal was to locate where Adrien was in Paris and the prize was to spend time with him, she pretended to genuinely want to be Kagami's friend so she could sabotage both of them and prevent Kagami from spending time with Adrien. So it's not like the belief that Marinette might be unfairly biased against Lila because she's made moves on Adrien is an unfair assumption.

In addition to that, on the occasions when Lila HAS tried to frame Marinette for something, Alya hasn't believed it, or hasn't been shown to believe it at least. In Ladybug, Lila tries to frame Marinette for cheating on a test, for stealing a necklace from her, and for knocking her down the stairs. Despite the evidence Lila planted, Alya doesn't believe it and investigates to try and find out what really happened. She doesn't uncover any solid proof, but she still believes in Marinette. She doesn't believe that Marinette's assumption that Lila's behind this is necessarily correct, since Marinette's leaping to that without presenting proof, but she doesn't believe that Marinette's the culprit either. And in the two following cases when Marinette's framed, Alya never actually gets a chance to say what she believes after the accusation is made against Marinette.

Just... the amount of demonization towards Alya TO THIS DAY, often for things she NEVER EVEN FREAKING DID, is absolutely insane. Even over 5 years since Chameleon aired, fics with Alya being made into this malicious, awful bully so that Marinette can get some new friends to publicly denounce her, get her arrested, or otherwise be punished are frequently on the front page of the most recently updated fics on AO3, and are often some of the most popular ones. If you go to "Fandom-Specific plot" on Tvtropes, saltfics like these have multiple files going through all the common salt tropes. When looking through fics, I frequently search for Alya's name because she's often the first person to be unfairly demonized, so if she's safe, then everyone likely is. 

I suspect that racism plays a major factor in this. It doesn't make sense that Alya's often painted as being a violent, malicious bully and leader in getting the rest of the class to physically hurt and terrorize Marinette, I haven't even seen analysis arguing that she'd do that... but it tracks with the "Black Brute" archetype. This becomes even more obvious with Chloe, who's white and canonically DOES do some of this stuff, taking on Alya's canon role and some of her personality traits in these sorts of stories.

Then there's the standard Alya's held to for how she handles her blog. It's way higher than anyone would hold real-world reporters to, much less 14-year-olds. But it makes sense if you factor racial bias into account, and how Alya, being Black, is going to be held to a higher standard than anyone else, and be punished more for failing to meet that standard.

For things like the babysitting double standard, it makes no sense if you're actually looking at the stated criticism, given that the same criticism isn't leveled at Marinette... but it makes perfect sense if you're going off the assumption that Alya, as Marinette's Black Best Friend, is supposed to solely function as her support and that she's simply fulfilling her duties by always being there for her when needed, including for babysitting, but that if Marinette ever attempts to repay in kind, then Alya's being unfair towards her because Alya's obligated to always support Marinette, but that relationship is supposed to be a one-way street. Alya is supposed to function as Marinette's support, never the other way around.

And as for the way Alya's demonized for asking for evidence before believing that Lila's lying, well... again, Alya's expected to act as Marinette's support, and her "failing" that in any way, even if it makes sense from her point of view, is viewed as a betrayal. She's supposed to be loyal to Marinette, and only to Marinette, not to think for herself or to have multiple other friends or values that she needs to weigh. And anything that she does to go against that "justifies" Marinette intentionally trying to hurt and punish her for failing to live up to her role.

In conclusion, the way Alya's treated by the salt side of the fandom is grossly unfair, often has little connection with anything she canonically did, and has some gross racist implications, and is likely at least partially spurred on by racism, especially with how common and popular it still is to this day.

Addendum: How Alya is screwed over by the writers.

While Alya is primarily screwed over by the fanbase, there are some aspects of the writing that exacerbate her ill treatment. In season 4, Marinette confesses her secret identity to Alya, letting her know that she is Ladybug. Despite now knowing why Marinette was so convinced that Lila wasn't friends with Ladybug, and that Lila's interview stating that she's best friends with Ladybug is a lie, the subject just... never comes up, even when Lila starts being important again. It's not that Alya's ignoring what Lila lying on those subjects means, it's more like the writers just completely forgot that Lila told those particular lies, since Marinette doesn't bring them up either. This creates an inconsistency with the fanbase, who really, really, REALLY haven't forgotten those lies. 

There ARE ways to explain this - Lila lying about being friends with Ladybug in order to try to boost her reputation, especially when she's the new girl, isn't really all that heinous. Marinette lies a lot as well, even if you don't count lies told to protect her secret identity or other "necessary" lies, sometimes out of embarrassment, sometimes to to try and prevent someone's feelings from getting hurt, and sometimes because she thinks it's the fastest, easiest, or most certain way to get the outcome she wants. And yet, even though Marinette lies a lot, she's not ostracized for that since it's usually not for malicious reasons - foolish reasons at times, but rarely malicious. It would make sense that Lila too, wouldn't be thought too badly of for merely lying in an attempt to make friends.

None of that actually comes up though. Alya later, in Confrontation, states that, "Marinette, you know we'll always believe you. But every time you've accused Lila, there's been no evidence. And at worst, it was just a misunderstanding." Marinette doesn't say anything about the previous times Lila has been proven to lie, so it seems like either it was decided offscreen that the more understandable lies she's told don't matter, or that the writers just plain forgot about them.

There were other opportunities created by Alya knowing Marinette's identity that were ignored. Alya concludes that Adrien backing up Marinette's statement that Lila's bad news was just due to him wanting to defend his girlfriend. This is also a bit of a writing flaw, while wanting to back up his girlfriend's stance IS a decent reason for Adrien to be biased against Lila, this is Adrien we're talking about here. He's nice and understanding to a fault, and is known for giving people the benefit of the doubt and second chances. It makes far less sense to believe that he'd believe the worst of Lila, even if Marinette does, than it does for Marinette to be biased against Lila. That being said, Adrien wouldn't have been present for Lila's more indisputable threats and statements directed against Marinette, so he can't actually verify for sure whether or not there could've been some misunderstanding.

There WAS, however, someone who was always with Marinette, and who could actually back up Marinette's statements more definitively. 

Tikki. She was present for every threat Lila made, for everything she ever claimed. While it's possible that both Tikki and Marinette may have misunderstood Lila in the same way, it's far less likely, especially since Tikki would have had different biases from Marinette. Tikki could be an important witness. Yet that never comes up, is never proposed, because that would end the plotline too quickly. 

Alya was also screwed over in the immediate aftermath of Lila being exposed, though not by the writers per se? There was a short scene planned after Lila's exposed where Alya apologizes for not believing Marinette about Lila being a liar and generally an awful person, we've even got leaked footage of it, but it appears that it was cut somewhere between being written and voice acted, and the episode being aired. 

All of this only really affects detailed arguments about how well (or poorly) Alya's story arc with Lila was handled, its affect on the actual fanfiction produced about Chameleon salt was minimal, I saw no change in its frequency, severity, or general handling of the characters with any season after season 3. I highly doubt that even the changes I suggested here would have done much to persuade the saltdom against Ron the Death Eatering Alya, especially since a lot of the hatred against her has so little to do with the show.

There IS some hatred thrown at Alya for non-Lila related reasons - well, reasons that aren't DIRECTLY Lila related, most of that hatred still stems from people hating her for Chameleon stuff and then retroactively justifying it by looking back at other things she did that irked them. The most common one (that actually has some sort of argument to it, not the "Alya's a horrible babysitter and is abusing her friendship with Marinette" nonsense I listed in the main essay) is that Alya's pushy about getting Marinette together with Adrien. 

This is more a product of Alya's usual role in the story than anything. I mentioned in the main essay how Alya sometimes falls into "Black Best Friend" territory, and this is one of the biggest examples. One of her most common roles throughout the series is as the person who pushes Marinette to actually confess to Adrien, to hang out with him, to pursue her romantic desires even with her anxiety holding her back, and to be honest with herself during the times when she's trying to deny her feelings for him. She's Marinette's sounding board whenever she's having an anxiety spiral about... actually, just about anything, and acts as the voice of reason when Marinette gets in her own head too much.

Thus, Alya sets Marinette and Adrien to end up somewhere alone together, or tries to push her to talk to him, or to be honest during the times when she tries to "move on" from Adrien by denying that she still has feelings for him (which is blatantly untrue). She IS okay with Marinette dating someone else though, if she honestly seems to want to do that. She had no problem with her dating Luka, for instance. She DID protest Marinette's seemingly sudden interest in Chat Noir, but that was mostly because Marinette seemed to be grabbing at her new attraction as an attempt to run away from her feelings for Adrien, something that Tikki ALSO noted.

That's another thing - Alya's the character who's most frequently thrown into this role, but she's not the only one, nor even the most extreme one. A new character that was introduced for the Miraculous New York Special, Jess, observed how Adrien and Marinette acted around each other, and decided to try to get them to confess their love by faking a supervillain attack on them, with the supervillain kidnapping anyone that no one loves in order to compel Marinette to FINALLY confess to Adrien. (Alya thought it was stupid, but agreed to help since it might actually work). When Marinette, Adrien, Luka, and Kagami went out to the wax museum together, Luka intentionally locked Adrien and Marinette in a room together so that Marinette would stop running away and would be forced to talk to Adrien. Marinette is written in such a way that other characters are compelled to meddle in her lovelife, because otherwise she'll continue making her own extreme plans and pining away, but never actually confess her feelings. 

So while Alya could be said to be "pushy" to an extent, it's mostly for Marinette's benefit. I would like if this was a less frequent role for Alya - I think it does her a disservice, since it locks her firmly into Marinette's orbit rather than emphasizing who Alya is as her own character. Most of the hatred towards Alya for this is tied up in "Die For Our Ship" being directed at Adrien though, with Adrien bashers hating that Alya's trying to set Marinette up with what they see as an inferior option. Ironically enough, while Alya's role in this situation is one of the primary examples in the show of her being treated by the writers as a "Black Best Friend" who exists to serve Marinette's character, it's actually one of the cases where I think racism is a pretty minor part of the hatred by the fanbase over it, since I think that's mostly motivated by hatred towards the Lovesquare.

In conclusion (again), there is an issue with the writers bending Alya's character in order to tell a particular story, particularly a Marinette-centered story, while ignoring how little sense that makes with what happened earlier on in the plotline, or how it centralizes Alya's role and character around Marinette in ways that exacerbate already existing writing patterns in media. 

[kitthepurplepotato]

Chapter 13 - You are my Number One.

Summary: Katsuki is more freaked out about Y/N’s appointment than Y/N herself.

Warning: Swear words, nothing too cheeky this time!

First Chapter Master List

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

It’s 5AM in the fucking morning but Katsuki is already freaking out.

He’s not worried. He has no reason to be; he’s not a fucking doctor but he knows there is no way Y/N’s appointment will bear anything but good news; she’s healthy and full of energy, her movements are back to normal even without the meds, so really, there is no reason for him to be a big ball of anxiety right now.

No reason.

But… he still can’t stop spiraling about the ‘what if’s.

What if she only looks fine and after a few tests the doctor decides to put her back on the meds? His woman is strong, the strongest person in the world but she would break down to hear that after all the work she’s done to get better.

