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silverkittenx9 · 2 months ago

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My PPG Headcanons

Oh, I've been itching to do these for a very long time. I want to add depth to some of my favorite Townsville citizens, so I'm gonna do it 🥰 wrote these last fall, but waited to release them until now because I wasn't sure if they were good enough. I'm just not a confident person, I guess 😂 Let me know if these headcanons are good as they are or if they need a bit more polishing.

The Powerpuff Girls themselves (and Professor Utonium):

The girls' birthday is in March or April, considering they immediately started going to school a day or so after being "born". It couldn't have been in the summer because school would've already been out. The weather outside in “Birthday Bash” somewhat had a spring-like atmosphere to it.

The Professor's birthday is sometime during the summer (most likely July); though we never actually see him celebrate his birthday in the show.

Blossom's favorite subjects in school are spelling, science, and reading; Bubbles loves arts-and-crafts and mathematics; while Buttercup only likes recess and playtime (she hates school because it stops her from fighting crime).

Buttercup is a dog person, while Blossom is more of a cat person (she still likes dogs though). Bubbles, being a huge animal lover, is a fan of all animals. One of the things she often asks for Christmas is a pony.

Bubbles often wishes for a baby sibling to play with. She has her sisters, but she also loves looking out for younger children and behaving as a "role model" for them. Blossom likewise is very gentle with kids younger than her, giving her own bits of wisdom to them (think Susie Carmichael from Rugrats with the babies). Buttercup, on the other hand, could care less about babies; she hates their guts.

Bubbles also wishes she had a mother. It'd complete the nuclear family dynamic of a mother, father, and three daughters. All the girls wish they had a mother, although they are grateful for their own father too.

As she grew older, Professor Utonium noticed Buttercup having a hard time concentrating on her schoolwork and sitting still, so she was diagnosed with mild ADHD (she's not too overly hyper, but she does have a hard time concentrating on something that isn't crime-fighting for a long period of time). She already was showing some signs of hyperactivity when she was "born", but Professor shrugged it off since he thought it was normal for kids her age.

The Professor was once married and was considering having children. But due to irreconcilable differences, his wife left him all alone with no one to start a family with (his wife cheated on him with Dick Hardly). From then on, he couldn't trust himself to go on dates in fear he'd run into another distrustful woman. One day while at work, one of his colleagues joked, “If you want kids so much, then why don’t you make them yourself?”. Rather than being offended, The Professor came up with the perfect idea. He wondered if it was possible to create a child solely from science. From then on, he tried to create a daughter of his own with little to no success. While he would've not minded caring for a baby anyway, he visioned having a girl at least 5-years old who would do normal daddy/daughter stuff with him. After a long time of failures, he thought of the poem "What Are Little Boys Made Of?" and hatched the perfect idea; he immediately knew what ingredients to get. Thus, The Powerpuff Girls were born.

Blossom is a huge perfectionist. Despite the fact she's only in kindergarten (a very easy grade, mind you), she is already worried sick about getting low scores on her tests. Even if it's something like finger-painting, she will go above and beyond to make sure it's her best work. It even impacts her ability to fight crime sometimes. She takes "mental health days" when she feels her work isn't up to her standards.

Buttercup sometimes feels as if she was the black sheep of the family (literally because of her hair color). She feels as if The Professor pays more attention to Blossom and Bubbles than her, which is the reason why she often rebels. Bubbles is often seen as a cherubic angel even if she does underhanded things (like the entirety of Bubblevicious, for example).... but Buttercup often gets hit hard with harsher punishments even if she does the same exact thing. She also cannot stand being called a "perfect little girl" because she wants to be her own person. She's a huge tomboy, so she possibly could've associated it with being a princess (she isn't a fan of princesses).

Bubbles has a slight bratty streak since she tends to be coddled by everyone for how cute and innocent she is. She will sometimes hold her breath when she doesn't get her way (like that one time Professor said no to a Darbie dreamhouse). However, she is not a spoiled brat like Princess Morbucks is.

The girls are actually much stronger than they already are. Considering they destroyed the entire city just by playing tag once, they're more than capable to combining their powers together to nuke the entire planet 🤣 They once caused an earthquake at the playground after jumping off the swings and landing on the ground.

The Professor sometimes wonders how different it would be if his daughters were born as "normal little girls" and tries to indulge that thought by taking them places like carnivals or ice cream shops... but then he realizes all the rampant crime in Townsville and is glad he created superheroes because if it weren't for their duties, Townsville would've been an anarchy by now.

As for the girls, they too wonder how different life would be if they were born as "normal little girls". They even teeter in and out at the idea of being born as babies. Keep in mind that they were born at the physical age of about 5-years old. This means they never experienced life before the age of 5.... Not even one millisecond. I'm engaging in Mojo-speak 🤣🤣

Others:

Despite (formerly) being next door neighbors to The Powerpuff Girls, Julie Smith doesn't go to Pokey Oaks with them. This is because her parents refuse to let their daughter go to school with those "pesky Powerpuffs". As a result, she attends kindergarten at Townsville Elementary rather than Pokey Oaks. On the other hand, her older brother Bud is in the 6th grade at Townsville Middle.

The reason why Pokey Oaks is a kindergarten-only school is because despite following the schedule of the local school district, it is a private school that exclusively focuses on preparing young children aged between 5-6 years old for first grade (and elementary school in general). Like pretty much the entirety of the United States, most kindergarten classes in Townsville are actually inside of elementary schools, but there are a few private schools that offer kindergarten-only programs (Pokey Oaks being one of them). The Professor picked this school not only because it's close to their house, but also because he wants his girls to be around similarly-aged kids while also getting the education they would need to progress through elementary school. Pokey Oaks is one of the most well-regarded private schools in Townsville since it has a teacher who is both patient and willing to challenge her students. She sometimes even challenges them a bit too hard. The Professor likely registered for this school beforehand since he knew he’d get kindergarten-aged daughters…. Immediately the day after the girls are born, he tells them to get ready for school. He likely wanted kids around that age so he could drop them off at school and at least have several hours of peace.

Pokey Oaks is possibly some sort of Waldorf/Montessori combo school since it seems to focus on kids' individual educational and social needs, which is why the girls don't get failing grades when they leave school to fight crime. Not that kindergarten is an incredibly easy grade anyway 🤣 Townsville Elementary (where The Mayor, Ms. Bellum, Ms. Keane, and Professor Utonium all attended) is the public community school in Townsville that houses grades K-5.

Speaking of Ms. Keane, she used to work as a daycare teacher for a while before moving onto kindergarten. She often worked with 3-6 year olds, though she also worked with babies and toddlers too. She wanted to make Townsville a better place for children to learn, so using experience she had working with very young children, she opened her own private kindergarten school, Pokey Oaks, which was actually once used for several daycare facilities in the past (including the one she worked at). She says kindergarten is her favorite age to teach because while the kids are still cute, they're more independent and outspoken. She’s glad she doesn’t have to wipe her students’ asses anymore. Her favorite students are The Powerpuff Girls, though she doesn't let them know out loud since she doesn't want to make the other kids jealous. They’re also Townsville’s heroes, so of course they’d be her favorite students!

When she's not teaching, Ms. Keane likes to paint. The Professor has a couple of Ms. Keane's paintings.... one of which is The Powerpuff Girls themselves. Yeah, tell me they aren't her favorite students 😏

HIM's lobster claws and high heel boots are removable. Underneath his signature lobster claws are five-fingered hands whose sharp nails are covered in glossy pink nail polish. He only removes them when nobody else is around. Much like Blossom with her bow, he feels like he's nothing without his signature claws.

All three of The Rowdyruff Boys might have ADHD, with Butch being the most severe due to how often his body shakes when standing still. It could be normal behavior for kindergarten-aged boys though.

The villains have their own secret organization where they all meet together and discuss ways they can destroy The Powerpuff Girls. The Amoeba Boys are the only "villains" in the entire world who aren't a part of the organization. They are often denied entry for how lame they are. Interestingly enough, The Smiths were offered entry into the organization, but Harold and Maryanne refused since their kids had school.

All the villains often have disagreements on how they want to destroy The Powerpuff Girls. HIM wants to emotionally break the girls, Princess wants to humiliate them in front of their classmates, Fuzzy Lumpkins wants to cook them into a stew, while Mojo Jojo wants to fry them to black char.

Despite being a supervillain who wants to reign over everybody in Townsville, Mojo Jojo often tries to patch things up with Professor Utonium. He vividly remembers his close relationship with The Professor and shows extreme jealousy over The Powerpuff Girls. He feels as if The Professor loves the girls more than him, so he takes his anger out by committing crimes. The girls, due to their young ages, fail to realize this and assume he's always up to no good. Despite not actually being siblings, they have somewhat of a older brother/little sister dynamic at times.

Princess Morbucks is a spoiled brat simply because nobody bothers setting boundaries for her. Her mother is on business trips 99 percent of the time, and her father is too much of a doormat to tell his daughter the word "no". He is a rather meek person compared to the more strong-willed Mrs. Morbucks. Princess is surprisingly more compliant when her mother is home (which is rarely, BTW).

Princess has gotten kicked out of multiple schools prior to attending Pokey Oaks in her debut appearance. It was possibly the only other school that was willing to accept an unruly brat like her. The rest of the schools in Townsville want nothing to do with her whatsoever. She is at risk for repeating kindergarten considering she's always wreaking havoc on Townsville rather than practicing her alphabet like she's supposed to. To accommodate this, her father tries to homeschool her to no avail. HIM is also a teacher figure toward her; she listens better to him for some reason.

Fuzzy Lumpkins is another villain with a troubled background; when he was a little boy, his father was captured by some hunters after being mistaken for Bigfoot. Fuzzy was deeply upset by this and he would vow never to leave his home turf in respect for his clan. His banjo "Jo" was a gift from his father. The reason why he doesn't want anything on his property is to protect his clan (and also in fear the hunters might come back for him). However, he struggles with anger issues, so he takes it out on the entirety of Townsville. (I'M NOT TOO SURE ABOUT THIS HEADCANON)

The reason why The Mayor is so childish is because he is showing very early signs of Alzheimer's disease, despite being a bit younger than most sufferers of the disorder (The Mayor is likely in his early 70s). He has always been goofy, but when he was a younger adult, he was actually competent at his job.

HIM's mother Lucy Fur is arguably even more dangerous than he is. She's not only more powerful, but she also has none of the standards HIM has when dealing with the girls. Her wardrobe consists of a fur coat with a demon mink wrapped around her. She also wears fur boots, fitting her name even more. His father B.Z. Bub was once the lord of Hell, having had experience of taking people's souls. The girls haven't met his parents yet, mainly because he keeps them a secret from others.

Ms. Keane remembers The Professor as a rebellious prankster who was always taking trips to the principal's office for his misbehavior. Whenever he visits the kindergarten, she has the urge to scold him like she does with her 5-year olds, possibly to get back on him for all the pranks he did to her as a child. Ms. Bellum, on the other hand, hasn't changed much from childhood; she was always a quiet, intelligent girl who always had a book covering her face.

Ms. Keane, Ms. Bellum, and Professor Utonium all went to school together from kindergarten to high school.

Even as a kid, Ms. Bellum already knew she had to do something to change the world. When she was a kindergartener, she wrote an essay about changing Townsville for the better. She had always been very mature for her age and earned straight As all throughout school. In high school, she was part of the debate team and even ran for school president.

Dick Hardly was the man who The Professor's wife cheated on with. He quite literally lured her away from him with his charismatic personality and good looks. Dick would rub it in The Professor's face, even all these years later. He would often belittle him, "Maybe you should try looking more handsome like me."

Townsville is located somewhere in the northwestern part of the United States (most likely in either Oregon or Washington) Since the pacific coast is shown in a few episodes, it possibly could be located in the northern half of California too (near the Oregon border). The forest Fuzzy Lumpkins lives in somewhat resembles a boreal forest. The pacific ocean is often shown too.

#powerpuff girls #cartoon network #headcanons

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draftmare · 1 month ago

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Two posts in two days! My wrist is going to be so angry, but I had such an amazing lesson last night.

First off, I don't actually know what I did to my wrist/hand. Have I been to a doctor? Of course not! Several years ago I was diagnosed with carpel tunnel and was told to wear a wrist brace while sleeping. I could not sleep with that thing on, so I said LOL to that and went about my way. Apparently because I can make my hand go numb "on command" by flexing it downwards that means I have carpel tunnel. It's never really been an issue other than sometimes I will wake up at night with a numb hand because that's how I tend to sleep. I honestly think I miiiiight have aggravated it with my gaming marathons over my Christmas/winter work break. Just maybe. Anyway, wearing the wrist brace has significantly helped the pain, so I am just self-diagnosing, and if it doesn't get better in another week or two I guess I will see if my neurologist can see me again.

Anyway, on to the pony. I have been really spiraling on her lately. She was doing really well, and then she started doing not so well. I was starting to worry that she might be in pain, my brain was even going as far as to wonder if she needed to be retired or have a much lighter work load, like a little kid doing up-down lessons or something. Trainer thankfully walked me back from the edge. We gave her some time off, did two magnawave sessions, and it seemed to snap her out of it.

I also took her off of flax. I had changed her on to flax mid-November or so. Trainer has a very holistic view on feeding horses, with wanting the most simple ingredients in everything. Going along with that, I was trying to get her off of Ultimate Finish 40, which has a million things on it, and on to flax, which serves her fat needs while just being, well, flax. It all could be one huge cowinky-dinky that she went on to the flax and then shortly there after became not exactly lame, but not exactly sound, and now she has come off of flax and I have had two really good rides in a row... Only time will tell if she gets back to her previous self. Flax is suppose to be anti-inflammatory, and supposedly flax allergies in horses are rare. I am just really hoping that I am on to something here.

In my last lesson we worked on straightness. So much straightness. Trainer had me ride about three feet away from the wall so that I could really feel what her body was doing without relying on the wall to keep her going in a straight line, and it was HARD. She also had me work on really using the corners and getting her straight again on the short side, not making the short side one big turn. As I mentioned in my last post, the straighter I got her, the sounder she looked. Shocking. So, I went away with that homework. This lesson she had us start out with the straightness, but also did a little reminder on the conversation I need to have get Sydney to stretch into the contact instead of want to curl her head towards her chest, which is her favorite evasion. Once we got that sorted Sydney was absolutely gliding across the arena. Swinging through her body, breathing through her whole body, her footfalls were light and even. It felt amazing. We started to add a little bend back into by doing one loops at the trot, and Sydney obliged with some lovely changes in bend through them. We only did a couple each direction and then called it good for the day as we are still in "building back up" mode right now. This amazing ride made me even more bummed that I won't get to ride again for almost a week due to the weather!

#dressage #appaloosa #belgian draft #draft cross #horsblr #equestrian blogging #blog post

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saracurtis · 2 years ago

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Betrayal: A modern AU Sodapop story

TW: cancer, death, toxic family, family betrayal, bad mental health

It started off like any other day, me and my six best friends- Dally, Johnny, Two-Bit, Steve, Darry, and Ponyboy - at my aunt’s house with my boyfriend of a month, Sodapop. We were all messing around with my cousin who was a few years younger than me when my father came home with my sister-in-law and brother along with my father's mother. I was sixteen and oblivious at the time as I hugged them until I noticed their blood-shot eyes and solemn expressions. “ What happened?” I questioned in hopes of clarification, They got greeted by the gang before we all took a seat on the couch where my father started by saying “ Sara, remember there was a slight chance your mother would perish when she was diagnosed?”

I immediately saw where that was going. My heart sank.

My mother had been diagnosed with cancer nine months ago and ever since then we have been driving to the hospital for her chemotherapies and when she was home we took care of her day and night. Even my father's mother came to help all the way from South America to help around the house and help her while I was at school and my father was working . I even stopped hanging out with the gang as much because when I wasn't studying or at school I was caring for my mother and my home.

As soon as I heard those words fall from my Father's lips I gasped, “ No” I sat back, stunned and in denial with my hand over my heart, not trusting myself to speak. I heard gasps next to me to realize it was the gang, I felt a hand on my shoulder which I recognized as my boyfriend’s as he squeezed it, I placed my hand on top of his and squeezed my eyes shut. This can't be real! It just can't! She was only 45! No, this isn't real! I felt several people wrap their arms around me in a hug, “ I am so sorry, Sara” Soda choked out in between tears. “ We know it stings, Sar” Pony sobbed, “ I am so sorry dearest, we're here, whatever you may need” my grandmother cried. We were all hugging each other , I could only imagine the pain my family was in.

My father lost the love of his life, My brother lost his mother who was the only parent he had left as his biological father abandoned him ( we do not share the same biological father), my sister-in-law barely got to know my mother, and my aunt along with my cousin and grandmother were just starting to patch up their relationship with my mother. Sodapop and the gang were devastated, they had already experienced loss with the Curtis parents; The loss of my mom was another devastating blow.

We stayed in our huddle for twenty minutes before father had to leave with his mother to schedule the funeral with my brother and sister-in-law. I stayed with the gang and my aunt and cousin as my aunt served one of my family’s comfort dishes, chicken soup with letter pasta. I thanked my aunt as she set down the bowl in front of me, attempting to find the letters to mentally spell words associated with Disney, just as I did when I was three, how my mom and I used to do. I sighed heavily and looked at my lap, Soda wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “ How long is it supposed to hurt?” I whispered to him, “ the pain never really goes away, honey, in about two weeks you should be able to feel at peace once more” he replied, planting a kiss on my temple.

Once father came back, all of us drove in different cars back home so we could all spend time together. Father and Darry allowed me and soda to sleep in my bed as they both agreed that being in the arms of the man I love most is just what I needed. Soda gladly obliged, We cuddled in my bed in comforting silence and drifted off to sleep but not before the phrase “ I love you” fell from both our lips.

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My eyes fluttered open, A new day had begun and I was still trying to grasp onto my new reality; Half-orphaned at sixteen years of age. My eyes felt incredibly sore; I felt a chill and cuddled close to Soda, he began to play with my hair as he began to wake up.

“ Morning, Sar” He yawned,

“ Hey, Soda” I replied, as he engulfed me in one of his warm hugs. We both walked to the kitchen hand in hand and greeted our family members, we sat down to eat the eggs and toast served by my grandmother.

“Sara” My aunt sighed, “There’s something you gotta know”,

Just then, My phone rang so I ran to answer it.

“Hello?”

“ Sara, I am so sorry about what happened to your mother, dear” My mother’s mom’s voice quivered on the other end, My father looked enraged and demanded I to give him the phone, I involuntarily obliged.

“ Leave us alone, Anna, I did what I could to save her! And you know that damn well” He yelled at her

“ You terrible husband! You killed her! You're such a terrible father ” Grandma yelled through sobs.

I was left speechless, my grandmother had always been there for me and my father and I were going through a rough time but he always wanted the best for me, who do I stand by? Sodapop noticed my discomfort and pulled me close to him, I grabbed onto him for dear life. I began shaking, My breathing got heavier, and tears pooled in my eyes but I did not have the means nor the strength to allow them to fall. I was so scared and confused, that I relied on Soda at that moment. I shut my eyes and buried my face in the crook of his neck. He began to rake his hand through my hair and began to whisper, “Shhhhh Sara, I-It’s okay, we’ll clear this up, don’t worry my love” . “ I hope you are proud of yourself and your daughters, Anna” Father shouted before hanging up the phone with a slam.

He then turned to me, “ Sara, I know you're confused ; but you gotta hear me out. Come look at this” He took my hand in his and signaled for Soda to follow. We did as we were told and followed father back to the diner table, where he took his phone and showed me a screenshot of a Facebook post- a public publishing of lies spread by my mother’s sister about her death. She made preposterous claims that my mother wished to be dead, she was miserable with us and countless other hurtful lies. I could not believe my eyes! I trusted her! I believed she loved me! I'm a fool.

Tears brimmed my eyes, l stood speechless; “ People talk of love when it's an act, simply meant to throw me” (quote from Aladdin musical) I bitterly choked. Sodapop wrapped his arms around me protectively and everyone followed suit. The funeral took place a week later and when I thought I was all cried out I was proven wrong. My mother’s death took such a toll on my mental health that I got sick, Sodapop stood by me through it all, the whole time. The way that he cares for me made it clear… I want to marry him some day. Thanks to him and my family and friends, I made a full recovery and fully processed my greif, and Soda and I made it out stronger than ever.

#the outsiders #the outsiders sodapop #sodapop curtis #greif #oneshot #sorry 😭#based on a true story #se hinton #sodapop imagine #sodapop patrick curtis #sodapop Curtis is my husband ❤️

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stew-skys-husband · 1 month ago

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All three of them are autistic and so were their parents. Mr. Curtis loved trains and automobiles and Mrs. Curtis loved knitting and sewing.

Darry, as the oldest, has had a lot of expectations put on him since he was young. He has a set routine he likes to follow and when it's slightly off it angers him. He used to get mad at Soda when he didn't do the things Darry expected him to do. Darry has a hard time with empathy towards others and especially with understanding others. He needs to be right all the time and if things aren't going his way than they are going wrong. He gets overstimulated the most easily out of the three and he often answers with outbursts. He's bad with masking to make others more comfortable, just like Ponyboy.

Soda is a fun combination of ADHD and autism where his autism is shadowed by his attention deficit. He's forgetful, all over the place and constantly needs stimulation. This gets on Darry's nerves quick. He has too much empathy, just like Pony, and he also needs a routine but is unable to keep it. I also diagnose him with dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Ponyboy is a daydreaming kind of autistic where he's always drawing or writing and in his head. He doesn't cause any troubles at school and has good grades so no one ever noticed something was wrong with him. He loves stories but can't decipher the deeper meaning unless it is being outright said to him. He can't understand people's motives by their actions. His special interests are reading and watching movies and has hyperfixations that last a couple of months to a year where it's like the only thing he cares about. He's much better than his other brothers at reading body language and social clues because of this.

All three Curtis brothers are autistic. Send tweet.

#curtis brothers #ponyboy curtis #darry curtis #sodapop curtis #the outsiders headcanons

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glapplebloom · 3 years ago

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I’m going to try to explain this as best as I can, because quite frankly it is confusing. So sorry...