What if the doctor tells him to wait another year before she goes back to actual hero work? Again, she would loose her shit. She would probably burn the whole hospital down out of frustration. Katsuki is not a big fan of rescue missions and it’s also way too fucking early for that shit. He does miss the adrenaline of being on the field but he definitely does not miss the smell of burnt flesh and he might be the number two hero, but he definitely can’t save more than 3000 people in one go, especially as at least half of them are disabled and incapable of running.

“Woman.” Katsuki shakes his still sleeping girlfriend with a manic face. “Whatever happens today you can NOT burn the hospital down.” He yells with a serious face but his woman only snorts at him.

“The fuck, Katsuki?” She laughs and oh god, he absolutely fucking loves her sleepy little laugh. “Why are you the one freaking out? You look I just went into labor.” Honestly, Katsuki wishes that was the case. Even though, now that he said that, Y/N would probably burn the hospital down due to her frustration from being in so much pain for so long. Okay, no kids for Katsuki then. It’s a small sacrifice for the greater good. “What the fuck are you muttering about?” She giggles at him so Katsuki decides to change the topic by pushing a big cup of coffee into his girlfriend’s hands. It works every time. Nothing is more important than a morning coffee. Not even mass murder. Good.

Katsuki feels like he’s about to throw up. His face must be really pale as the Menace looks at him with worry etched into her features.

“We need to leave in twenty minutes, hurry up.” Katsuki makes a hard turn and stomps towards his dresser to find something normal. What do people wear to hospitals at all? His usual attire in a hospital usually consist of a hero suit soaked through with his own blood. Or ridiculously oversized trousers and a hoodie three times the size of him topped up with a cap and a face mask or at least that’s what he used to wear when he was forced to go to therapy.

This time, Katsuki wants to look… well… proper. He’s not going there alone, he’s going with his partner, his future wife (probably?!), the woman he’s so fucking proud of; he wants her to be proud of him too. It’s stupid, he knows, but somehow, it feels like this is important; this is the first time they attend an important appointment together. This is the first time he’s going to be seen as Y/N’s boyfriend. Katsuki feels like he’s about meet her parents or some shit.

“You don’t need to come with me, I’ll be fine alone.” She mutters, but that’s the last thing Katsuki wants to do.

“Do I fucking look like I’m capable of sitting on my ass right now, you idiot?” Katsuki lashes out. “I want to be there, I want to hold your hand and shit. I want to… fuck, I want to be there with you. I want to share the burden. You see, I’m already freaking out so you don’t have to. You can just giggle and be fucking adorable while I shit my pants. I’m perfectly fine with that.”

“Katsuki, you don’t make any sense but… thank you?” She giggles again and Katsuki swears he would be able to survive without water and food and get his nutrients from Y/N’s laughter instead. He’s so fucking fucked, isn’t he?

“Put some clothes on and let’s go.” Katsuki takes a plain black T-shirt and some tight jeans out of his dresser and makes a beeline to the bathroom. “If you don’t have proper clothing on by the time I come back you are going to the hospital in your pajamas.” Katsuki threatens but it doesn’t have an edge.

“Roger that, boss!” Y/N salutes before Katsuki slams the bedroom door aggressively.

~•💥•~

“Keep your eyes on the road, Kats, I won’t disappear.” You smile at your boyfriend who’s absolutely freaking the shit out right now, for no reason at all. It’s a little bit endearing.

You always knew he cares so much more than he’s willing to admit; he’s secretly a big softie for all his friends, even though he does nothing but yell at them all the time, but this is the first time Katsuki feels safe enough to actually show his affectionate side to anyone else and it makes you so fucking proud to be on the receptive side of it even if it’s a tiny bit annoying.

You don’t want to know how has Katsuki felt when you were gone for a day of this is how he reacts to a doctor’s appointment. Maybe you should thank Todoroki and Midoriya for keeping him alive while you were away back then.

“Technically…” Katsuki is about to give you shit and go all nerd on you, but you don’t let him finish.

“Technically, I can disappear, yes, but it doesn’t matter if you stare at me or not, I can literally do that anyway.” You retort scoldingly.

“Sorry, I’m just really fucking worried.” Katsuki sighs, his eyes finally back on the road. You sigh and move your your hand to caress the blond’s thigh, drawing soothing circles on his jeans to calm him down.

“You have no reason to be. It’s over, Katsuki. I’m over it and I know I won this fight, I just need a stupid paper from the doctor that makes it official. I trust my gut and my gut tells me I’m good. Don’t you trust me, KitKat?”

Katsuki visibly shakes at the new nickname you just gave him; thank god you two were waiting for the light to turn green, otherwise he would’ve caused an accident by stepping on the brake so suddenly.

“What’s with you and your stupid nicknames?” Katsuki mutters with the most adorable pout on his flushed little face.

“I can’t help it, you are so fucking cute.” You giggle and Katsuki is about to explode out of embarrassment when a loud honk coming from behind startles you both; the light turned green and you didn’t realize. Oh fuck.

“You are insufferable.” Katsuki mutters in front of himself and the rest of the ride is silent. You know your boyfriend well enough to know that nothing will calm him down right now anyway, so you just let him mutter to himself for the rest of the journey.

For your surprise, Katsuki intertwines his fingers with yours right when you stand by his side after the ride. His hold is downright painful, but you decide to not speak up about it; Katsuki clearly needs this right now and seeing him so stressed about something that doesn’t even affect him in any way makes you realize how important you are for him. Bakugou Katsuki can’t seem to stop surprising you these days, in a good way.

“Hello.” Katsuki mutters at the entrance; it looks like it literally pains him to be nice to someone else for once, but he does it anyway. Why? You have no fucking idea. Katsuki looks at the amused lady at the front desk with a constipated face. “Appointment. For Y/N.” Katsuki mutters again, his face red as a tomato. You don’t have the heart to tell him that he doesn’t need to do this at all as everyone knows your face by now.

“End of the hallway, right side, 235. Good luck!” The lady gives you a thumbs up and you can barely smile back as Katsuki is already pulling you towards the fore-mentioned door. He knock three times aggressively and the door opens; the nurse’s face pales at the sight of the number two hero towering against her at 6AM in the fucking morning.

“Ahh, Y/N! Come on in, your guest can wait in the waiting room until we finish!” The nurse gives Katsuki a forced smile, already knowing there’s gonna be drama.

“I’m not a fucking guest, I’m her boyfriend! I took care of her fucking ass this whole week! I should be allowed to come in!” Katsuki almost yells at the poor nurse, but his voice gets quieter as he finishes his sentence. Fuck, he’s trying so hard.

“Sir, I understand but we need your girlfriend’s full attention. We need to do some tests as well today. Please, take a seat outside.” She points at the bench on the hallway. “Would you like some tea, or some coffee? We have some pastries as well if you are hungry!”

Wow, you do get a different treatment when you are the number two hero in the country.

“Do I look like I need caffeine, woman?” Katsuki mutters under his nose, his hands still in yours. “Just fucking… go…” the blond mutters, slowly letting you free from his grasp.

“I’ll be fine. I love you.” You hug your boyfriend tightly, hoping he can feel how grateful you are for everything. The nurse steps back into the office and leaves the door open for you to come in when you are ready. You didn’t miss the tiny fond smile on her face as she left.

“You are invincible. Whatever fucking happens today… you are… you are my number one.” Katsuki’s head is about to explode. Your heart skips a beat.

“I’m the luckiest fucking bitch to walk this Earth. Fuck, Katsuki.” You can’t stop yourself from jumping on him and kissing him fiercely in the middle of the thankfully empty hallway like your life depends on it. It takes him a few seconds to reciprocate but when he does it gets even harder to let him go; he kisses you with the same fervor, his touches hot and full of desire. He pulls away rather abruptly, takes a few deep breaths then he finally speaks up:

“Go before I devour you in the middle of this stupid hallway that smells like cheap bleach.”

“I’ll be out before you know it.” You smile and leave a last, lingering kiss on the blond’s lips before you close the door on his cute, anxious face. You’ve never been into the whole marriage thing but you kinda want to elope with him right here, right now.

“Let’s get this over with.” You sigh as you sit down in front of your doctor, who can’t hide his amused face as he takes in your red lips and disheveled hair.

“I really want to tell you off for coming to my office looking like that but I’m actually quite impressed. So who’s the lucky guy?” The doctor smirks at you; your cheeks flush, making you look like a ripe tomato but he only laughs at that.

“See it for yourself after we are done here, sir.”

This is it. This is fucking it.

Oh shit, you haven’t been anxious at all before but now it kicks you in the face as you take in your doctors office, the white walls and all the equipment he’s about to use on you.

“Whatever happens, you are my number one.” Katsuki’s words play in your head like a mantra as your body slowly lets go of all the tension that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

It doesn’t matter what the doctor says; it might sound super cheesy but even if you can never be a hero again, having Katsuki by your side, saving people for the both of you is more than enough for you.

So this is what people call “love”. It’s so powerful it changes even the strongest, most determined people.

You can’t help but giggle to yourself from your own silly thoughts.

You really are the luckiest person in the world, aren’t you?

… Next chapter!

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Potato ramble:

- This story is about end in a few chapters. I gave this a lot of thought and I realized I don’t need to write down every single idea I had for this one otherwise this story will never end and I have so many other stories in my head I want to share with you all, so I made the executive decision to try to finish this in 5 chapters (you guys know me though, that will be 10 lol).

- My plan is to finish this one, take a bit of a break and continue posting only the Deku one for a few weeks then come back with the Kirishima spin-off and then later with a new Katsuki x Reader series. I already have a few chapters ready for both but I’m trying to aim for having almost the whole thing written out before I start posting to not overwhelm myself but I might change my mind about that as I really enjoy to hear your thoughts and add some things you want to see and I absolutely love to listen to your feedback and make the next chapters more enjoyable. It’s hard to be an adult, I just wanna write and read your comments 24/7 😂

- Ah, also! I got over excited and I already have edited the header for the Kirishima spin-off! I hope you like it!

Yes, there is a typo in it, I’ll sort that out later shut up 😂

- I hope you guys had a lovely week and sorry for being so late; I got some bad news from the doctors and it messed up my head a little bit, I also did several extremely early shifts in a row and was dead tired in the afternoon so I had a hard time writing this week. Next week will be even worse so yeah… sorry in advance 😂

TL: @sixxze @iwannahaveaprettyaesthetic @hanatsuki-hime @cloroxisadelectabletreat @cheesenmax @coffeent @smolsleepybat @therealpotatobish @qardasngan @canarystwin @unofficialmuilover @nanamomo1 @mikestuffffs @p4ndawrites @yao-ai

[smiggles]

Might be a bit of a weird ask but you seem so confident in yourself and what you post- were you ever at a point where you didn't feel like you could talk about what you enjoyed? I'm struggling to be more open about my "weirdness" I guess in fear of people would dislike me for it.

I'll be super honest It wasnt until recently I was able to post about my actual interests.

Twitter made me absolutely terrified to step out of line in any way because as a disabled trans person living in a red state that actively makes laws (and lists) against trans people art is my only way of income. But I believe I got to a point where I just said Im too tired. Im too frustrated. Cut my income see if I care. If people hate me or call me weird or think Im a freak. Good. Leave me alone. Just rip off the band aid and make some callout that Im a terrible person for what I like And it did happen. I was said to be "just as bad as a zoophile" in one post.

People will dislike you for enjoying weird or grotesque content. But people are going to dislike you anyway no matter what Might as well be hated for being who you are than hated for as someone you pretend to be to appease others

Then you can find people who love you as you are and curate a wonderful home for yourself. 

[weebsinstash]

the overturning of Roe v Wade happened and pregnancy felt disgusting and a physical threat to be defeated

I felt that. I an asexual person with zero intention of getting married or having a baby but seeing Roe v Wade, I just... feel the need to have my tubes tied? Which should not even be a thing I consider since I have no plans to have sex. Those radical religious/misogynisitc views that are popping up nowadays just make me feel very disgusted at things that are... Really not horrible. Nothing wrong about being a housewife, or getting pregnant, but the way those incels with a mic talk about women in their podcasts just create very unhealthy relationships between women and "womanhood"/traditionally feminine things.

What's so fucked up is like the exact same people saying shit like "oh these gross LGBTQRSTUV alphabet mafia freaks are trying to groom and molest our kids! How dare they try to say kids need to learn about safe sex and periods and not to send nudes or address sex in any way other than abstinence!" will then turn around say "wow, asexuals? How UNNATURAL. You aren't PROCREATING like GOD INTENDED. You're ALSO somehow grooming our kids" and it's just like. Fuck. Leave people alone about their fucking sexuality and gender presentation.

And then sometimes I try to discuss this with my mom because like we discuss politics a lot and she's, you know, a woman and has raised me and ill seek her perspective as my mom and a woman and an adult, and sometimes she'll just be "oh don't read all that, youre getting upset over trolls, people are just stupid" ok well these stupid people can VOTE and sometimes these stupid people ARE the ones we're voting for!!! Like! I'm so tired of seeing bullshit like Americans saying "haha good on Country XYZ for making it legal to beat those t slurs in public, this is just MODERN WESTERN PROPAGANDA" and I want to scream shit like "India has recognized trans people for over 3000 years you fucking bigoted moron"

Like!!! Ugh!! Should I be furious or sad!!! (Putting the rest under a rm because this gets a little long and I also discuss abortion/miscarriage)

Fucking idiots saying shit like "oh just use birth control there's like 30 kinds" and guess what motherfucker literally the only 100% effective ones involve SURGERY. Even my OWN MOTHER got pregnant on a diaphragm. Fuck you! Fuck you! You think abortions are being used as birth control? I know at least two people who've had them and they can be ABSOLUTELY EXCRUCIATING, I am talking SCREAMING TO STOP THE PROCEDURE KINDS OF PAIN. "Oh women just want to avoid accountability" bitch some of them don't want to DIE, some of them can't raise a disabled child, some of them have diseases and conditions that can't be passed on

I... may have had some risky sex a while back with, minor precautions, ok I'll be the dumb irresponsible slut and say the pull out method was used, and while nothing came of that, obviously, literally my game plan after it happened and post nut clarity hit was "ok well I know if I need an abortion there are people who literally terrorize you outside the clinics so maybe I'll just kill myself". And you know what, I wasn't even intending to do that kind of thing, the unsafe sex, it was just, you know, happened fast and in the heat of the moment, and it happened briefly. Even I, as someone who has never wanted children and FEARED motherhood all my life, made that kind of mistake. And I spent the following three weeks in absolute TERROR waiting for my period, thinking of all the people who would happily force me to carry a child that would no doubt inherit my physical disability, my genetic disorders, and wouldn't be wanted by me or the father (and im not saying that as anything against him we are both very anti kid lol)

It's so upsetting because like, people have different opinions, and in some cases can you really say if an opinion is right or wrong? But so often do I see things that are inhumane, grotesque even. I was reading a story of a woman who was forced to carry a malformed fetus to a full pregnancy where it passed that same day. Here you have a woman who was forced to deliver what was essentially a corpse, the trauma that must have caused her, not just in mind but also in body. 9 months, 9 months of knowing it was being born just to die. And. People were legitimately replying "better that than to be ripped limb from limb inside the womb" that's a specific form of third trimester abortion which wasn't even what she was asking for you fucking idiot. "Better for the baby to know its mother's touch" it literally didn't have a properly formed brain and we don't even know if it could have even SENSED anything besides agony. "I would have wanted to hold my baby before it passed" you would have let a fetus which had abnormalities discovered in the first trimester to fully develop into a child so it could die in horrible pain just for your moral closure?

I read a comment just a few days ago that was legitimately one of the most disgusting things I had ever read and dear God I hope this person was lying but they said "I know a catholic woman who was pregnant and found out her baby would be born terminal and die shortly after birth. She carried it the full pregnancy so she could baptize it" THAT'S ABHORRENT. For you non religious folk, which I am too but I have some secondhand knowledge, the point of baptism is the idea that we are all born into sin and must be like cleansed to be children of God or something like that. And to be blunt I consider this woman an absolute monster and I replied as such.

"She let a newborn baby suffer in agony just so she could dip it in her magic fairy water? And she thinks she's the GOOD GUY?"

It's just. Ugh. I don't even know. I use culture and country as an excuse for religious freedom and sexual and gender expression (ie. Banning trans people from being visible is prejudiced to Indians, Native Americans, Samoans, Judaism, etc) but then people turn around and say "but it's my culture or religion to be homophobic/not allow abortion" and then I just want to say "well you're just an idiot who can't think for themselves then and you need to get with the fucking times :)" like obviously I am not perfect but I believe basic human rights transcends borders and beliefs. Like for example, similar but different, Malaysia is about to literally hang a man just for having a kilo of weed and people are happily saying "don't do the crime if you can't do the time" and its like do you understand it's inherently problematic to just say "their country, their rules" right. Like some places use that as an excuse to keep forms of slavery. Like to circle the argument back around states rights was an argument to try and keep slavery and now states rights is being used as an argument to criminalize abortion?

Like I try not to bring the vibe here down too often but these conversations are important. We as human beings should be helping and protecting each other and I feel a legitimate fear of society approaching some sort of social collapse or civil war. Like even if you're opposed to abortion you should actually still be voting in favor of keeping abortion because, if abortion is outlawed on moral and religious grounds, it will start the ball rolling for banning other medical procedures out of opinion and not fact. You know we already let the insurance companies do that right? Tell people their life savinf treatment isn't covered because they don't deem it medically necessary even though insurance agents arent doctors? Even on my main blog I boosted a post about a person with severe endometriosis who is being denied a hysterectomy because of their weight by the NHS but a private clinic will save them for a price, and meanwhile the endo is impacting organs outside their reproductive system

It's just. God. I'm sorry I guess I went all over the place in this post but everything is so scary now. Transphobia is on the rise, homophobia, racism, gun violence, they keep finding horrible child labor shit like 15 year olds cleaning slaughterhouses, even in my current blue state, red senators are arguing we should let young teens do construction, they're changing legislation on healthcare, on the internet, on student loans, inflation is HUGE NOW, rent is skyrocketing, homelessness is rising, just

It can be hard to keep your head up you know? I try not to be a doom and gloomer but there's legitimately scary shit happening? Like I didn't even touch on climate change and how all of these issues are going to intersect and snowball until our entire species is fucked. I know what I'm voting in 2024 but, it doesn't make anything less terrifying. If we weren't protected before, if we still really aren't now, can we really trust it to happen in the future?

[raspberrysmoon]

ummm please say more about the wilbur/john/xander fic right now <3 theyre my favourite guys ever and we need so much more content for them (i say as I write yet another fic not about them)

YIPPEEE YEAHHHHH LETS GOO!!!!! ok this got LONG so its all under the cut. uhm. i hope this tickles your fancy :3

i have SOOOO many thoughts abt these three tbh,,,, i had a thought last night of what it would be like if john and wilbur were engaged when wilbur. uhm. "died". but like 20 years later john's found xander and to hell with it if he can love them both. one is dead, itll be fine

except, wilburs not actually dead. he falls out of a portal and hes normal again and holy shit what does john do now. like thats still technically his fiance (and first love but shh) but his husband is Right The Fuck There

but it wnds up pretty okay. john makes sure wilbur really is okay and normal (hes as normal as he can be after being in the black for that long) and introduces them and it goes great

wilbur backs off of his own accord even though it absolutely destroys him to do so and gives both john and xander (mostly john) the shovel talk ("i swear to god- and ive met god- if you hurt him ill be one to get your ass and send it to hell" type shit)

but. where is this legally dead man going to live. aside from john, there arent many people who jnow him still alive (and ghats not to count the amount still working with peip) (there are two still working with peip. john and colonel schaffer)

so wilbur camps out on john and xanders couch until they figure out what to do from there

but wilbur is Old and Weak and hes honestly provably pretty close to (if not) disabled from the sheer amount his body has gone through and the couch is definitely making it worse. and xander being trained in medicine (though not practicing) steps in and is like "ok i know its going to be weird as hell but you have GOT to get in a bed. ours or not i dont give a shit" but they dont haev the space for another bed and honestly wilbur's been struggling to sleep alone anyway

so they end up dragging his ass into their bed and its like. the best sleep of his life. and he wakes up in the fetal position (normal) between john and xander (not where he fell asleep) and theyre both kind of holding onto him (what the fuck ?)

and he freaks a bit. bc thats his ex (?) fiance and his new husband. he cannot get between them like this are you kidding??

so he goes and sits on the couch but its really cold and he hates it (flashback sequence??) but he forces himself to not care and like. puts a show on or smth until xander wakes up and comes out like "why did you leave i was comfortable" and hes like "im already intruding a lot i felt bed" and xanders like "youre literally not but ok. do you like pancakes" and thats that (the answer is yes, blueberry ones)

and like a month later finally wilbur is cleared to get to work on mapping and explaining the black and white, and the lords in black, so he throws himself into that. 9/10 times he falls asleep at his desk or on the couch again and john and xander are both a little sad but theyte quiet abt theyre big boys theyre handling this great (<- lying)

and xander snaps after like. three weeks of wilbur destroying himself for the sake of explaining the shit he'd seen and he goes and demands that wilbur comes to bed one night and it goes a little something like this

"wil, come to bed"

"i have work to do"

"i dont give a shit, im shutting your laptop in ten seconds"

"no, i have shit to do. go cuddle with your husband" (< said bitterly)

"why are you being a bitch about this. we miss you" (< terrified this is wilbur shutting him down rn, but totally genuine)

"wtfdym you miss me. your husband is in there. you realize im your husbands ex right." (< getting increasingly upset)

"yeah. i mean. it doesnt really feel like you are ahymore, but if you want to call it that sure. but we miss you." (< catching on slowly. not fast enough)

"what" (< officially confused)

"have you not. noticed how much we're both kind of totally in love with you. really" (< losing his fuckingn mind)

"xander what the fuck are you talking about. what" (< also losing his fucking mind)

and then its a monologue about how john never stopped loving him and xander knew that if wilbur ever came back john would probably (definitely) go back to him in SOME capacity and he never minded. and then that happened and xander found himself doting on both of them and kind of maybe definitely falling really in love with wilbur and he can say not but. you get the point

by this point john is also here standing in the doorway (exhausted) (his fingers are crossed) and wilburs just stunned into silence for a while

and then he shuts his laptop and stands up and takes xanders (outstretched) hand and lets them take him to bed in silence and its. its his way of saying yes okay? its his way of telling them that he gets it, that he's done the same and that he loves them too

and they fall asleep together with wilbur in the middle. and its perfect

[katyspersonal]

Okay okay I will stop I promise, but you, “““anon”““, should leave my mutuals and friends ALONE. If you are even reading MY blog, because you are clearly more interested in my friends more for some reason :/

It is not even about the fact that I said nothing wrong and it boils down to you coming from drastically different conclusions and experiences. Fuck that, presume you never cared to understand and declared me “problematic”. But absolutely none of my mutuals deserves this nonsense. Your faith that mature legit adults cannot read something online and decide ‘that’s bullshit, I disagree’ reeks of religious fanatic control freak vibe, that sees people as sheep that is easy to “misguide”.