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Now this episode was made in July 12, 2014. This is before Season 5. Now you’re wondering about this being Project Thundercloud II, so likely information from Project Thundercloud 1 should be taken note of first. Well, to save you the trouble I looked at that. Its basically he first few minutes of this video with Kirby Music. So talking about one talks about the other. Also note that one was released in August 2, 2013, so in reality only the first three seasons are considered for this.

So it begins with talking about the Elements of Harmony. Built from the “Rarest Crystals from all the corners of Equestria” and for generations its bearers were the ones responsible for protecting things from the Chaos. Yeah, a lot of things wrong when you look at it through a modern lens. And if they were to disappear, a beautiful Alicorn Mare with a Golden Mane and Silver Wings will appear to find them back. So said Elements are gone and the Eternal Night is coming back for some reason.

We now focus on Muffins, who in this episode is referred to as Derpy Hooves, Ditzy Doo and Bright Eyes in this one episode alone. We learn about her upbringing and her being diagnosed with strabismus. This makes her crossed eyes, not blind. Thing is a lot of people are going to say she’s a blind pony because a symptom is her vision gets blurry. Also the doctors couldn’t do anything to correct it despite that link suggesting so many simple solutions.

Since Muffin’s backstory isn’t important to this story, let’s focus on the things shown during that retelling. So Celestia sent Luna back to the Moon (somehow) and is the one planning to bring Eternal Night once again (for some reason). She’s even taking out the current Element Bearers and lost her Rainbow Hair Coloring. Also Trixie has a colorless orb for some reason. She never shows up for the rest of the episode.

Want to find out more about why Celestia is doing this? TOO BAD! DINKY TIME! Now the story is turned to Dinky’s backstory. Because her horn’s twirl is the opposite of normal, she finds it harder to do magic (for some reason). And since her mother is a Pegasus and her Daddy is an Earth Pony, she has to take Magic Lessons from Vinyl Scratch, Lyra Heartstrings and Amethyst Star (welp, Dinky’s doomed).

So back in the present (I think) Dinky is with Amethyst while Muffins try to stop Celestia on her own (for some reason). Amethyst promises to protect Dinky but like how she promised Matilda to help with the wedding fails miserably. It was all so sudden but the implication is Dinky used a spell so she can head to Canterlot too, but nothing indicated that. I’m going to assume Amethyst just has narcolepsy.

After Dinky arrives in Canterlot (relatively quickly), Muffins (who doesn’t even looked like she confronted Celestia at all) meets up with Time Turner and her other friends who arrived to help. So two things to note. First, I am presuming the Train Ride we followed in this animation is the one Dinky used. And Lyra and Bon Bon were on said train. And Dinky implied that Time Turner and Muffins went together, yet here they were apart as if hey were following her.

And I really hate to do this since my own voice I feel sounds like Breeze Rider from Dusk’s Dawn, but Time Turner’s Voice Actor sounds like he had five minutes in the studio and was running out of time. He was talking so fast and not like the Doctor would. It was like super obviously talking fast. Anyway, they want to help, Muffins agrees, sees Celestia flying somewhere and chases her. Since Muffins is the only one with wins, she reaches her first.

But Dinky was there and figured out what is happening to Celestia. Something about her magic not being unidirectional and can corrupt the user. But the key thing to take out of this is Celestia ran out of energy because she didn’t sleep for more than a thousand years. By doing so, she’s becoming a Super Nova. Still doesn’t explain why she sent Luna back into the moon, why she took out the other Elements of Harmony, and why she wants to bring Eternal Night.

After a fight between Celestia and Muffins we don’t get to see, the others arrive just as Dinky figured out that they’re the Elements of Harmony. Yes, these seven ponies who only two had a focus on and four without any speaking lines at all are the Elements of Harmony 2.0. So instead of showing us why they represent said elements, Dinky explains...

Octavia = Kindness because she wants to make a good impression and never spoke a word louder than others. (Compared to Fluttershy who showed compassion to an animal others didn’t)

Vinyl = Honesty because she’s a respected DJ that gives fair reviews and never hid who she really was. (Compared to Applejack who reassured people when they were in doubt) Also, has Rainbow Dash’s Symbol.

Bon Bon = Laughter because she told them fresh and funny stories to make them laugh and smile. (Granted, this is a similar reason I gave Rumble and is the big reason Pinkie was her element)

Lyra = Generosity because she makes inventions to help the world (Compared to Rarity who sacrificed a bit of herself to comfort another)

Time Turner = Loyalty because he wouldn’t abandon them (the only one note for note)

Dinky = Magic because she’s a Unicorn and that’s the last one left.

Muffins = Inspiration because she earned the respect of the others and influenced them. In short, this is the Element of Magic.

It takes almost a minute to explain five of these elements. And all they do is tell us while panning around the ponies. This also shows how bad they implement the 2D Elements with the 3D Background. Thing is, they could definitely work if done properly, as seen with more recent Death Battles. Anyway, with the Elements of Harmony returned they freed Princess Luna and...

It ends on a closing message about them being the Elements of Harmony and Dinky and Muffins being the Alicorn mentioned in the first one. They also said we already know who were the first two Alicorns that represent Inspiration and Magic and that this story continues in Dinky’s Destiny. Yet overall, I have to say this is not really that good.

Its ambitious for wanting to tell a story that seems epic. But as someone who tried and failed to do so with the Royal War Infinite, ambition alone does not yield positive results. It spends a lot of time telling us about Muffins and Dinky that don’t really matter to the whole “Celestia is going Super Nova” plot and we don’t really see why these ponies were the Elements of Harmony. If I could fix this, I would spend more time on either the stories of Muffin and Dinky or the Eternal Night 2.0 Story. Not both at the same time.

#mlp review #MLP Revisit #Green Lantern Apple Bloom #Other Reviews

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captain-sodapop · 5 years ago

Note

This is for the headcanons but you think you could do how everyone acts when sick?

yesss. tough guys made vulnerable - we love to see it!

Darry

mr. deny, deny, deny

if he can go into work sick...he will, he absolutely will (this drives his brothers nuts)

dude could have a fever of 104 and he’d be like “what are you talking about that’s my normal body temperature”

he hates all the attention that comes with being sick and would really just love it if everyone would pretend with him, but they rarely do

Pony will try to heat him up some campbell’s at some point and Darry will make him cry because he snaps at him and then Pony runs away but he feels bad about it

freaky fast recovery time, lucky bastard

kind of guy that will look god in the eye and chug an entire bottle of nyquil with a straight face and sleep for 48 hours and come out the other side good as new

Sodapop

*weak cough* “I’m sick” :(

everyone around him: *prays to the lord to give them strength*

Steve: boo you whore

will milk it for all he’s worth

if it’s not that bad and he’s out and about, girls will coo at him and want to take care of him, and he LOVES it

claims he’s dying and will bitch to anyone who will listen. maybe not even about being sick, just things that piss him off in general. he’ll keep going even after everyone’s left the room

if his temperature gets high enough, he will tell you all his most embarrassing inner thoughts and secrets, so the gang has a stockpile for blackmail if they ever need it

Ponyboy

he’s a total baby about it, let’s just get that out of the way. even worse than Soda. like...a million times worse

whiiiiiiiiiiiny. and very picky. if the orange juice isn’t the right brand, he’ll know, and he’ll tell you about it

usually doesn’t mind the babying, unlike in the book, but he does mind having to miss school and catch up on schoolwork

likes to curl up in little cocoons to stay warm

might cry a little if he’s really uncomfortable :(

being sick makes him miss his mom. Pony’s a total mama’s boy, and he misses her taking care of him. Darry’s just a little too gruff sometimes

can get a little hyperactive. kid could spend three hours throwing up, then he finishes and is like “WE SHOULD PLAY FOOTBALL RIGHT NOW RIGHT N O W”

Johnny

just sorta suffers through it

secretly is begging god to take him right the fuck now

since the home situation isn’t great, he’ll just be like “Darry can I crash on your couch for the next three days” and Darry gets it right away and doesn’t bug him about it, which Johnny appreciates

Ponyboy won’t stop pestering him, and since he already doesn’t feel well Johnny has to try extra hard to be a good sport and remember he’s just trying to help

the guys will kinda check up on him, but won’t push at him too hard, they just wanna keep tabs

sometimes has to spend what little money he has on stuff he might need, but there’s this nice woman whose husband owns a diner he frequents who always catches on and gives him free soup and a pat on the shoulder :)

might get a bit chatty, and that’s how people know something’s up

Dallas

turns into the TASMANIAN DEVIL. and he’s already bad enough x_x

just...an absolute jackass. doesn’t want help, doesn’t want sympathy, doesn’t want to admit it

will crawl under his bed in the middle of the night at some point

“hey, you need anything?” *hauls off on the person*

holes up in his room at Buck’s for the duration and tries to ignore it out of existence, which means it usually gets worse before it gets better

not above stealing meds, of course, but he only does that if he’s absolutely desperate

surprisingly good in a fight for a guy who’s hallucinating

Two-Bit

I feel like this dude has a freaky good immune system. Two-Bit is a freak of nature in many ways, and this is one of them

HOWEVER, if he does get sick? you won’t know. legit, you would not know. not unless he wanted you to.

but if it’s really bad, he’ll start to overcompensate and just be...more. More chatty, more jokes, etc., but people don’t really catch on to the tell

is not afraid to use it to gross out strangers and people he doesn’t like. if some jackass is pissing him off, he’ll just start hacking to make them flip out, and then just starts laughing through the pain

he might disappear for a bit and it’ll be like “Where’ve you been, man? It’s been like three days.” “Mexico.”

when he’s hungover, he tells his little sister he’s sick, and she’s just always like... “again?” and will stand over him with some medical dictionary she found and try to diagnose him with some awful disease, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell her the truth

on the flip side, he’s actually got a decent bedside manner. he’ll get anybody whatever they want, ride out bouts of sickness, tell dumb jokes to cheer them up...whatever. I imagine he does this for his sister a lot, and that’s probably why :)

Steve

like Pony, not feeling good really makes him miss his mom :/

so, he goes to the next best person: Evie

Steve is also a total ass when he’s not feeling 100%, and Evie is pretty much the only person who can put up with his crappy attitude by being an equally snarky nursemaid (especially since he’s just kinda assuming this is convenient for her, but she does love him so she’s not gonna turn him away)

eventually just sorta mellows and becomes very pliant, and he might talk about stuff he wouldn’t usually talk about - like his mom, or things he’s been keeping to himself

low attention span, so if he’s playing a hand of cards one minute, the next he wants to learn everything there is to know about quantum physics

he’ll talk in his sleep, but none of it makes any sense

hates going to work sick. not only can he not focus, but it’s also fucking gross

#this was fun!! send more plz #the outsiders #darry curtis #sodapop curtis #ponyboy curtis #johnny cade #dallas winston #two bit mathews #steve randle #abby speaks

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chapter-17 · 4 years ago

Text

Not quite 10 years of pony

Well I feel like since we’re here at the decade mark since Friendship is Magic first aired I should probably say SOMETHING in my usual effort to pretend I’m even remotely close to being someone anyone would want to listen to!