The only ones somewhat harmed here are shy people that woulda loved to send anon asks to my mutual but now can’t because you forced her to disable anon asks feature. And, naturally, people you stress out. I don’t know what is WRONG with you when you see literally one of the most friendly, most level-headed users in the fandom and be like ‘yeah she will totally shame and harass us because she has fun lore discussions with someone’. It takes TRAGIC lack of ability to understand how human beings work to have such ill faith.

I hoped that staying in the fandom for a story that demands very intricate analysis, strong intuition and deep negative experience to be understood would eventually heal you and make you think outside the direct line, with more nuance and context, but you are hopeless. You are just an NPC that reacts at ‘trigger words’ programmed in their code, and gives scripted reactions in return.

Leave my people ALONE. Just because you cannot contribute anything good to the fandom or say anything interesting, doesn’t mean you get to win a sense of self-worth by proclaiming “witches” and then chasing them with a torch.

[delusion-of-negation]

what the actual fuck are you talking about? the passage of time literally isn't constant. it changes based on gravity, speed, and it wouldn't even be wholly accurate to describe it as "passing", but relevant to the post, people's perception of it changes through a bunch of mechanisms and for a bunch of reasons, then it "goes" faster when you get older - something nobody believes when an adult tells them when they're a kid, then they get slammed with years passing like months and they feel out of their depth and in need of a moment to catch their breath that can't come. and we haven't even gotten into how losing your entire childhood to the things like trauma, war, severe ill health, etc, that plenty of folks feeling lost now went through, makes it even harder to watch an eternity crumble to dust, to realise you're in the final stretch and racing towards the finish line and you've got no brakes and your entire existence is going to end and everything will stop forever. nobody needs to hear your sardonic holier-than-thou bullshit, if they're struggling you can shut your mouth and leave 'em alone.

anyway, I have another post about this gross attitude you have:

this screen isn't the only person to leave something on the post about wii, one started off like "I do understand, but..." and gave whatever speech about how actually it's beautiful and good and exciting when time happens. for the record, what I said, what all these dudes are replying to when they reblog from me, was this

literally just left those tags on a post about time, right before I'd reblogged an original post of my own from earlier about how I'd stumbled upon a trigger, then I had kept reading or seeking out things that actively worsening the suicidal feelings I was having, following having had a particularly bad other thing triggered...

[note: the original triggering post mentioned wasn't the wii one]

that's why it bothers me so much that everybody is leaving this bollocks in my notifs. go back and read the tags at the start, you literally saw me say "I'm miserable" and went "well, that's just all because you decided to hate time you dumb bitch go suffer lol". whereas I "hate time" because I didn't have a fucking childhood, because of severe trauma and poverty and a load of awful shit, because I'm severely disabled, because I'm slowly dying and the years you have to grow comfy with being an adult don't exist for processing my grief and loss, I get to watch everything just sink between my fingers like sand, and realise I never had it anyway, before my heart, lungs, or brain finally fail and I die "young", but absolutely yeah that's not difficult at all nope I just hate time ig. actually fuck people like you, who think mean sarcasm to mock struggles people have is the way you target unhealthy attitudes, people who assume the motive and reasoning for everyone who experiences feelings, who blame them for their own trauma, etc

[5amanthus]

For the ask game :) 😈🎶🎯

Ask game

😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers?

I don't know if I've ever been playfully mean to readers 😂 I'm either genuine, or just mean (i.e hurting blorbos, added angst, killing characters).

It's not really playful, but probably the closest example I have is this one person was obsessed with Purple/Xander, literally the biggest bigot/not-in-the-fun-way asshole™️/just downright awful character I had in the earlier part of my series and they shit all over my massively diverse/queer/disabled/neurodivergent cast of characters because I refused to give him a redemption arc, so later on I ended up taking some of their direct quotes and putting it in some of his dialogue while he was being an idiot and then I got rid of him a few chapters later.

        "Perhaps you can give me some valuable insight then. Tell me about the crew."

        He paused upon realizing the other man was actually trying to talk to him, "Where do I even start? Cyan is an absolute snake, don't trust that one. 'They' will backstab you. Lime is gross and has made 'gay' his whole personality. Black is creepy and a dad. Red is really fucking weird. I thought Pumpkin would be cool, but I hate her too. Yellow is okay, I guess. The Captain doesn't take anything seriously and he should have been fired ages ago. Pink is the nervous one. Uuh, honestly everyone is so forgettable. It's so hard to keep up with everyone, they might as well just be a bunch of colours with vague personality traits."

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

I'm always listening to music and I absolutely do while I write! I've got over 100 playlists and pretty well all of my characters have at least 1 song if not more.

These are two I've had on repeat a lot because this band is great for just a specific vibe I need for a current original WIP about a trans woman going into a cabin in the woods to discover herself and she ends up coming out with a trans monster girlfriend 😄

Also been listening to this one a bunch because it fits a possible WIP I have about two characters who love each other trying to find the other again and again even as their ripped apart while their realities constantly change around them, but I won't say more because it's going to be a big project that I'm still trying to figure out a format for. (Brain says show, but I don't really have access to those kinds of resources, so I might write it but I think it's going to be difficult to capture in a story.)

This one is always on repeat cause it's a major Fuchsia and Dijon song and I have so many feelings about them, but they're not showing up again for a while. I have a whole scene planned for this one though, and some art too.

And I've got a whole playlist for the Spot/Venom fanfic thing I'm working on, but these two songs I've been listening to a lot out of the whole playlist. I should probably slap the playlist down, maybe in the fic when its done.

🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which?

I don't really have readers that comment their guesses usually? Also I'm terrible for just blabbing about stuff instead of writing it, so people either know what's going to happen, or they comment that they were surprised by things! Like this comment, I love it a lot :D

"This has to be my fav fic in your Crews series yet. For context, I have binge read up to this chapter over the last two days.

Cyan having an altered imposter parasite was a fall-off-my-seat plot twist. Whoa! That explained what they were freaking out about when they had to get scanned and I thought they couldn't get their gloves off, but they weren't able to temporarily get the parasite to leave their body (because it was protecting them from the spawn of Chartreuse, but Cyan didn't know at the time). I want to go into more, but this paragraph alone is too long already."

Or I did have someone really accurately read a scene/the hints I left, which was great!

"When she flinched away from his hand the first time he went to touch her, I wonder whether he thought he'd partly reverted back to impostor form and that was what scared her? It must've been confusing for him to see her flinch away from a normal hand and realise it had nothing to do with his nature as an Impostor.

When Fuchsia comes during the night shift, it becomes clear Dijon is bad at hiding not only his strangeness, but even his ability to see in the dark; I wonder whether Orchid knows he's an Impostor. If so, mentioning she'd kill Pantone if she had a chance might've been an indirect approval for Dijon to get rid of him."

And the only other closest one would probably be people accurately calling Black and Red as impostors in V-Crew, but I wasn't really trying to hide that one 😂

[the-firebird69]

Is a huge problem here these returns are all over our son won't take no for an answer and they're insane. And they're dangerous. I didn't want everything from him. And we're going to have to stop them so I'm saying go to hell you're a freaking nutcase and they won't leave him alone. I want to do some things to make it look like he's somebody because they keep treating him like it's absolutely nobody and whenever I try to they start blocking me. Find out what it was it's reputation and trying to block and they all kind of want it and I don't know who he is and what he can do and what he's saying and it all quite insane. This is so what I look like nobody to you that's an advantage they all started freaking out and sitting there pissing all that s*** out like it was nothing he said he's going to wipe out these idiots and they might disable them but it'll be them and they'll fight for a few minutes so what's your huge deal bothering me to death cuz you're going to win something and they turn around and said we know it would happen all sorts of them started laughing at them no they're all running on saying so you know what's going to happen here though to you and they're doing not really I said nobody will be able to get here and you won't be able to communicate with anyone and what will happen to you. So you turn around said d****** around with you and finally Brian said you knock it off or else this is a dumbest s*** I've ever seen those clothes are doing it to all of you now stop them they went out there and couldn't stop them start fighting with them and said well this is where it's at and so yeah part of it and just trying to fight the Max and they can't this is where a bunch of weaklings and I'm falling this idiot John remillard to the grave he's been saying it's absolutely true you do what you're doing it's the right thing to do if you need an army she starts thinking of it anything she should disable us things if they're hitting them and he's checking and they see beams that's a huge being so I don't think it was reaching us next time he says he's crazy and he hasn't looked at and yeah he's not really him is going on right there in the mall. Huge numbers of people that are listening they're having a huge problem with it and Brad did a good job

Thor Freya

I don't want to mention that he wants to a little you're not supposed to hit him and the clothes are doing it kind of knows it but he's mad I really you need to know the stuff that you suck you need to have an sop so I'm going to hand it out if you don't follow it you might die because the matrix now he's handed out what to do about it you have to find these things and people figure out what they are and they're all going to be horrified does Tommy F guy

Brad

How big is it it's huge he is over 99% of it now and it's not matrix facilities for like 700,000 octillion people that's all leadership of the entire Army and just racks them up sends them out there threatens to use them and try to use them a little to blame them and we stop that and they get hit it's quite awful

Mac

Why didn't you tell us you couldn't and he said it he can't say a word and so I figured out something he's been hinting to it those things are active and that's a hint sort of

Bja

We're going to get on this tired of his bellyaching about real stuff we got to get on this stuff right now

Thor Freya

Olympus

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

everyone asks me why I’m so fucking critical of the education system when I’ve literally been barred from accessing it ON MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS!!!!!

I have to deal with shit most people never will think about for as long as they live because people like me aren’t even a peripheral we are literally nonexistent in the topic of school reform or fucking anticapitalism or anarchism.

we literally are pushed into a situation and world and life in which we are LITERALLY second class citizens, IF I GET MY DISABILITY BENEFITS I WILL BE PAID LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE IN UBER INFLATION COUNTRY. (All disabled ppl do, we must unite and bash the ableists teeth with bricks)

how the fuck do I afford to live on my own, to eat or catch a Uber. To afford housing or bills, to work.

I literally can’t, I am fucking incredibly lucky to have a family that supports me.

if I didn’t I’d be on the LITERAL STREETS, no joke no nothing I’d be on the actual streets.

I have just dealt with the bullshit of grades and certifications, and being treated like a monster and a freak my whole life.

no wonder why we are mentally fucking ill, like INCLUDE PEOPLE WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES IN YOUR FUCKING DISCUSSIONS!!!

I am sick and tired of being called a retard, because people genuinely would rather be insanely ableist to a guy who’s had to LITERALLY FIGHT every single step of the way, lie and more to access basic fucking education.

you fuckers are literally the worst, you are not “oppressed” by a guy with learning disabilities for fucks sake.

if anything I’m being continually descrimnated against for shit outside my fucking control!!!

Most leftist fucks (not my beloved moots) are huge ass fucking ableists who use people like me as some kind of gotcha that I’m not disabled or fucking something.

I have fought so fucking hard to get here, to be better at writing and speaking because if I didn’t? I’d be cast into the bowels of hatred.

you fuckers actually hate people with learning disabilities and I am not afraid to say it.

also shut the actual fuck up low supports, high functioning, Asperger’s fucks.

I am talking about you also, shut the fuck up.

the actual fuck up, you do not face descrimnation because you had to leave school or couldn’t attend school. You don’t have to deal with people looking at you with pure disgust and anger, you didn’t need to.

you went most of your life being autistic in a way that did not affect you in the way being visibly and obviously disabled since your birth did for me.

I was literally since the moment I was born disabled, five ways to Sunday.

and well? What do I have to show for it, fucking nothing but the government thinking I’m beyond stupid and retarded.

like, my whole life! I’ve been told it.

I’ve been hurt, called names under peoples breath, people saying they’d give me up or kill themselves if they had to deal with me, people from all walks of life telling me I’m beyond stupid and I’m wrong for feeling horrible when they call me names and yell at me.

I am just, so done.

throw the entire education system in the actual fucking trash and bash the prime minister’s teeth in with a brick.

I have fucking trauma, I have had no benefits, nor do I want the current ones that give me LESS RIGHTS THAN IF I DIDNT HAVE THEM.

the fucking system is so unsustainable and fucked I’m surprised more people aren’t dead, because sure as hell do I know way too many people who’s kids were exactly like me and have LITERALLY KILLED THEMSELVES!!!

this is how bad the school system is to people with learning disabilities, we kill ourselves because we know we can’t get anything.

we are second class citizens and no one has done a thing to help us.

we help each other to stay alive, we have no one else who will ever understand these feelings and don’t want us dead.

we are literally alone in our fights, fuck you all.

and you FUCKS think you have a RIGHT?

to call us these things, you absolute sorry waste of time fucks.

you have brains that work, you have rights and don’t need help, I have struggled my entire life and been threatened to be taken away because I have learning disabilities and because I learn extremely slow they thought I was being abused by like not doing school

(worst fucking thing that has happened to me on MULTIPLE OCCASIONS, they denied I was fucking autistic/had severe learning disabilities but that doesn’t matter when your the government and you don’t give the benefits to the people who need them, because well if the system actually worked thousands of kids and teens and adults would not be dead.)

worst fucking bullshit, someone please bash anyones teeth with bricks.

what the fuck am I supposed to do 🙌

Literally there’s NOTHING i can do, I can’t fight I can’t scream, I can’t protest because sure as hell no one cares.

I’m going to rot with the rest of my brethren, or I have to leave the fucking country and pray that o don’t experience the same shit.

a quick reminder to everyone

I have SEVERE LEARNING DISABILITIES

I am literally disabled because of my learning disabilities, I have faced literal descrimnation because of it.

everytime you call us retarded or a retard you are ACTIVLY upholding the systems in which I am trapped in.

I take more offence in being called a retard than anything due to the literal DECADES of systematic abuse and descrimnation from the medical system, every single government resource, and almost all school alternatives.

fuck you greatly if you use these words against us, I have to live in a country where they hate people like me and would rather us dead than to do literally anything to help people like us.

call us what you will, but I will never call anyone retarded because it’s a basic decency reserved for everyone.

I’m a very happy retard, fuck your ableism!

I will happily live and love and learn even if THE LITERAL GOVERNMENT doesn’t want me too.

(yeah being a mid supports autistic with other learning disabilities and disabilities in general that made me unable to attend a school just means I deserve to die. 100% legit I deal with this literally all the time always fuck the Australian government)

so again fuck you all greatly, for using a literal slur against me one that has been used against me since I was a baby.

fuck you all, genuinely.

did I forfeit my rights to be treated as a human being the moment I had a bit of trouble learning things? Because if I did I’d like to break someone’s teeth with a brick.

[valkerymillenia]

Klaus in season 2

First of all, let me point out that I love season 2, I really do. It's a great season for a great show. This post is very critical but it's not a reflection of the whole season itself, just of one aspect.

I know a lot of people are as upset as I am about how Klaus was treated in season 2. He's my favorite and I hated how the writers and characters alike treated him so I'm just here to vent.

Not that everything was awful, no, Klaus is still my favorite, he still had some amazing scenes but...

I get that not every character can be center stage every season when you have a show with 7 main characters, I really do. I'm not upset that Klaus had less protagonism because I know he'll get his chance to shine again and be in the spotlight in the future, but... That doesn't excuse the bullshit that was done with Klaus this season.

Everything around his arc and his powers in season 1 was ignored in return for turning him into comic relief with a dash of unresolved ship angst.

I don't like how his constant suffering is ignored with no catharsis or endgame or acknowledgement, or how his obvious kindness is downplayed by every character.

I don't like how him falling off the wagon was approached.

I don't like how the cult thing was played for laughs and he was called narcissistic and selfish when he was obviously trying to do the right thing (and failing) over and over.

Yes, starting the cult was a bad idea but he clearly didn't mean for it to get out of hand, he was just trying to survive and looking for support and validation anywhere he could in a strange new environment and he tried very hard to end it but they never let him. The cult was smothering him, disrespecting his personal space (and his actual requests not to be touched or to be left alone), invading his home without consent, objectifying the hell out of him, and so on. This would have been perfect to play out a parallel with how the ghosts never leave him alone, it's a sugar coated version of the horrible hauntings in s1, it would have been the perfect way to have his siblings realize how hard he has things, but instead he's painted as selfish and the cult plotline had zero payout or meaning in the overall plot.

I don't like how his powers were either nerfed to avoid stealing the spotlight (and how some of his original comic powers were co-opted by other characters).

I don't like how one of the biggest key points of his powers that shaped 29 years of his life was suddenly swept under the rug this season and treated so lightly.

Seriously, not a single ghost around him other than those two split-second scenes? This guy ruined his life with hard drugs just to escape the constant presence of the dead that are literally everywhere but suddenly in season 2 they are nowhere, suddenly the very thing that led him to desperation (and near death in more than one situation) before is gone, it makes light of his addiction and suffering, it makes his struggle with sobriety come off as lazy.

Remember Hazel and Cha-Cha's ghosts? Where are Five's ghosts? The cult's ghosts? Ghosts are supposed to always be around whether he wants them or not. Remember the how the voices haunted him even in the bath and underwater as soon as he started coming down from the high? Where's that now? Sure, maybe he could have learned to control what ghosts he sees or hears but we saw nothing of that, no struggle, no learning, no evolution, it's never mentioned and Klaus no longer seems to care, suddenly the only ghost around is Ben and the only power Klaus is developing is the ability to physically interact with Ben or make Ben corporeal (and that's all about Ben, not Klaus). Even possession, a power that should belong to Klaus or at least be controlled by him, is given to Ben without explanation.

They gives us a tiny glimpse of Klaus at peace with ghosts and in control of his powers in the opening of the season and then they annul it completely and show absolutely no explanation for it. It's such lazy writing! It's like they don't even know how to write Klaus unless he's high or drunk, it's like the writers see that as his only personality traits and not as something he struggles with.

I don't like how his reaction to Ben disappearing was so glossed over and barely addressed.

They were glued to each other (willingly) for 16 years. Ben was the voice of Klaus's conscience, his only support and his best friend, everyone else mourned Ben 17 years ago but not Klaus, he deserved to mourn and we deserved to see more a 2 second bed scene of Klaus looking kinda sad and a 20 second conversation about the loss of his best friend that was less about grief and more about guilt.

I don't like that he had no role in the final battle, even if they didn't want him to stay the spotlight, they could still have given some role, they could still have given him a chance to fight Lila too (perfect moment to show Lila being freaked out by the dead and give the siblings a glimpse of Klaus's burden), or at the very (VERY) least they could have given a plausible reason for him to not participate (like being injured or disabled early on or having to take care of someone else) but no, he, the trained vigilante and war vet, was just hiding and cowering.

Speaking of which, I get that Klaus is acting like a hippy pacifist in this season and he's crippled by PTSD but there are so many scenes where he should have at least shown his fighting skills for self-defense because you cannot tell me he had no fighting skills, he was trained the same way as his siblings and he was a soldier in an active battlefront for 10 months without dying, he HAS to have excellent skills. They just made him a physical doormat this season, he never reacts other than getting hit, hiding or running.

The Dave plotline was the only thing well addressed and I suspect we'll see the proper resolution to that in the next season.

I don't like a lot of things about how Klaus was handled this season but it's not that everything was awful, I still love Klaus and he did have great parts this season too and some interesting development.

I did love seeing him bond and interact with his siblings, I did like seeing him be incredibly supportive and affectionate to his family (even when they don't notice or appreciate it and even when it's just too further another sibling's plot), I absolutely adore how he dished out romantic wisdom with his sisters.

Seriously, I really did like him being supportive and affectionate- Allison with her love life, the dead Swede, her worries for her husband, the danger of the riot, getting her husband out of jail, etc; Vanya by including her and being affectionate, with her love life as well and by being honest with her all the way; Diego by trying to comfort him after Reginald emotionally devasted him, hugging him and trying to lighten the mood and show affection in other scenes even after all the times Diego is dismissive of him and accuses him off still being intoxicated; etc, etc, etc. Yes, he was rather mean towards Ben this season (refusing to tell the family he was there, ignoring him, using him to impress people or as a shield, etc) but he was also kind to Ben by keeping him corporeal often, letting him possess him despite how horrible it felt, again with Ben's love life as well by acting like a wingman, etc.

Klaus is naturally kind and affectionate, he's caring and protective of his family, his methods may be terrible and he may mess up a lot but his intentions are always good. This season picked up on that from s1 and highlighted it even more. That was a positive thing but the fact that nobody in the family acknowledges this, the fact that they still dismiss him as intoxicated and narcissistic, that was AWFUL.

Klaus is still self-destructive and deeply traumatized but both of those things were glossed over or played for laughs, I could handle the family dismissing him if these issues were given the importance and respect they deserved and there was an endgame or some payoff but... Nope, we got none of that.

Honestly, it just really bothers me that all the serious things established in season 1 were completely ignored just so Klaus would be lighter and less likely to steal the spotlight. I just want the multiple traumas and secrets that he's keeping from the family to be addressed, I want his struggles with his powers and sobriety to be validated and addressed instead of played for laughs or only remembered when it's convenient, I want to family to start showing any little bit of understanding or concern or appreciation for him (if they could do it for Vanya this season then they can do it for him too).

What I wouldn't give for Klaus to just finally snap in season 3 and be the accidental cause of the next possible doomsday just so the family would finally be forced to take him seriously and give him the right kind of support and attention.