I don’t know what it was about Friendship is Magic. It was a good show but there had been good shows before and there will be plenty of good shows to come, but I think what clicked the MOST is that when it came out I had recently moved out of my parent’s house for the second time at age 23, and for the first time I could just... do what I WANTED to do, stress free.

Flashback way further to when we first got satellite TV when I was at the tail end of grade school. Prior to that TV was just our antenna, and let me tell you, that was the crappest of shoots. At least 50% of the time there would be too much signal interference. We got the joy of picking between the channel with no sound, the channel with sound but no picture, or the channel with maybe 25% of each but we could KINDA detect something coherent in it. I’d wait all week for episodes of Dragonball Z to air at 6 AM on Saturday only to have my kid heart crushed by the entire episode being in varying states of chaotic viewability... not that things HAPPENED that much. You dang kids are spoiled with your DBZ Kai! (Shakes cane!)

But then, satellite TV! My GOD it was amazing. Not only could we SEE AND HEAR THINGS BESIDES STATIC, we got a guide with a menu and everything so we could see upcoming shows! But then also, Cartoon Network... and Toonami... and DBZ EPISODES EVERY NIGHT HOLY FUUUUUCK also this other show called Gundam Wing or whatever I don’t think anyone paid any attention to that one.

...

(Discretely adjusts camera away from shelf full of Gundam models in the background)

Anyway another couple Cartoon Network/Toonami shows I remember actually watching for the first time was The Powerpuff Girls and Sailor Moon... but I watched them HESITANTLY, and in secret. We had two TVs set up and if mom and dad were watching something I didn’t want to watch I’d be fine going to the other side of the house to chill and watch the other connected set on a different channel. This was stress incarnate. I’d split my attention between watching the show at low volume and listening for footsteps getting even REMOTELY CLOSE so I could hit the previous channel button before they could hear what I was watching. There are grown adults who watch outright pornography at their workplace office with less caution than barely teen kid me watched perfectly harmless CARTOON SHOWS. I was thoroughly ashamed of watching these shows but in spite of this I watched them anyway and came to really like them, Powerpuff Girls in particular.

Now of course this was a big nothing burger to worry about, my parents wound up really liking Powerpuff Girls too, but this is a trend for me. I’m internally terrified of anyone in real life finding out I LIKE... well, anything. At some point when I was a kid it became cool to hate Power Rangers, and I didn’t hate Power Rangers, but if I ever said I didn’t hate Power Rangers I would get absolutely shit on for it. I took away the lesson that you shouldn’t outwardly LIKE THINGS.

Basically just Rainbow Dash realizing she likes to read Daring Do books and keeping it a secret with the same fervor a murderer would employ to hide a corpse, but it’s for DECADES instead of 22 minutes. Frankly, I still feel this way. All my shirts are monotone with no art or anything, and I even feel a slight cringe whenever I bring out my wallet to pay for stuff because my wallet has a Nuka-Cola logo on it. I go out of my way to make sure you know nothing concrete about my interests just by looking at me.

So then decades later I’m living on my own for the first real time with a job and everything and one of my WoW buddies keeps linking me stuff related to a MY LITTLE PONY show of all things. Eventually he gives me a link to watch the, then latest, episode called Call of the Cutie and I begrudgingly watch it. Then I say “...god damn it” and start looking for episode 1. I never would have done that if I were still living with my parents, no fucking WAY. Friendship is Magic was the first show I realized I could just WATCH without perpetual existential terror clawing at my brain because I was alone, and it was genuinely positive at a time in my life where I thought about suicide way too much without thinking it was a PROBLEM.

Then something WEIRD happened.

See somewhere in my mid teen years I made a personal vow to never write fanfiction again after writing a small chunk of fanfiction. My teen self thought that fanfiction was an uncreative endeavor, and that people who wrote it were foolishly wasting their time with something that could never legally make them any money when they could be writing original fiction instead, and potentially getting published! But for some reason, for the first time in like a DECADE, Friendship is Magic actually got me to read fanfiction from other people. Not just fanfiction, but cringy crossover fanfiction with genres that couldn’t POSSIBLY work for something like My Little Pony!

Then for SOME reason I got the idea to write a sequel to someone else’s crossover fanfiction and crossover MLP fanfiction now accounts for basically ALL of my online writing material what the fuck happened.

But yeah here we are a decade later. I still haven’t finished Reunion, I’ve taken the better part of three years to write what I have of this miniseries, dad’s dead, I had to move back in with my parents, my dogs are dead, grandma’s dead, Friendship is Magic is over and done with and I likely missed all opportunity to get a readership from my inaction and mental issues, most of my friends have little to no interest remaining for the show so the thing that got me friends in the first place is now ISOLATING ME due to my continued interest, I’ve been diagnosed with severe depressive disorder and since I lost my job I have no reasonable access to medication, a conversation with a friend recently made me consider that I might have undiagnosed ADHD but, again, no access to medical care, I’m trapped in a situation I see no way out of short of basically leaving my loved ones to die without my help, I have little to no privacy anymore so my introverted ass gets NO MENTAL REPRIEVE and it’s so... fucking... tiring.

I’m TIRED. I feel at 33 the way I assume someone would feel at 63 and I never ever ever see it getting any better than it was for me around the time season 5 was still airing.

About the only thing that feels good anymore is knowing how much weight I lost this year.

So yeah... I miss Friendship is Magic, sure, but I also just miss WHEN Friendship is Magic was airing, because it may likely end up being the best time in my entire life.

Sad.

#My Little Pony #Friendship is Magic

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allysartstuff · 5 years ago

Photo

[Kofi] [Picarto] [Commission Info]

Some may already know I retconned RariPants a little. Digital Art > Drawings > Movies & TV"> I didn’t include Fancy here as this whole thing was big enough already, might make a different post with just him. All the kids cutie marks are the same, just didn't want to draw them.

Rarity

Rarity’s first marriage to Fancy Pants wasn’t as smooth as she hoped. Before, they were on friendly terms and got along well. However, that all changed after a drunken night out in which Rarity became pregnant. Initially, he wanted Rarity to have an abortion descreetly and even offered her money to do so. Rarity, after long talks with her family and friends, decided she had enough emotional and financial support to raise her baby and told Fancy it was his decision if he wanted to be involved or not. Fancy decided he did want to be involved but, unbeknownst to Rarity, planned to woo her so that would marry him and not ‘live in shame’ (Fancy was older than Rarity, had some pretty old fashioned views and liked younger mares anyway). Luckily for him, his plan worked and Rarity fell pretty dang hard for his charm and gentleman ways and they married roughly a year after their first son was born, then called Chic Magnifique.

For the first few years, everything was good. Rarity moved to Canterlot where Fancy and Rarity raised Chic together and eventually decided to have another baby, Ace Dandy. But things started to gradually change. Fancy started staying out later and later, leaving Rarity to raise two very rambunctious boys on her own while working on her three shops from home. When she asked for help (like, y’know raise your fucking kids and no it’s not babysitting, dammit Fancy), his idea was to vigorously train them as perfect little elites. When Rarity saw the negative effects this had on the boys, she blew her top, resulting in many massive arguments. During this time, Rarity finally saw Fancy for who he really was and left him, returning to Ponyville with her sons.

Fleur de Lis

Many years before Rarity met Fancy, Fleur was Fancy’s secret personal bodyguard. A native of Prance and a former secret agent, she came to work for Fancy by chance. Often, Fleur would act like a typical trophy wife who would over fawn and simper over Fancy while on the lookout for anyone who could harm him. She is full capable of kicking anyone’s ass and had saved his butt on a few occasions. The pair became really good friends and the two fell in love and married. However, things began to de-escalate when Fancy wanted her to be his trophy wife for real. After only a year of marriage, Fleur noped out of that relationship and quietly moved to Ponyville, becoming a private Prench teacher while ignoring the Canterlot gossip surrounding her.

A few years later Rarity and Fleur have a chance meeting and, after getting over the awkwardness of the whole ‘holy shit, it’s my ex-husband’s ex-wife, oh fuck’ thing, they begin an understanding friendship and reguarly have tea together. They soon develop real, honest feelings for each other, especially when Fleur got on so well with Chuck and Ace. With the boys’ very eager blessing, Rarity and Fleur marry and have their own child, Opal, via Twilight’s IVF spell. Fancy was not a happy bunny when he found this out.

Chuck Lindsneigh (formerly Chic Magnifique)

A ecentric pony who doesn’t know the volume of his own voice, Chuck is passionate and anything but subtle. He loves nothing more than to go on rousing adventures, fly his plane (which he crashes a lot) and return lost/stolen artifacts to the indegious races of Equestria and beyond. He has a very strong sense of wrong and right and will not rest until it is right again. Despite having a savant-like intelligence in planes, archaeology and ancient pony societies, Chuck has difficulty understanding basic visual communication so he often fails to understand other feelings (eg, why his brother continues to keep in touch with their father) and can be easily lied to (eg, he has fallen for many a scam by Jammie Dodger). This is due to him being autistic, which wasn’t diagnosed until he was an adult, something Rarity feels terribly guilty for. May have an on/off no strings attached relationship with Orin every time he winds up in Manehatten. Hates Fancy Pants and often deliberately sends him bills to places he’s damaged by his plane crashing.

Ace Dandy

Ace lives up to his name as a hoofball superstar, the sport introduced to him by his grandfather Hondo Flanks, as a way to cope with his parent’s divorce. Although smaller than Chuck, he is easily physically stronger and incredibly fast, having both played for Ponyville and Canterlot teams. He takes his celebrity status and image very seriously, taking care of his appearance but also showing endless kindness by donating endlessly to charities and signing every autograph asked from him. As good as his intentions are, this stems from an underlying need to be perfect. His elite training from Fancy and his parents divorce resulted in severe issues. He’d sooner ram his head in a wall than get one thing wrong and little Ace blamed himself for the divorce, despite Rarity’s insistence than it wasn’t his fault. Because of this, Ace accepts his father back in his life when Fancy returns, much to Chuck’s disgust. They have an ok father son relationship but Ace stresses when Fancy makes a minor passing comment or action that something’s not to his liking. Basically, this boy is 50% muscle, 50% anxiety. Ace lives with his long-term boyfriend Bramble at Grand-Pear’s old house. The two are very sugary sweet and don’t know the meaning of PDA. But what Ace loves most about Bramble is his down to earth nature and it never fails to put him at ease (also, he has a cute butt).

Opal

Opal is Rarity’s third and final bab and Fleur’s only biological child. The youngest sib at seventeen, Opal get’s really excited at the most boring things imaginable. She looooves rocks and often believes she was born the wrong species (Opal has a deep admiration for Earth Ponies). As a child, Opal loved going with Rarity on her gem expeditions, although she was more interested in the rock around the glittering gems. She is completely obsessed with Maud Pie and Maud, a little amused and touched by Opal’s eagerness, took it upon herself to become her mentor (Opal fainted on the spot when she was told this). Opal is also autistic (diagnosed as a child and Rarity and Fleur recognised the signs), like Chuck, and will info-dump the hell out of you about rocks. She struggles with reading other’s facial expressions but otherwise is a happy wee soul. Most of the time. Opal was blessed with both her mothers’ beauty which attracted the attention of many teenage colts but they soon dumped her when they realised she would never shut up about rocks. This would plummet her confidence for a while until a meddling little Hullabaloo set her up with his mortified brother Lucky Bug. Now the two can enjoy talking about rocks, bugs and do any cute smooshy teen romance stuff to their hearts’ content.

Extras;

Bramble does not like Fancy one bit, but Ace begs him to be nice when Fancy visits as Bram is known to saying exactly what he thinks.

Chuck loves his family (besides he-who-shall-not-be-named) and pops in every now and again, announcing his return by slamming the door open and yelling, “What-ho!”

Fleur taught all of the kids Prench which they are all fluent in (although Chuck’s accent is atrocious).

When Rarity and Fleur became engaged, Chuck and Ace asked her if they could call her ‘Maman’. She cried ugly tears of joy at that.

Chuck and Ace adore their little half sister and would probably stomp on all of her ex-boyfriends if given the chance.

Opal was born via emergency c-section. Fleur will tell anyone who would listen that her c-section scar is her favourite of all her scars.

Ace is willing to model any new line of clothes Rarity makes.

My Little Pony, Rarity and Flaur de Lis (c) Hasbro

Chuck Lindsneigh, Ace Dandy and Opal (c) me

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thegreenhorseman · 6 years ago

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We hear it every year, year after year…”This is going to be the worst year for ticks yet.” It seems to get worse every year. If this is unfamiliar to you, you might be fortunate enough to live in an area where the concern is not so prevalent. In the northeastern United States, however, you’d be hard pressed to find a group that hasn’t expressed concern.

Why ticks?

These tiny vile creatures spread several diseases, most commonly Lyme Disease. Since May is Lyme Disease Prevention Month let’s work to understand HOW Lyme is transmitted. We’ll also explore some steps we can take to keep ourselves and our animals (horses, dogs, cats) safe.

In 2017 nearly 30,000 cases of Lyme disease were diagnosed and another 13,000 were suspected as “probable.” Most of these cases originated in the northeastern United States as seen in the map below thanks to CDC.gov. The chart following shows the upward trend of Lyme disease throughout the years.

Cases confirmed in the United States 2017. Courtesy of CDC.gov

Cases of Lyme Disease in the United States 1997-2017 courtesy of CDC.gov

Ticks are arachnids, or eight-legged creatures, that thrive in deep grass and wooded areas. Often areas where our horses enjoy, of course. There are several different species of tick and they all have different life cycles, feeding habits, and habitats.

What is a bit more alarming is a new tick to the United States called the Asian Long-horned tick, which can reproduce without a mate. The video below talks briefly about it.

youtube

Most of the time when we think of ticks we think of the most common threat; the deer tick/black-legged tick. The deer tick is often the source of Lyme disease along with several other illnesses including Anaplasmosis, Powassan, and Tick-Borne Relapsing Fever. Blade suffered from anaplasmosis in 2017 (Blade’s Got the Blues and Equine Affaire).

The deer tick begins its life cycle as an egg laid by the females in springtime. By summer the larva emerges from its egg and waits for a host. Hosts are typically birds and small rodents.

Freshly hatched ticks they are free of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Only when they feed on their hosts do they pick up the pathogens. In the United States the bacteria transmitted is either Borrelia burgdorferi or Borrelia mayonii. Across the pond in Europe and Asia you are more likely to find Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia garinii.

The birds and rodents that feed tick larva carry these species of bacteria without illness; they are simply hosts. By fall the tick falls from its host and enters its nymph stage. The nymphs are barely visible to the human eye. These critters lay dormant through the winter but by April/May they begin to emerge again. They wait for a host to walk by so they can catch a ride. Using their barbed mouth parts, the tick digs in for a blood meal. The pathogen inside the tick enters the salivary glands and can be released through the tick’s saliva. These hosts include us and our loved ones. Nymphs are often the cause of Lyme disease since they are small and difficult to spot.

By fall the nymphs become adults looking for new hosts. At 45°F they seek wooded areas to survive the winter. When they emerge again in spring they continue to look for hosts and mate. A single female tick can lay 3000 eggs! After a two-year life cycle the new batch of larva hatches and begins the cycle again.

As you can see, we can become infected by both the nymphs and the adult ticks. The more hosts carrying the bacteria, the more likely it is to spread to us.

The hallmark sign of Lyme disease is the bullseye, a circular rash around the bite. Symptoms may appear weeks after the bite. This appears in a majority of cases…but what of our equine friends?

Horses suffering from Lyme Disease may have subtle symptoms. They might be off mentally, emotionally, and physically. They may be sore or lame, lethargic, grumpy, neurological, or have a low-grade fever. Lyme is known to mimic other issues so a vet is critical in ruling out other problems. Lyme will also elude testing, as there are many cases of Lyme that appear negative on test results.

I’m even learning that Lyme can be a cause for some headshaking in horses. Headshaking is not commonly listed as a symptom nor have any of my vets over the past two years suggested the possibility. This is, however, something I plan on looking into after this research. As you may know from past articles, Blade developed headshaking about 18 months ago (shortly after his run with anaplasmosis). Though our tests were negative it could have been one of those instances with a false negative.

Once Lyme has been diagnosed (or suspected) there are a few treatment options.

The most common treatment is called Doxycycline, an ingestable antibiotic often given in a powdered form with food. A similar drug is called Naxcel. Despite their popularity with horse-owners they only happen to be 50% effective.

The most effective treatment is more pricey… a study in 2005 reported 100% effectiveness. The reoccurrence levels were considerably lower in the study as well. What’s this treatment you ask? Daily intravenous oxytetracycline. My vet once called it the “gold standard.” The reason most horse-owners don’t opt for this treatment is the administration. Having a vet visit and administer the shot every day for 3-5 days is pricey so most horse owners use the Doxy.

If I remember correctly I paid somewhere around $450 for three daily IVs of Oxytet for Blade.

So what are some ways we can prevent this problem from happening in the first place? As the Benjamin Franklin saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Lyme vaccines for horses are not available yet. Studies have shown some effectiveness using canine vaccines on ponies, but it is still far too early. There are no studies out (yet) showing the safety of this methodology. Until we have vaccines we are tasked with the footwork that we should be doing anyway.

Checking for ticks often is the first thing you should be doing. Check yourself, check your dogs, check your cats, check your horses. It takes 24 hours for a biting tick to transmit the disease. I tend to find most ticks under the cheek, the neck, the chest, and the barrel (especially up behind the back legs).

There are a lot of Facebook experts who have tips, tricks, and endless opinions on tick removal. The simplest thing you can do is use a good pair of tweezers and pull the tick up slowly and steadily so you remove the whole bug. Another useful tool can be found in most pharmacies and pet stores. The tick twister. This little hooklike tool comes in a couple sizes (at least mine had 3 sizes in the package). When you find a tick you slide the bug between the openings at the end so it becomes wedged. From there twist and pull gently. I have successfully removed many ticks using this tool and I love it. After a tick is removed you may choose to save it in a plastic bag for testing. Apply alcohol or antibiotic ointment to the affected bite wound to be safe.

Since ticks prefer wooded areas, you can try to stay out of these areas. That’s easier said than done if you enjoy the outdoors.

Keeping the grass and pasture mowed can be helpful.

Removing piles of leaves and moist ground cover is an excellent way to prevent ticks. That leftover hay pile? Let’s get rid of it!

Keeping down the rodent population could be useful. Non-poison rodent traps, barn cats, and proper food storage go a long way.

Chickens and guinea hens love to eat ticks!

DEET and permethrins are of course some good chemicals that have proven efficacy for the prevention of ticks and other pests. Some people use them others don’t. That’s your choice to make. There are many products on the market including fly sprays, spot-on applications, and even wipes.

I have had mediocre success with feed through pest repellant. The more I use it the less effective it seems to be (though the first year seemed to make a big difference).

If you are opposed to chemicals more research has been finding useful essential oils that are as effective as the CDC recommended products. The key to the best product is perfecting the volatility ratio of oils. High volatility essential oils disperse into the air faster. This helps by preventing ticks from attaching in the first place. Lower volatility oils will disperse into the air more slowly and have a longer lasting effect. Check out the Tisserand Institute’s “Tick Talk” (link below) for more information on these oils. I’ve also shared with you their formulation for DIY tick repellant.

Credit to Tisserand Institute

The thought of ticks and the disease they spread makes my head hurt. Lyme disease is rarely fatal but it does lead to some frustrating and debilitating complications.

Other diseases like Powassan are rarer but a lot more deadly; this virus is associated with brain swelling. Here in New York we are already beginning to hear reports of Powassan virus. One group has found 25-50% of deer in the Adirondacks are positive for the virus and it only takes 15 minutes for the tick to transmit the virus to humans.

Whether Lyme, Anaplasmosis, or Powassan we can take steps to stay healthy and prevent ticks from biting. It may take some time and effort but it’s completely worth it.

What are some of the methods you use to keep ticks at bay?

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

http://ssequineclinic.com/pages/services_lyme.html

https://ker.com/equinews/lyme-disease-horses/

https://equusmagazine.com/management/protect-against-lyme

https://www.vet.cornell.edu/animal-health-diagnostic-center/testing/protocols/lyme-multiplex-horses

https://igenex.com/ticktalk/2018/01/01/a-closer-look-at-the-different-types-of-ticks-and-how-to-identify-each/

https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/graphs.html

http://www.aldf.com/deer-tick-ecology

https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/life_cycle_and_hosts.html

https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/index.html

https://www.lymedisease.org/get-involved/take-action/lyme-awareness-month/

https://tisserandinstitute.org/tick-talk-2/

https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-news/2019/02/powassan-virus-on-the-up-tick/

What Ticks Me Off We hear it every year, year after year..."This is going to be the worst year for ticks yet." It seems to get worse every year.

#Animals #Family #Health #Horse #horselover #Horses #LymeDisease #LymeDiseasePreventionsMonth #Prevention #TheGreenHorseman #Ticks

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autistic-moonbeam · 6 years ago

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Herd au

I wanted to add to (one of) my head canons (this one goes along with the Pinkie Pie Headcanon post I made). This will be about the mane six, as well as some other characters.

Okay! In this AU (I might turn it into an actual story but I'm not sure. Definitely gonna do drawings based on it)

Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash are a herd (closed? polyamorous triad) and all three of them are transstallions(All of their names will remain the same as I don't feel like they are necessarily feminine or masculine).

Rainbow(I will also refer to him as Dashie or Dash) is the most masculine of the three, Pinkie is kind of in the middle, being kind of masc sometimes, femme sometimes, and sometimes a combo of the two, and Flutters is usually rather feminine.

Rainbow Dash is gay(questioning, but gay is what he has come up with for now, you will see later on), Pinkie is Pan, and Flutters is Bi, they are also all on the Ace spectrum.

Rainbow is the tallest of the three, Flutters is the shortest, and Pinkie is a bit taller than Flutters. Both Pinkie and Flutters are chubby, Pinkie being a bit chubbier than Flutters(Pinkie loves food and is not ashamed to admit it), while Dashie is rather slim and muscular(he also loves to eat but he has a very high matabolism). Pinkie has the shortest mane of the three, and Fluttershy has the longest.