[operaghostnocturne]

The Problem with ‘Love Never Dies.’

“Love Never Dies,” 2012 Starring Ben Lewis as The Phantom, Anna O'Byrne as Christine, watched on Youtube, 4/24/2020 SPOILERS.  I would like to note: I enjoyed the set design, costume design, some of the music, and production of this version of Love Never Dies.  I also really liked the actor’s performances.  They did a good job.  I especially loved Ben Lewis’s singing voice.  (Derrick Davis ((US Restaged Tour)) is still my favorite.) The problem with Love Never Dies is its a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, the characterization, and writing. ALW’s Phantom of the Opera stands alone. It was never meant to have a sequel.  It really doesn’t need one.  I do feel there is a big disconnect between POTO and LND. I think LND could be rewritten to have nothing to do with the original POTO and would not suffer for it. To me, LND feels like someone’s fixit fanfic that doesn’t actually fix anything.  POTO is also insanely iconic.  It is hard to follow it up. While LND’s music is pretty good, I don’t think its nearly as memorable nor iconic as POTO’s.  I also don’t feel it balanced original POTO music with new material.  Honestly, it needs to pick one. Something ALW does in his musicals is reuses the notes of a song, mixed in a different pattern to make a new one.  “The Music of the Night” and “All I Ask of You” are like this (look at sheet music if you don’t believe me.)  This is not a complaint.  This helps with cohesion of a musical.  It also makes refrains, duets with battling music, and sometimes even story, clearer. When its done well, its unnoticeable. In fact, I got to play a POTO compilation in a semi-professional concert orchestra in high school.  I never noticed ALW does this until when someone pointed it out to me like a month ago.  In LND, I can constantly hear the rifts from the first musical, to the point where I think one of those songs is about to start, or it gets super distracting.  I noticed this especially in ‘Why Does She Love Me?’  I’m 80% sure it was based of POTO’s main theme (like the song ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ or the ‘Overture.’)  Again, I liked most of the music in LND.  But it doesn’t hold a candle to POTO. oh look I made a pun. Having said that all that: LND feels like a sequel mostly to 2004.  In my opinion, 2004 has the most sympathetic version of the Phantom, and the one that could most likely end up with Christine in the end.  Especially compared to the US Restaged Tour.  In 04, I also feel like the Phantom and Christine (not their actors) feel closer in age than other productions of the musical, other Phantom adaptations, and even the book.  (For those who don’t know: Erik is 50-60 in the book, Christine is like, 16.) LND’s writing is not great.  First of all: THE PHANTOM’S NAME IS ERIK. I know they were trying to have a MYSTERY pun. Mister Y does not work for that, especially in a format that ISN’T BEING. READ.  I can understand why its left out in POTO, as it lends the Phantom some mystery (though I do not like it.) There is LITERALLY no reason not to have the Phantom called Erik it LND. Granted, this is a complaint I have from POTO too.  I kinda feel like the Phantom not having a name dehumanizes him. That is a discussion for another day. I absolutely HATE that the Phantom runs a circus company.  A big part of Erik’s trauma comes from being in a freak show.  I don’t believe Erik would be willing to go back to that.  I also don’t think it would be his scene.  The Phantom of the Opera belongs in an Opera house, or at the very least a music all. I don’t know why he couldn’t have started something like that instead of a freak show.  Or perhaps be an eccentric composer. Especially if he is getting help from the Giry’s.   I do think its fitting that he’s working with/employing disabled, or deformed people, and other societal outcasts.  However, being the owner of the VERY THING that treated him horribly is pretty bad, especially since we don’t know if he treats these people any better than he was treated. Also, every time the music switched to ‘show tunes,’ I felt Erik’s soul dying.  On that note, when LND shifts from a musical to addressing the audience directly in its ‘show tunes’ sections, its jarring.  It breaks the fourth wall way too much and really pulls the audience out of whats going on.  The way Erik is in POTO, chased away from the world and the light, is why he is like he is.  He became fascinated with the night, the macabre and darkness because of his experiences with the world. That’s a pretty big point in POTO.  Its one of the things that make him sympathetic. After all “THE WORLD SHOWED NO COMPASSION TO ME!” is the Phantom’s excuse in the final lair. LND tramples over that.  Gustave seems to be interested in the same darkness his biological father is, as seen in “The Beauty Beneath.”  Erik’s obsession with the dark, night, and macabre is turned into genetics.  Which is pretty bad for Gustave if you think too hard about it. Erik is a serial killer.  I do believe talent can be passed in genetics.  I also think the way we view said talent and how we use it is shaped by personal experiences and preferences.  On that note, Gustave could have gotten his musical abilities from his mother, or his grandfather, both of whom are also talented musicians.   Another thing LND suffers from, is making Christine a prize again. Raoul and Erik do not see her as a person.  ‘Devil Take the Hindmost’ is literally the boys having a dick measuring contest, with Christine as the prize.  That is not okay. I hated the ending. For several reasons.  First of all, the Phantom is still abusive.  He is a puppet master. He is still not capable of having a healthy relationship with Christine.   Secondly, Christine dies. ALW, if you are gonna write a fixit fic the LEAST you could do is let Erik be happy.  Plus, Christine is killed by a cliche ‘I just wanted you to notice me’ subplot. One that wasn’t entirely well set up or thought out.  Which is disappointing and frustrating.  Last two things I hated: when Christine kisses Erik for the last time, she doesn’t take off his mask.  I feel like they missed a good opportunity to show Christine being completely accepting of who Erik is, including what he looks like (again, would be better if Erik wasn’t abusive.)  I also NEVER like it when we don’t get to see Erik’s deformity in any version of Phantom.  The only other one that doesn’t I’ve seen/read is Dance. (Which I dislike greatly. Its at the bottom of my list.)  I’m kinda good either way if Gustave goes with Erik or Raoul (preferably neither, if I get a choice, which I don’t.)  Erik and Gustave can connect over music in a way Raoul and Gustave cannot. Erik can teach Gustave about music and the beauty beneath. Raoul did raise Gustave.  Raoul might also have a serious heart change after the events of LND that we are not shown.  Or we can do that one AU where Raoul and Erik become Gustave’s two dad’s (either gay or not, whatever floats your boat.)

The worst thing about LND is it completely ignores the character growth in its predecessor. Characters completely regress into who they were before the ending of POTO.  This is annoying and bad writing. Lets start with Meg and Madame Giry.  I don’t like that Madame Giry is helping Erik. Yes, she helped him escape the freak show in 2004 (and possibly other versions.) BUT, she was also absolutely TERRIFIED of the Phantom in POTO.  She helped Raoul find the Phantom’s Lair, with the full knowledge that Raoul intended to put a stop to Erik’s madness.  I think it would be more likely that Madame Giry would stay as far away as Erik as she possibly could. Madame Giry also feels like a secondary greedy villain in LND, and that feels WAY off base for her. Maybe Erik being manipulative has rubbed off on her? Again, I don’t think she would be in this position in the first place (nor would Erik be manipulative, because I see him as realizing he DUN HECKED UP at the end of POTO). Meg, I could see wanting to help the Phantom (she even does in some versions.)  I see this as her being enthralled by the legend of the Phantom, and less that they actually know each other. As for her loss of innocence, I don’t think it was set up well, nor was it executed well. Also, Meg wanting the Phantom to see her is a cliche. Cliches can be okay, if they are handled well. I don’t think LND wrote it well. The only person I feel that has consistent characterization from POTO is Raoul (well, a specific version of it.)  I have always been of the opinion that Raoul is a jerk.  Having him spiral into gambling and drinking after a traumatic event is not surprising.  Could be something that was always there, could be PTSD.  Who knows, it wasn’t really talked about beyond Raoul feeling sorry for himself, and him being frustrated that he can’t connect to Christine on a musical level. Christine’s arc in POTO was about taking back her own power and becoming her own person. Of letting go of the past and moving forward.  This is thrown out. She is once again caught between two men in a dick measuring contest, both of which are trying to manipulate her to one side or the other, completely powerless.  This time, there really wasn’t a way for her to get it back. I feel like she felt obligated to sing for the Phantom, even without Gustave’s life being threatened, and the Phantom’s manipulation is what made Raoul leave  (Granted, I think Raoul leaving makes sense in the context of LND.)  Christine has no agency in LND. Finally, the ending of POTO is what redeems Erik.  He is the one with the biggest character arc and character growth. He learns the most.  I do believe he had a genuine heart change at the end of POTO.  What happened wasn’t what he wanted, but it was what he needed to become a better person, and start moving past his trauma. Ignoring that is a big mistake. Yet, in LND, he is back to being an arrogant, abusive, manipulative, puppet master.  Sometimes, I can see small pieces of character growth. He seems less bothered by his appearance, and maybe slightly more mature. Though, even these glimpses are often overshadowed or ignored in the next scene.   LND is NOT continuation of the characters we met in POTO. Much of the writing that connects LND with POTO is meh.  Honestly, in some ways it feels like less a sequel and more its very own adaption of Phantom. Which is half its problem.

[omoi-no-hoka]

Rural Life and Mental Health in Japan as a Gaijin

Heads up: This is a very long, personal post about mental health and the stresses of living in rural Japan as a foreigner. If it’s not what you’re looking for in this blog, please feel free not to read it. If you can’t tell by the gif above, this isn’t going to be a very positive post because I’m not in a very positive mood.

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

It’s been just shy of five and a half years since I moved to Hokkaido, the northernmost island/prefecture in Japan. In many ways, it’s similar to the American Midwest, which is the region I’m originally from. It’s big on agriculture, it’s got lots of nature and rural areas, winters are long and nasty, and the people have a warmth that make up for the cold snow and ice outside. Heck, even a lot of the flora and fauna are the same.

I think of my current city as my “Japanese hometown” because it was where I stayed during my first trip to Japan and it’s where my hostparents from that time are. I love it here like I love my country bumpkin village of 2,800 back in the states.

But after a little over two years of living and working in this city, I think I need out. I am...tired of it in many ways.

特別扱い Tokubetsu Atsukai, “Special Treatment”

Prior to living in this city, I lived in Sapporo, which has a population of 2 million. There, no one batted an eye at a foreigner walking the streets. A lot of them were surprised that i could use Japanese, but a good few people were used to gaijin that could use nihongo and read kanji.

But in my current city, I have experienced all of the following things, some of which on a daily basis.

DISCLAIMER: I have also had a LOT of very positive experiences with the people of this city. Most of my experiences have been positive or neutral, but a good 40% have been as described below.

Everywhere I go, I am openly stared at. Gawked at, at times. (I am your standard-looking, standard-dressed, slightly overweight white girl. No visible tattoos, piercings, vibrant hair color, or otherwise attention-grabbing aspects about me other than the fact that i am clearly not Japanese.)

I am often spoken to like I am mentally disabled, or if I am with a Japanese person, they will refuse to speak to me and instead speak to my Japanese companion.

I have entered restaurants on my own and had waitstaff make a big “X” with their arms and say “No English” immediately upon seeing my non-Japanese face.

I have had waiting taxi drivers drive off instead of allow a troublesome foreigner into their car.

I have sat down alone at a bar and had the Japanese people beside me openly gossip about me with the assumption that I could not understand them.