As stated in my Pinkie headcanon, He is autistic(and adhd), as is Fluttershy. Fluttershy also has Social Anxiety Disorder and Generalized Anxiety disorder. Dashie is Diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia (which is part of why he didn't read much before that time he was in the hospital), and it is thought that he is also autistic, but he has not yet been diagnosed.

Fluttershy's favorite stims are stimming with music(this varies and he usually prefers to have music anyway), various body stims, colorful lights (when they aren't too much for him), soft textures, swings, he likes soft movements and calm things, he also tends to flap (wings and hooves) when he's greatly excited about something and can also get loud at these times (like when he saw spike the first time). Fluttershy loves tight hugs when he gets overwhelmed, they help him calm down immensely. Fluttershys skin is very sensitive(even more sensitive when he's overstimmed), so he is picky about clothing (when he wears it. His coat helps prevent some irritation). Some of his special interests are animals, animal care, and fashion. Rainbow on the other hoof prefers to move fast and is usually constantly moving in some way, flying is one of his favorite stims. When Rainbow gets overwhelmed(which doesn't happen very often) he is very sensitive to touch and lights, so it's best for him to be in a familiar place with dim lights (like certain places in his cloud home or Flutter's cottage).

All three of them wear clothing from time to time, when they do Dashie prefers scene, emo, and comfy styles of clothing, Pinkie also likes scene and other colorful styles of clothing as well as some pastel styles (like fairy kei), Flutters prefers pastels and comfy is his default (he loves loose flowy things, and adores dresses and skirts).

When the three aren't working at their respective jobs or spending time with their friends, they are spending time together (usually at flutter's cottage as it is the easiest to get too(compared to Rainbow's) and the quietest (compared to the Cake's).

Also, I put closed with a question mark after the bt about them being a herd, because they are considering adding Twilight to their herd. Twilight is questioning their gender so they use they pronouns for now. They are intersex(which is part of the reason they use the pronouns they do) as well as autistic. (Note, Flutters is intersex as well and Pinkie and Dashie have both physically transitioned). Twiley is bi.The herd all loves spending time with Twiley.

Twiley special interests include magic, books, an learning.

Pinkie and Dashie are the most outgoing of the four, with Flutters being the most shy, Twiley having the hardest time understanding other ponies. Twilight is in between Rainbow and Rarity height wise.

Next are Applejack and Rarity.

Rarity is a Trans mare. Applejack is a stallion (born that way but they thought he was a filly until he hit puberty and developed properly, but he knew from when he was younger what he was). Rarity had supportive parents and transitioned early on, first with growing out her mane and changing her name and pronouns, then physically(through magic) transitoning to the way she wanted to look. She is one of the tallest of the mane six. Apple jack is the tallest. Applejack is also the strongest, thought the others are strong in their own ways. Rarity and Applejack are both bi. Rarity is diagnosed with ocd and autism. Her main special interest is fashion. Applejack isn't diagnosed with anything but the mane six isn't so sure he's nurotypical. They do know he's stubborn as a mule and can be rather resistant to change as well as quite possibly have dyslexia and discalculara(he's always had problems with reading and math but he hasn't let that stop him.)

Okay, now the CMC.

Applebloom is afab (assigned filly at birth) genderfluid(trying he/him and they/them at the moment) and pan , Sweetie is acab (assigned colt at birth) questioning (currently trying out she/her) and pretty sure she is bi, and Scoots is a pan trans boy. They are trying out being a herd together(but if that doesn't work they will still be friends). Scoots can't fly well (still aren't sure why), Sweetie has difficulty walking sometimes(and needs help from the others when this happens), and Applebloom has attempted to get sweetie to use a walker that he/they built for her when she has trouble but she fears it will make her look weak. Scoots is adhd, and sweetie is autistic and has hearing processing difficulties, Applebloom has a lot of the same problems his/their brother Applejack does. Applebloom and Scoots are the same height, and Sweetie is a bit taller than them.

Babs is afab questioning(thinks they may be a trans colt or maybe a demicolt but they aren't sure, uses they for now) and is pan. Babs has hearing problems because when they were born they had ear infections in both ears and has scar tissue from those infections as well as others. They don't have a massive amount of problems because of it, but they can't hear as well as other ponies their age and it's worse on the right side so it's best to be on their left side and have them facing you when talking to them. Babs also only has three legs, being born without their front right leg. The CMC and the Mane six are understanding and do their best to help Babs in any way they can. Babs has a very advanced magical prosthetic that helps immensely and a hearing aid for the ear that has more damage.

Spike is a nonbinary transgirl and questioning her sexuality (and if she is ace or not).She is pretty sure she is panromantic.

TenderTaps is a cis gay colt.

Some family of the mane six now.

Big Mac a cis stallion, Pansexual.

Shining Armor is intersex and acab(like Twiley) and she realized early on that she was both but identified more as a girl and wanted to use feminine pronouns. Cadence is a transstallion who only realised it a little while ago. Flurryheart(taking after her parents not only with her wings and horn but is also intersex like her mother) is still young and they are waiting until she gets old enough and she can decide for herself what she is. They use she/her pronouns for her as she was assigned filly at birth.

I think that's enough for now. Note I haven't seen the newest seasons and I may or may not change things in this headcanon (due to the show and personal preference ) in accordance with this. I will probably also add more as I come up with it.

#mlpau #mlp #mlp:fim #mlpheadcanon #myheadcanon

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backstrom-for-selke · 7 years ago

Text

My Chronic Pain Story

TRIGGER WARNING: death, serious injury, surgery, sexual harassment/assault, drug use (painkillers, marijuana), depression, suicide, weight shaming

I had just started getting back into the one thing in my life that made me feel truly happy: horseback riding. I had a job and my own car, so I was able to pay for lessons once a week and drive myself out to the stable I rode at. I was excelling faster than I ever had in my monthly on-and-off lessons since I was a young girl. Gone were the days when I would stare in envy at the rich girls who could afford to ride every day (some who complained about it, even) because I was putting myself first. I was paying my way through my own hobbies. It was my first taste of real independence.

Every Christmas and birthday, I would ask for checks to go toward extra lessons or a new pair of boots or a new helmet. I was obsessed with this, like many girls my age, but as I got older, I didn’t grow out of it. It’s a love that I still feel, and I have to say, there is nothing like mourning the loss of the one place in your life that you feel at peace. For me, that was in the saddle.

I fractured my spine just two weeks past my 17th birthday. It was one of the worst days of my life even beyond the obvious reason; my car broke down, I was late for school, I had one of my first panic attacks, and I was 45 minutes late for my lesson (because of the car breaking down) which cut me down to just half an hour of riding time (out of the kindness of my instructor’s heart).

I finally arrived on a blustery March afternoon to a fully tacked, 19hh Percheron/Thoroughbred cross, grandson of Secretariat, and the same horse I had been riding in the last three weeks of bi-weekly lessons, and from the moment I got on, I knew something was wrong. He was usually a relatively excitable horse, but he had his ears pinned back and was prancing around like he was some sort of show pony - not at all the hefty horse I was used to riding.

We usually started out at a walk, but Indy (the horse) had other ideas and broke out at a lively trot. Clouds were rolling in, and if I recall correctly, there was a snowstorm on the way. He shied away from the gate halfway down the long part of the arena, so my instructor figured he might be acting weird because of the weather, so we started him heading toward the barn (the other direction). He shied from the other gate, too, but this time, he took off at a full gallop down the center of the arena, blowing past jumps set up in the middle and heading straight for the other end.

I remained relatively calm. This wasn’t the first time I had ridden a spooked horse, but it had been a while, and I was already having a terrible day. In hindsight, I should have stayed home because horses are emotional creatures; they can feel what you’re feeling, and my foul mood likely didn’t help matters at all. We had recently practiced an emergency stop where you hold both the reins in one hand and tug as hard as you can with the other on one side, forcing the horse to turn his head and body abruptly. I tried it. Several times. He didn’t budge.

I stayed on relatively well until he took an abrupt turn to the right. I only had one safety stirrup on (I lived in the middle of nowhere, and I was lucky to even have one), and thank god it was on the foot that got stuck. As I was coming out of the saddle, my foot got stuck, and I did the splits mid-air, but I don’t remember this part. I don’t remember much at all from it, really.

What I do remember is seeing the ground rising to meet my face, a hard hit against my shoulder as I braced for impact, and then nothing. I remember thinking, even as I was heading for the ground, that this was my fault for being stubborn and riding that day. At no point did I blame the instructor - or even the horse - for the accident. I knew how empathetic horses were, and I got on anyway. I was at fault.

For those who don’t ride, it’s common practice to sign a liability waiver before beginning lessons with any instructor or school. It basically says that if you are injured or die during your lessons, your instructor can’t be held liable for medical expenses/be legally responsible for it in any way. A common theme is that, “horses are unpredictable and thousand-pound creatures, and their actions can result in injury or death” and that we “ride at [our] own risk”.

I remember each of those contracts that I and my mother signed, and I always took it to heart because it made sense: the instructor in no way pushed me beyond what I was capable of, nor did they intentionally spook the horse. They were no more at fault than the horse was for following its instincts. I, however, should have known better.

I came to on the ground seconds later with my legs in front of me and an unbearable pain in my back. I screamed about it hurting, and I knew to immediately try to wiggle my toes to make sure I wasn’t paralyzed. I wasn’t. I took a breath of relief, but that didn’t negate the pain at all. After the panic was gone and my instructor was rushing toward me, I stopped screaming and listened to her tell me that her husband was on his way with the truck. She knew that an ambulance ride was a private expense and likely wouldn’t be covered by insurance - she also knew that an ambulance likely wouldn’t be able to get out to where we were, so we were on our own for getting to the hospital.

This was the point that my parents had the most problems with, and in hindsight, we probably should have called the ambulance anyway, but given the dire situation and the pain fogging my judgment, I can see how we would come to this solution. I was scared. I was so scared. And at some point after walking to the truck at a 90 degree angle (I couldn’t stand up straight) and sitting myself in the pickup truck, I found my coping mechanism: a sense of humor.

My stepdad and toddler sister had gone to Burger King for dinner, and I called them just as they had ordered.

“Hey, [name], I’m going to the hospital,” I said into the phone between groans of pain. “I hurt my back.”

“What? Seriously? We just ordered.” My stepdad said, and at the time, I was a little offended. You’re really worried about your food when I might’ve just broken my back?! In hindsight, again, I know that shock and grief can do strange things to a person, like making them worry over the little things to better cope with the bigger concern. Eventually, he agreed to meet me at the hospital and sounded as panicked as I should have felt. I felt oddly calm.

Next, I called my mother. She was 30 minutes away in my hometown, and was much more panicked than my stepfather. I don’t recall what our words were.

Then, I called one of the students in the play I was a part of, joking, “I don’t think I’m going to make it to rehearsal tonight,” I said, and I’m pretty sure I was smiling.

“Why?” They asked of the cryptic greeting. I told them, and they all wished me well. It still didn’t quite feel real even though the crippling pain was very, very real.

When we got to the hospital, my stepdad was waiting for us. My instructor had called ahead to make sure we could park at the emergency (ambulance) entrance, and she ran in to get a wheelchair for me. When we got inside, my stepdad was panicking because he didn’t have my insurance information handy. The office staff tried to make me wait until a kind nurse came along and demanded that I be put in a room to start examining me. I was still vocalizing with groaning sounds in pain. This is one of only two times I have been in this much pain in my life.