When searching for apartments when I moved to this city, I was denied 75% of my picks because they have a “no gaijin” rule. Despite the fact that I can speak and read, that I have a good job and valid visa, and that I have already lived here 3 years without a single late rent payment or complaint against me.

I have built up casual relationships with employees at grocery stores, etc. I frequent, and they have asked me for my contact info because, in their own words, “I’ve always wanted a gaijin for a friend!” In Japan, every girl wants a token gaijin friend instead of a token gay friend.

I have gone on dates with Japanese men who clearly just wanted a white girl to hang on their arm like a piece of swag and insist on taking me to a pasta place because “You must prefer western food to Japanese food” or insisting that I dye my hair blonder to look more foreign.

I am just...so very tired of this 特別扱い (special treatment).

I don’t want to call it 差別 (prejudice) because, the majority of the time, Japanese people think they are doing me a kindness by speaking slowly and simply, or by telling me as soon as possible that they cannot help me in English, etc. While a couple of the above experiences are straight up racism (I’m looking at you, asshole taxi drivers and landlords), most of them are a misguided form of “omotenashi,” a.k.a. Japanese hospitality.

So I try very hard not to let it get to me, because I know that they don’t wish ill upon me. But I’ve worked so goddamn hard to learn this language and speak it well, and it is so frustrating for the people around me to assume that I can’t do what has been my freaking life goal. Or having people assume I can’t understand slightly difficult words and dumb down their language (Even colleagues I’ve worked with for two years now!). In the middle of a conversation they’ll say things like, “It’s hard to deal with that level of animosity--oh wait, omoi-no-hoka-san, sorry, ‘animosity’ means ‘dislike.’”

They mean it in a helpful way, but it just comes across as very condescending and I end up thinking, Oh, so they think my Japanese proficiency is so low i can’t understand that word. Which sends me into doubt over whether my language skills are actually that deficient, or whether I am speaking in a way that makes myself look at bad at Japanese.

The Effects of 特別扱い (Special Treatment)

It’s been gradual, but over the past two years, I have found myself withdrawing from the outside world. I got bad at replying to friend’s messages. I started making excuses to avoid meeting up and hanging out. I would buy all the groceries i needed to last me through the weekend on Friday after work and not emerge until Monday morning to go back to work. Even though I really love the outdoors and used to spend entire days just riding my bike along the river trails here.

...But in the past few months I’ve become unable to answer even close friends’ phone calls and messages. And I’ve even had a hard time phoning my parents, which is crazy because ever since I left home for uni I’ve called my mom on a daily basis. When I think about stepping outside of my apartment, no matter the reason or destination, I am gripped by a dread so strong I nearly throw up. I have gone a couple weekends without food because it would require me leaving my apartment to buy some, or paying for very expensive delivery which also means interacting with whoever is bringing me that food.

I’ve had a stressful summer and fall at work, and that undoubtedly has contributed to my current anxiety overload. But things have settled down at work for the past month now, and not only have I been given an award that only 2% of employees get globally, recently I have been in talks to take on what is very nearly a dream position for me within the company that is a BIG step up career-wise. I have great bosses who recognize my efforts, who listen to what I have to say, and do what they can to help when I tell them I’m in over my head.

But I have had several days where I have woken up, gotten ready for work, and just frozen at my apartment door, too sick at the thought of going outside. And yet, I can’t stand the thought of calling in sick because I feel chronic, self-imposed guilt when I take a day off, no matter the reason. So I call in to work and tell them I have a stomachache and will be in once it’s gone, (which isn’t an absolute lie), and then drag myself into work within a couple hours.

And once I enter the office, do the obligatory bow and apology for being late and causing inconveniences, the dread and anxiety vanish and I am fine until it is time for me to go outside to return home.

This makes me think that work is not a main stressor right now. It doesn’t matter if I’m going to the convenience store or the grocery store or work or anywhere. I think the constant being stared at everywhere I go has gradually accumulated to become a nasty form of social anxiety. I used to have panic attacks in middle school and high school due to home life, but since removing myself from that environment they’ve gone away. I’ve always been a socially-reserved person who shies away from the spotlight, and despite telling myself a thousand times, “Let them look at you--you’re just being you and they’re being them and that’s OKAY,” I just can’t brush it off. I have very, very seriously considered dyeing my hair from its natural brown to black in an effort to blend in, if only slightly. Which is laughable, but that’s just how much it bothers me to stand out.

But the event that really sounded the alarm for me was when my best friend of 10 years, a Japanese girl whom I met by chance my freshman year of uni, who was my roommate for 4 years of uni, who let me sleep on her living room floor here in Japan for 3 months until my work visa came through, who has been with me through thick and thin, sent me a message asking when she could drop off a souvenir for me and

I couldn’t bring myself to reply to her text.

That was when I very clearly knew that I was too deep in this funk to get myself out on my own, and I had to figure out how to get help.

Frankly, despite having struggled with panic attacks and anxiety in the past, I have never sought professional help. Until now, I never felt that my symptoms were so bad that they warranted medication. But the fact that i can’t contact my mother or my best friend, that I would rather not eat anything for two days instead of go outside, means that snorting essential oils and rubbing rose quartz against my temples or whatever isn’t going to be enough.

Mental Health Views in Japan

It’s not exactly a secret that the approach to mental health in Japan is “sweep it under the rug.” You do not talk about it. You may go to a doctor and receive medication, but you do not get counseling, because that involves talking about it. You do not tell your friends. You do not tell your family. You DEFINITELY do not tell your coworkers.

I saw my boss, T, fall into a very similar spiral to my own this summer. Stomach aches in the morning, coming in late, making excuses to get out of outings outside of work, not replying to messages, not sleeping well. And then one day he just vanished. Didn’t show up one Monday.

T wouldn’t respond to our messages so we had to contact his mother to get a hold of him. And once she had confirmed that she had spoken to him and scolded him for being “selfish” by skipping work, my coworkers were satisfied because, in their words, “Now that we know he’s still alive, we don’t have to worry.”

Honestly, that was one of the most fucked up reactions to any situation I have ever seen. I was shocked, because these coworkers truly cared for him, but their mutual reaction to this was to just...let him languish.

T announced to a select number of supervisors/colleagues that he had been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and would be stepping down from his position. He said that he had been diagnosed years ago, but had not disclosed it because he knew that he would never be promoted if anyone knew.

And that’s one of the big reasons that no one wants to talk about their mental illness here. In Japan, having a mental illness is a shameful thing. It shows that you’re weak, that you can’t keep up with everyone else, that you are flawed in a way that will adversely affect those around you at one point or another.

But my company really is a great company and the people in charge are progressive. T has a lot of great skills and experience, and they didn’t want to let him go. So they told him that they would find someone to fill his current role, but once he had rested and gotten better, they wanted him to come back and do a position that he used to do, one that he really shined in and enjoyed. And that is where he’s at now, and he’s doing much better for it.

So, having seen all of this unfold mere months ago, I grappled with how much I should tell my employers. The talk of this new and big position in Tokyo was underway, yet I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle it unless I got better.

So I bit the bullet, and on the night that I couldn’t respond to my best friend’s text, I sent my boss a message, explaining my symptoms, how long they’d been going on, what I thought the causes were, and that I wanted to take the morning off to see a doctor about it sometime that week.

And I was really shocked by his reply.

This boss is the guy that filled T’s position, and i didn’t know him that well yet. As it turns out, he used to be a counselor before he joined this company. He told me that I could go to the doctor whenever I wanted, but that he also wanted to talk in person about this the next day.

The next day he called me into the conference room with one other manager, a guy I really trust and like. When T vanished, shit really hit the fan at the office and it was basically this manager and me keeping us afloat for the first couple weeks, so we’ve got a lot of camaraderie going. They asked me to talk more about what was going on, why I was feeling all this anxiety, etc.

And it was during this conversation that I saw the division between the traditional Japanese views of mental health and modern views of mental health.

When I explained to them both why I wanted to see a doctor and try medication, their reactions were mixed. My boss, the former counselor, said that if I thought it was best, trying out medication for a few weeks was a good idea.

The manager looked doubtful and said, “But do you really think that going to a doctor and getting pills from him will fix everything? If you’re diagnosed, what will your colleagues think? I thought you wanted that promotion.”

In that moment i felt intense fear and regret, as well as hurt. T had said that he had withheld his diagnosis for this very reason. A part of me had wanted to think it was paranoia on his part, but now I realized that he had been right to keep it a secret. This manager, whom I knew very well and trusted deeply, clearly was of the opinion that a diagnosis/medication = evidence of weakness.

So I ended up lying and telling them, “I’ll go to the doctor just to get some sleeping pills.” (I’ve been waking up every hour on the hour for a couple months now.) Sleeping pills aren’t frowned upon in Japan and the manager was pleased with this decision.

And after that manager left, I told my boss the truth, that i would be getting anti-anxiety meds as well because I really thought it was necessary, and that I would appreciate him not disclosing it unless he was required to, which he agreed to.

Seeing a Psychiatrist in Japan

So now i had to find a psychiatrist and make an appointment. A Google search provided me horrors. Below is an excerpt of a Google review of a certain mental health clinic in my city, and the record of the exchange between the doctor and reviewer (patient). I’m not going to translate it all because it’s long, but these are some highlights of the doctor’s words directly to the patient.

“You can’t sleep? I can’t sleep either. What, do you want some pills for it?”

“You can’t expect me to believe what a patient says.”

(After he made the patient cry) “You are being so difficult. Could you stop crying?”

He gives her medication, has silent nurses send her out to the waiting room where she continues to cry, and the doctor comes to the waiting room and says, “Could you hurry up and pay and leave?”

Having read this, I was filled with absolute fear. Maybe I was better off trying to fix this on my own after all.

But I kept searching, and I also learned that my city hall has a 心の相談窓口 (Kokoro no Soudan Madoguchi), “Mind Consultation.” You can call them to learn information about what sorts of mental health facilities/options are available in your area. A very kind lady there informed me that it takes about 2-3 months to get in to any psychiatrist in this city, most of them do not take new patients, and that counseling is almost non-existent. Unless I was a harm to myself or others, I would have to wait. However, there was one general hospital in the city that had one psychiatrist staffed. This hospital has no reservation system whatsoever (very common in Japan) and takes a set number of patients in the morning and evening. I could try my luck to get in and see her.

So that was what i did, and I was able to see her on the first morning I went! I think the Kokoro no Soudan Madoguchi lady made it sound harder to get into so I wouldn’t feel let down if it didn’t work out the first time I went.

Having read the horror story above, I had a lot of trepidation stepping into the exam room with her and two nurse secretaries. I had expected it to be a very clinical, dry exchange of symptoms and a sufficient prescription with a token お大事に。

And, more than anything, I had feared that she would say something like, “Maybe you should just go home to your own country where you wouldn’t stand out.”

But she asked me a wide range of questions, with none of them focusing on the fact that I was a gaijin: what my symptoms were, how long they’d been going on, what I had going on in my life, what work was like, past history of anxiety, etc., and she and the nurses all truly listened to what i had to say. It was clear that she cared about the underlying causes and me as a person.