Once we got into a room, a nurse offered to help me undress. I told her I was fine, that I’d be slow, but I could do it. I also joked that I had a MAJOR wedgie, and proceeded to pull my cotton underwear straight out of my ass in front of her. Looking back, you’d think I had already had the pain meds when you find out what that was all about. Shock can be a great painkiller.

I finally got into the bed and remember thinking that it was the fastest I had ever been processed in the ER, and I was wholly impressed with the speed at which the doctors attended to me. I was seen by two or three doctors relatively quickly, all rushing in at once. I was their most urgent patient, and it made me feel like a superstar - a nice distraction from the pain.

They informed me that they couldn’t give me the morphine they wanted to give me until all my injuries had been diagnosed, and I groaned but agreed to this course of action. It would be four hours until I finally got painkillers.

I was rushed in for a CT scan of my back and legs (I had complained of knee and shoulder pain, too). I had a few x-rays done, too, as I had blood on my face and a headache. The only injury they could find on the x-rays and CT scans were a broken nose and a broken vertebra. However, when they came to tell me about it, they said that the imaging was so identical on the T11-T12 that they wanted to do a repeat scan to rule out a shadow on the machine.

It wasn’t a shadow; I had broken both vertebrae.

My mother and sister arrived in the time I was in the CT scan, and they were there when I called my dad to tell him what happened. They left shortly after to get food. (I told them this was alright - I wasn’t going anywhere, I said.)

Sometime while I was alone, a woman popped in from behind the cloth divider, asking me what I was “in for”. I was still audibly groaning in pain, but I managed a smile and told her. She said she would pray for me, and that she was here for her mother who was having chest pains. I remember thinking that they should pay more attention to her, since my injuries weren’t life-threatening, just painful.

By the time my mother and sister got back with food and ate, the doctors moved me off the back board and onto the regular bed.

“Are you on your period?” They asked with concern.

“No,” I replied, confused.

“When was your last menstrual cycle?” Fuck if I knew. Luckily, my mother and I were just about synced up, so she replied, “about two weeks ago.” That sounded right, I confirmed.

I was bleeding heavily from “down there” (in addition to pissing my pants thanks to a bodily reflex to losing consciousness).

In perhaps the most traumatizing exam of my life, a male doctor stuck one finger into my vagina and one into my anus, and the pain was excruciating in addition to being humiliating and my first experience with anything “up there”. I sobbed and screamed as it happened, and my mother held my hand while it happened and reassured me it would be over soon. My carefree attitude didn’t really pick up again until after I got my morphine an hour or two later.

That massive “wedgie” I mentioned to the nurse when I was admitted was actually my underwear tearing my skin from my vagina almost to my anus almost down to the colon wall. My back didn’t require surgery, they said, but I would need surgery that night to repair the damage down there and stop the bleeding. I finally got painkillers four hours after I was admitted, and was sent to surgery about two hours later.

Perhaps the worst part about this experience, physical pain aside, is something I vividly remember the doctor saying to me:

“Compression fractures heal very well. You won’t need surgery to repair it or physical therapy. In fact, you probably won’t have any chronic pain at all.”

I made it through surgery fine and was put back into my room in the wee hours of the morning. My mom slept in a chair, and my stepdad took my sisters home.

At seven in the morning - less than six hours after I had been put in my room for the night, a nurse burst in demanding that I urinate. I told her my bladder was empty. She berated me for not being willing to try, so I got up and sat on the toilet fruitlessly until telling her again that it was empty. She brought in an ultrasound machine to make sure it wasn’t a lack of sensation, and sure as shit, to her surprise, my bladder was empty. Another relief, in part, that I hadn’t lost sensation of my bladder in the fracture of my spine.

I was finally discharged around lunchtime that day (it was a Saturday) with a prescription for painkillers and an order to rest to recover.

My mother woke me up for school on Monday. I couldn’t believe it. I told her I literally just broke my back on Friday night, that I wasn’t ready for school yet. She (begrudgingly) let me stay home from school that day, but I was expected to go in on Tuesday. I did.

I was confronted with rumors that I had been shot, in a car accident, or in an argument with a friend. I brushed them all off as jokes. I completed my play that spring after spending 6 weeks in a back brace, and spent the remaining 3 months of school on prescription painkillers.

At the end of that 3 months, I told my doctor that I didn’t want to keep taking these painkillers due to the risk of addiction. I told her that I was concerned that I was still in enough pain to need them, and that I wanted to get to the bottom of it. She referred me to a neurosurgeon an hour and a half away at the nearest large hospital. We spent a long time going back and forth to that doctor.

He told us at first that most insurance companies wouldn’t approve any sort of imaging or surgery until at least 6 weeks of physical therapy were completed. I agreed to go, figuring that it couldn’t hurt.

I saw a local physical therapist that I never quite felt comfortable with. He was younger, and the dad of a kid in my school (a few grades below me), but something always felt off about him, particularly when I was practicing my exercises in front of him. It was summer, so I usually showed up in gym shorts and a tank top. He gave lots of oiled massages and used a TENS unit at the start of our sessions, and spent a lot of time behind me when I was practicing my exercises.

A few weeks in, I felt an erection against my ass when he was performing a chiropractic maneuver. This was my first experience with an erection as I was still a virgin. I questioned it for a few days, and told myself it was something else entirely while I was still there, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back. It only validated the creepy vibes I got from him from the start.

Luckily, it was just long enough for the insurance company to approve an MRI which found the beginnings of bone spurs, and most notably, that my T12 vertebra was in worse shape than when I broke it. It was deteriorating instead of healing, forming a giant chasm in the middle of the bone where there should be spongy bone.

My surgeon said we had 3 options:

1. a stressful, inpatient procedure with rods and pins and a 6 week inpatient recovery period.

2. an outpatient, minimally invasive procedure only requiring a small amount of medical-grade cement to fill in the gap

3. continue treating with existing measures and hope it gets better

Obviously, 3 was a no-go. He did tell us that it was possible it wouldn’t work, but he was “very confident” this would solve my residual pain. I felt that same confidence as I still had a great deal of trust in medical professionals at that time. We decided to go with option 2 because I had commitments at school that were coming up that winter (it was fall at this point), and my mother wasn’t sure about our ability to pay for a 6 week recovery time (and missing that much school).

I’m not sure what happened behind the scenes with the insurance. I was too young to understand a lot of it. Hell, I still don’t understand it sometimes. We had to get a pre-authorization for this surgery, and all I know is that they called after I was dressed in a hospital gown and had peed in a cup to prove my virginal ass wasn’t pregnant (I joked with the nurse that I’d be having a Jesus if I were), and they got a hold of my doctor to tell us that it had been denied.

This surgery was $20,000 without insurance.

My mother looked down at me - I’ll never forget the look she gave me - like she was about to cry, and I don’t blame her. I would cry, too. I panicked, thinking I wasn’t going to get the surgery I needed to be pain-free. Instead, my mother surprised me by telling the doctor to do it anyway, that we would figure it out afterward.

So I went under, and when I woke up, I was in a dark room, alone. The surgery didn’t take more than 45 minutes and went well, but it took me some time to be able to stay awake long enough to leave the hospital. My mom wheeled me out to the car. I told her I was hungry, so we stopped by Outback - a rare treat for us because of our rural hometown.

I fell asleep at the table, no joke. I didn’t even make it to when the waiter introduced himself. My mother had to wake me up to get me to order my drink. I fell asleep again after that and woke up when the food got there. My mom took pictures (I don’t blame her - it was hilarious). The poor waiter probably thought my mom had drugged me. I wasn’t even awake long enough to know if she explained it to him.

I ended up taking most of my meal home in a box, and I didn’t touch it. I slept for 18 hours that day, and my mom came in the next day to get me to go to school. I again told her I wasn’t ready (it was a Tuesday, I believe), and she (reluctantly) let me stay home but told me I was expected to go in Wednesday. I did.

I had an emotional breakdown on the first day of school that year (earlier on) as my best friend from when I was a kid had died in a car accident. I cried about her and my back, and I think this was one of my early signs of pain-related depression. Breaking down in the middle of class was not my thing. I was the bubbly, goofy nerd, not the emotional crybaby.

All along, my mom had promised me that once I was pain-free, I could ride again. I found out that winter that this was an empty promise. She told me I could ride again if I wanted, but that if anything happened, I would be the one responsible for the medical bills. That she wouldn’t pay for me to get hurt again. I understood where she was coming from, but I was incredibly hurt that she fell back on her promise. It was the first time she did that, but it wasn’t the last.

By the next spring, we knew that the surgery hadn’t worked, but there was no more structural damage that could explain my pain. I was off to college, so it wasn’t feasible for me to continue treatment with that practice.

I was at the point where the pain was interrupting my life by the time my freshman year started. I had to leave football games early, had to schedule my classes close together so I didn’t have to walk too long, and found myself in a great deal of pain if I stood for too long. At this point, laying down was still alright, as was sitting. It would not stay that way.

I saw a doctor and was told I was just feeling pain because I was “depressed” and that a small dose of an antidepressant would help. It didn’t. When I went back, they said that they didn’t know what to do for me because there wasn’t anything physical wrong. I started biofeedback therapy (tricking your brain into thinking you’re not in pain), and continued that for a while until it, too, wasn’t working.

Even though life was going pretty well - I had a great group of friends, my first boyfriend, my first kiss, good grades, I felt like I was falling apart beneath my perky mask.

I fell into my worst depressive episode to date - and perhaps my first big sign of future issues - that spring.

I broke up with my boyfriend in December after being compared to her for the greater part of our short-lived relationship. I started skipping a lot of classes, staying up way too late, and sleeping in until the early afternoon. I was still incredibly social and had a strong drive to see my friends, but absolutely no motivation to go to class to pursue my career. I couldn’t get myself out of bed, and I couldn’t sleep when it came to nighttime. I was also forced into a social light a lot of the time because of living in a dorm, so maybe all my socializing wasn’t completely motivated by me.

I was also trying to push myself to be more social because for a little while, I did feel “normal” to some degree. I dressed up one night in a cute dress, tights, and a jacket with a pair of high heels to go play poker with my friends. My ex was there, and my friend and I were the only ones dressing up (because we felt good).

My ex called me a slut/whore for dressing up.

I wouldn’t say this was my trigger point, but it was a contributing factor to the steady decline that followed that spring. I had a cold at some point and had been prescribed cough syrup with codeine, and it got so bad on more than one occasion that I considered drinking the whole bottle. I had told myself that I would wait about half an hour and then go sit in the hallway because I had a single room and I didn’t want my body to sit in my room for days on end until I was found. I wanted someone to find me.

Plus, I thought, I could get free tuition for whoever found me. Do a little good on my way out.

Ultimately, I couldn’t bring myself to drink it, and reached out to my ex in a last desperate cry for help. He was a total ass about it and basically told me he was busy.

I failed a lot of classes that spring, but was able to requalify for student loans by filing a claim that I had been depressed, resulting in my inability to attend classes. It was approved, and I planned to go back in the fall after meeting my now-husband at a party.