She told me that it sounded like I was experiencing a buildup of stress and anxiety and that she wanted me to try a low dose of anti-anxiety meds and sleeping pills for a week and then come back for another discussion.

That was 3 weeks ago. I’ve since been in the process of working with her to find the right combination of medication. Fun fact: they prescribe you Rohypnol (roofies) for sleeping meds in Japan if they deem your insomnia is serious enough. So. That is interesting.

Where I Am Now

I am keeping my boss informed of my condition and he is still very supportive. He seems to have informed his bosses of my tribulations to some extent, because they have gone out of their way to check in on me and see how I’m doing, which is very kind of them. Of course, they also know that i went above and beyond the call of duty for several months in a row until recently, and they could simply be asking because of that. Either way, I am touched that they would think of me, as I am a lowly translator for a lesser project and they are quite a ways up on the corporate ladder.

I am still in talks about taking on a very exciting position in Tokyo HQ, despite one of those bosses likely being aware of my situation to some extent. I used to dread the thought of Tokyo because I am a country girl who needs to see green, but recently I’ve come to the tough decision that I need to leave my beloved Japanese hometown, just like i left my American one. I love them, but I do not belong in them. I have visited the Tokyo HQ quite a few times, and there are a ton of foreigners in the area so I don’t stand out at all. I think that as long as I can live reasonably close enough to a park, I can satisfy my needs for nature while lessening my social anxiety.

I am having good days and bad days where it is still hard for me to leave the house. But I am having more good days than bad now. And today I was finally able to send a text message back to my best friend. Which really doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is a lot to me. My friend is supportive and understanding, which means the world to me.

I’m getting back to being me. 💗

p.s.: The gif at the top of this is from the anime Mushishi, which I think illustrates various mental illnesses and their effects in a very metaphoric way.

[robotslenderman]

Still only partway through CP77.

Spoilers for the Death’s Head questline.

Warning: this involves my V ignoring canon, having a mental breakdown and expressing it by attacking poor, poor fucking Judy.

So like

My V was a complete fucking mess after the Heist and what happened there. Her best friend (and crush) was dead, she almost died, and she had a fucking terrorist in her head who could TOUCH HERRRR and had hijacked her body and hurt her, and she was going to die in a month and slowly lose control of her body to someone who wanted to hurt her.

She. Was fucking. Terrified. Even when Johnny offered an olive branch she didn’t trust him at all (something Judy would come to relate to, although my V hasn’t yet noticed the parallel).

So when Judy refused to give her any information on Evelyn?

V, who was absolutely scared for her life and having a mental breakdown after the death of her best friend, went to visit Judy.

With a baseball bat.

And used it.

I know this doesn’t make it better at all, but V did hold back a bit -- didn’t hit the head, pulled her punches on the body and spine, and mostly went for the legs. If any permanent damage was done, it wouldn’t be to Judy’s brain, it wouldn’t be to her hands or arms. Better she disabled Judy’s ability to walk if she went too far than fucking lobotomising her or fucking up her hands.

How fucking considerate of her, I know. V basically wanted to scare the shit out of her, made her think that other people were hunting down Evelyn (”if you don’t give me this information, I’ll just fucking kill you. I don’t need you. I can wait for someone else to find her first and drop in on them. So you better talk because otherwise you’re not getting out of here alive”), and made a big song and dance about how the only reason V wasn’t going to fucking annihilate Judy on the spot was because Jackie would never forgive her for turning into a complete monster.

Anyway. Poor Judy quickly blurted out the information about Clouds once she realised V was not fucking around. V threatened her again, then got the fuck out. And obviously hasn’t been back to Lizzie’s since.

When she calmed down she wrote Judy an apology letter. (I told my friend this. She was like “your V is fucking psycho.” Yeah.) She was like “look, I know an apology doesn’t mean jack fucking shit after what I did to you, but... idk man. send me what you owe the ripperdoc and I’ll square my debt to you.”

Yeah V, because contacting someone you fucking traumatised is a BRILLIANT FUCKING IDEA, I bet Judy wouldn’t be afraid AT ALL to send you a bill!

(Naturally, Judy didn’t reply and just sent some of the Mox. V gave them everything she could spare and told them to come back in a week for the rest. They roughed her up. She fought back enough to defend herself and eventually toss them out, but didn’t attack them because she knew that wouldn’t help Judy.)

Needless to say, when she ran into Judy at Fingers’ place Judy was NOT at all happy to see her and didn’t want to work with her at all. V basically gave her all the details she uncovered at Clouds -- by now she was actually pretty damn worried about Evelyn and she’d started coming to terms with the fact she was going to die, so she was far more concerned about finding Evelyn than getting anything from her, and was terrified Evelyn was dead.

But obviously Judy was still Mega Freaked Out and traumatised and wasn’t going to work with her. V didn’t offer, either. V didn’t try to scare Judy, but she was also a bit tetchy because Judy obviously didn’t want her looking for Evelyn still, and so V probably scared her a little still because V was like “look, I’m going to find her whether you like it or not, get out of my way. She is in big fucking trouble and I don’t have time for this.”

Judy followed her into Fingers’ room and watched her deal with Fingers. V was actually pretty calm when dealing with Fingers, then realised how fucked up it was that she beat up Judy but not this asshole, so she beat up Fingers too.

Nice, V. Way not to freak out Judy even more.

But obviously, Judy didn’t want to work with V like she did in canon. So V got the snuff film by herself. Unfortunately, she needed an editor, so this was the point where she reached out to Judy again. Sent her a text message that basically said, “This film could help me find Evelyn. Give me a time when you won’t be in and I’ll use your stuff to get into edit mode and track them down.”

V’s dumbass logic: “she probably doesn’t want to see me but I need this information, so I’ll just tell her to keep away from me.”

Judy’s response was “oh my god, even if you could do this without someone on the outside what the hell makes you think I’d let you on my tech unsupervised?!”

(V: “Oh. Right.”) “Do you want me to find Evelyn or not?”

“That’s not what I meant! Come in, but I’m operating the computer and I’m putting Mox in there with us, so don’t you dare try to intimidate me.”

“... Yeah that’s a much better idea. I just knew you wouldn’t want to be alone with me.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

(V, thinking a joke might put her at ease a bit, not realising it just makes her look like a psychopath anyway.) “It’s okay, I’ll leave the baseball bat at home.”

(Judy is not at all amused.)

So the questline continues the way it does in-game, except with a very jumpy Judy. It’s when they find Evelyn that Judy is freaked out enough to be distracted from V. V carries out Evelyn, speaking to her softly.

At this point V had totally come to terms with the fact she was going to die. And Evelyn was a complete fucking mess, and Evelyn was not going to talk even if V wanted her to. So my V didn’t even bother with that, just helped Judy get Evelyn the hell out of there.

Once Evelyn was settled in Judy’s apartment (it’s only later that Judy realises “oh shit, now V knows where I live”) Judy and V’s conversation went almost exactly as it did in canon, with the exception of the more trusting/loyal responses Judy gives you, which Judy simply omitted. V also elaborated on some of the stuff in her letter -- that V was dying because of the relic slowly overwriting her presonality, and she’d hunted down Evelyn because Evelyn could give her a lead to go on to reverse the process. But V still didn’t make any attempts to talk with Evelyn. V knew she was going to die. She wasn’t going to compound Evelyn’s trauma even more. When Judy expressed concern that other people were hunting Evelyn, V was like “oh, shit, no, actually, I was bluffing.”

“...”

“I wasn’t going to kill you. I just wanted to make you think I was. I don’t know of anyone actually trying to hunt her down, and I didn’t run into anyone at all while chasing up this information on her. So either she’s in the clear and nobody wants her, or they’re being damn subtle about it. Either way, since she’s in this condition she’ll be staying inside and lying low, so that’ll help her shake off any tail she might have.”

V gave Judy some more money, though not the full amount because she’s still scraping the eddies together -- told Judy she’d make sure she was fully reimbursed before she went. Told Judy if she or Evelyn needed anything more, call her.

...

By then, after seeing her with Evelyn, Judy is not sure about my V.

After the baseball bat incident, Judy thought that my V was an unhinged violent lunatic. I mean, V was an unhinged violent lunatic -- but she’d thought my V was that by default. But obviously my V showed Evelyn a lot of empathy and concern -- genuine empathy and concern, not V trying to go “LOOK HOW NICE I AM” to Judy. She knew V wasn’t trying to show false empathy to butter up Judy because V got pissed at her in Fingers’ office for getting in the way of her trying to find Evelyn to make sure Evelyn was okay. That is, pissed at her for that specific occasion of Judy getting in the way -- V was definitely not checking on Evelyn’s wellbeing when she visited Judy with the baseball bat, but Judy tried to discourage V from going after Evelyn again at Fingers’ office and V’s response was pretty much “oh fuck OFF, she’s in a really bad situation and needs help.”

So Judy was like, okay, there’s two possible judgements you can make about V:

V is one of those people who seems absolutely lovely until she gets in a bad mood, which is even more fucking terrifying because that makes her unpredictable.

V legitimately was in the middle of a mental breakdown and Judy just happened to be really fucking unlucky in that she was the convenient target. V had said this in her letter but obviously Judy was like “What the FUCK did you really send me an APOLOGY LETTER for almost BEATING ME TO DEATH” and hadn’t really taken it seriously, but now she’s starting to think V might have actually told the truth.

Judy is hoping it’s the latter but she’s not holding her breath, and also you have to remember that even if it was a mental breakdown... it showed her exactly what V was like when she was having a mental breakdown, and therefore meant V was perfectly fucking capable of doing it again.

(Meanwhile V was thinking “If she knows I was having a mental breakdown then she knows she doesn’t have to be scared of me doing it again.” No, V. You’re wrong.)

Judy is less spooked after seeing V in action with Evelyn, but she’s still very wary of her. But after V helped her with Evelyn, Judy told her not to worry about the rest of the eddies and just accepted what V gave her then and there. V almost pushed it, but realised Judy probably didn’t want to feel indebted to someone who beat her up with a baseball bat, so she dropped it.

V later sent Judy a weighted blanket for Evelyn to sleep under. “I’ve got one, it helps when I’m stressed. It won’t make her any better, but it might give her a little comfort.”

So right now, V and Judy have an uneasy truce. V keeps her distance from Judy unless she has to, except to occasionally ask after Evelyn, and Judy keeps her distance right back.

V is, however, not sucking up to Judy or grovelling to her. All she wanted was to let Judy know she didn’t have to be scared of her (although again, Judy is perfectly fucking aware that even if it was an actual mental breakdown then yes Judy should be scared of V having another one), that Judy didn’t have to worry about V going back to have another go at her.

V’s not going to make a huge deal about what a horrible person she was. She’s... well. Even if she thought it would help, she’s got a month to live unless the omega blockers give her more time. She’s not going to wear a hair shirt over this. She gave Judy some funds for the ripper doc, she’s apologised (even if an apology feels awfully pathetic), and she’s kept away from her.

Now she’s going to go back to chasing up leads, because Evelyn is in no condition to help. Because Judy released her, she’s been able to pay off her debt to Vik, and now she’s scraping up funds to pay Rogue for help and trying to talk Hakemura out of that fucking parade because that idiot keeps trying to get himself killed and she has to stand by to haul his ass out of the fire.