Some time after I met my then-boyfriend, my ex expressed concern that I was leading him on and that I had misled him by helping him study for Chemistry (a class I had previously taken). I invited him over to talk it out because he was being pretty persistent about wanting to talk.

He came over, we talked until 6am the next morning, during which I told him to leave to sleep before his final several times, but he refused each and every time. He later blamed me for failing it, and told our mutual friends that I didn’t let him sleep, further “evidence” that I had led him on and caused him to fail his studies. He dropped out and didn’t return.

The following fall, I recovered well from my depressive episode, touting a 3.2 GPA that semester and generally enjoying my classes. I realized, however, that I had no real focus, and I was quickly falling into a hole with my education that I would have a hard time getting out of. When I started at the school, I was intending to go pre-med, and at this point, I was a psych major. Psychologists don’t get paid as much as doctors, and I couldn’t justify the cost of schooling any longer.

So I left, and I moved in with my boyfriend.

Washington state had legalized medical marijuana, and it remains one of the few things that has helped me in the treatment and management of my pain. I knew someone with their green card, so I had access and frequently smoked to deal with my pain.

I got a job that spring - I was on my feet about six hours a day, and that sucked, but I was managing just fine. I didn’t have any additional suicidal spells. I started pursuing a cure for my pain again the following winter. I began physical therapy with a wonderful woman, and they recommended doing acupuncture concurrently. I followed all their recommendations with the promise from my doctor that after 6 weeks, if I was still in pain, I could have an MRI done to examine my spine again.

Only, when I returned to that doctor, the doctor I had seen previously was unavailable due to an emergency surgery. They asked if it was alright if I saw a different doctor, and I thought sure, why not, the notes are all in my file about our plan.

A young (male) doctor came in with a lot of energy and what I thought had been genuine concern on his face. It was not. I told him that I was still in pain, and that while the physical therapy helped with some pain in other places, it didn’t relieve my chief complaint of pain in my mid back where I fractured it. He began asking a lot of questions and told me that he didn’t think that I needed an MRI. He said that I was overweight (I was only about 20 lbs heavier than my lowest adult weight, by far not overweight), and that I needed to get into shape in order to cure my pain. I told him that I walked regularly, but much more than that caused serious flare-ups making it difficult to work out. He told me, basically, that it was bullshit and that I needed to work out vigorously.

At that point, I began to cry. You’d think men would know by now not to comment on a woman’s weight, especially so aggressively. I said I just wanted to go, that I’d work out, whatever, just to let me go. He refused to let me out of the room, blocking the door and saying, “you’re not leaving until we figure this out.”

I cried harder. I just wanted to go home and end this nightmare. He started asking about depression, asking if I wanted to kill myself. I told him that I was depressed in the past, but that I was fine now and my crying was because he wouldn’t let me go, not because of depression.

He didn’t believe me, and insisted we sit and figure this out. At that point, I started to agree with him just to get him to let me go. I didn’t care what he was saying. Honestly, I don’t even remember what he did say or what I supposedly agreed to during that appointment.

I was so traumatized by that appointment, that I couldn’t return to the office. I had an appointment scheduled with my regular doctor, but I couldn’t bring myself to go through the door. I told my amazing physical therapist about it, and she told me that he was a doctor that frequently worked with athletes, so he’s used to berating patients and being able to get away with it. I expressed my wonder that he was still in practice at all.

It got to the point where I didn’t have a doctor treating my pain any longer, and when a $800 bill came from the physical therapy center for my treatments, I realized I couldn’t afford to go any longer. I was stuck “dealing” with it again. So I continued to self medicate, and once again, I suffered no depressive episodes during this time period. I actually felt alright. I felt like I was living a decent life.

Washington state legalized recreational use of marijuana right as I was leaving the state.

I moved to a state where it isn’t legal in any form - even to this day - and the difference in quality of life is night and day. Shortly after we moved here, I started my THIRD round of physical therapy which also resulted in no relief. I had an MRI, it showed that there was no physical problem with my spine. I was told at that point that it was likely psychological. I didn’t like that answer. I didn’t accept it. I had been through varying levels of psychiatric health, and my pain never changed. I had been in states of bliss and heartache, and it never changed. The only time it changed was my level of activity or position. I was hurting all the time, and no one believed me.

I went to an urgent care clinic a few years ago and was lucky enough to see a doctor who actually seemed to care. He took an x-ray and said I had a smaller space than normal for my peripheral nerves to pass through, and that the irritation was causing an already inflamed nerve to swell up more, resulting in worse pain. He prescribed an anti-seizure medication frequently used for pain management, and my god, it worked like a charm.

The only issue was that a month or two in, I started having terrifying episodes of a lapse in recognition of common places - the drive to work and work, primarily. One time, I recall walking into work and knowing in my brain that it was “work”, but not knowing where work was or where I even sat. My doctor (a CNP who was amazing and my biggest advocate for relief) stopped the medication immediately.

In the months that followed, I tried everything. Muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatory drugs, anti depressants with secondary therapeutic use as pain relievers - we tried every drug out there. Rather than blaming it on my weight as all my other doctors had done, my doctor referred me to a pain specialist in the area. He said there wasn’t much we could do, but we could try an injection. I had the injection done, but it didn’t do much. After that, he basically told me there was nothing he could do.

I was devastated. I’ve suffered numerous depressive episodes since leaving Washington, and even come close to suicide again. I’ve cried myself to sleep and curled up wishing I could die to end the pain. I’ve even wished I was paralyzed sometimes so that I wouldn’t feel anything - as misguided as that is.

I was so depressed at one point that my doctor gave me a prescription for 10 hydrocodone, emphasizing that she didn’t normally prescribe pain pills to anyone but terminally ill patients, but she said that she was afraid I was going to kill myself if I didn’t get some relief. I can’t tell you the weight that took off my shoulders.

I made 10 pills last more than a year and a half - almost two. I had been out for a month or two when I went back to the urgent care clinic in serious pain - enough to drag me into the clinic in the first place. I saw a doctor who told me he used to work for the pain clinic I had gone to. He asked what I did to manage the pain. I told him I’ve tried everything, that I take ibuprofen/acetaminophen on mild days but it’s not a mild day. He asked if tramadol worked, I told him no. I told him about some sort of injection they gave me at the clinic one time. He said he didn’t think it would help. He told me to see a chiropractor (as if I hadn’t tried that), and I began crying and asked what I could do to relieve my pain now.

He asked what worked. I told him that previously, I had been prescribed hydros.

He immediately discredited me. He went on a long rant about how if they wrote scripts for narcotics (which I had gotten in THAT office, by the way) that they’d have “a line out the door” for them every day, that they couldn’t just be giving them out to just ANYONE. And get this - he actually wrote IN MY FILE that I was SEEKING DRUGS that day. Me, a woman with chronic back pain who had gone through TEN pills in over EIGHTEEN MONTHS. I was enraged.

This was now a part of my medical record. It was permanent. I was pissed. I got some lousy anti-inflammatory from him, and I found myself in yet another situation where I was agreeing with what the doctor said just to get out of the room.

I haven’t gone back to a doctor about my pain. I don’t know if I ever will unless we move. I know what works, but doctors are too blinded by the opiate crisis and the controversy over pain treatments to see that I know my body better than them. To see that I know what will work, but I can’t get it. I’m beyond frustrated at this point, and my mental health is seriously compromised by my terrifying experiences in an attempt to pursue a method of pain management within the confines of the law.

I am seriously concerned for the day I get pregnant like I want to be because I know it will be hell on my back. I know that I will be in more pain than I ever have been. At least that pain will be worth it.

My doctor wasn’t wrong when she said that she was worried I would kill myself if I didn’t get some relief for my back. I’m falling right back into that mindset as each year passes by that I continue to suffer without any option of even temporary relief.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Writing this has been therapeutic to me, and I hope it has been eye-opening into the horrors that sufferers of chronic pain have to go through just to be treated like they are humans instead of second-class addicts (in the medical industry’s eyes, not mine). I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars towards treatments, and nothing has worked. Every day that I walk this earth is a miracle because I suffer through every minute of it.

#chronic pain #back injury #back pain #fuck the us health system #fuck this state #personal #sorry to anyone who doesn't appreciate this content but i have needed to get this out for almost 10 years

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brightlotusmoon · 5 years ago

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Oh, I want to do this. I didn't have many posters since my bedroom was in the A frame of the house so the walls slanted - but after I got a 486 computer - at age 15, in 1994, I played around in AOL (Aaaaugh) and much later found the wonderful world of Geocities and writing about my favorite characters in comics and TV shows (I didn't know it was called fanfiction, I called it What If Stories after the Marvel title). I printed out stories and shoved them in a drawer in my computer desk that once held an electric typewriter - I liked to play my mix tapes in my purple radio on the shelf that had been on the nearby slanted wall with specially placed brackets holding a specially placed wood shelf. But every time I played the mix tapes and typed on the electric typewriter, the gunshot noise of the keys got recorded onto the cassette, it was wild.

Instead of posters, my bookshelves were crammed. Comic books overflowed the top of the shelves. Action toys and Barbies and My Little Pony dolls littered the floor in no particular order but I played with them all together in epic science fiction adventures. She Ra and Catra were lovers, half my Barbies had butch haircuts and I painted their torsos to pretend they wore muscle shirts to be with the other Barbies whose hair flowed loose because it was important everyone who wanted partner have a partner or two that they loved. In the 90s, it was dangerous to be out. My neighbors, the two Susans who helped raise me as the only child in that three building apartment complex in Brooklyn on Kings Highway, taught me about love and protection and fighting - without fighting - for identity.

We all knew that I was "off" aside from cerebral palsy, and had anyone known, I could have gotten the diagnoses of ADHD and autism earlier, but the depression and anxiety already showed.

And I immersed myself in my fictional worlds: the Ninja Turtles were my best friends and defenders and avengers, the X-Men mansion was my school, She-Ra and the Thundercats had world-crossing adventures. When I was six, I traded off with my dad reading heavy long bedtime books about dragons. I wanted a dragon and a unicorn, I wanted to find dinosaur bones and work with dolphins, I wrote poems about the universe and short stories about psychic teenagers that were subconscious analogies and metaphors for things that didn't have names yet, I still hate the phrase "labels are for cans" because I need my own labels that I didn't know back then, I wish the labels that "typical" people came up with didn't view us in such a defective abnormal light. Normal itself was historically applied to further separate. The idea of "can't we just all be the same, just people, one humanity" is deeply bothersome because there are too many kinds of people and identities anyway and I want my own box which I choose to fit so I sits in my own comfort.

Haaaa, I rambled again um.

I keep seeing attempts at updating "We Didn't Start The Fire" but they need work.

’90s Teenagers in Their Bedrooms, Adrienne Salinger

In 1995, artist Adrienne Salinger wanted to depict the authentic lives of young people in ‘90s America — a contrast to the perfect Beverly Hills 90210 types portrayed in the media. She photographed teens in the most intimate space of all: their bedrooms.

Instagram.com/WeTheUrban

Keep reading

#welp #anyway #i remember #fandom grandma #yay nostalgia #self reflection #being disabled means having a very dark sense of humor #hyperempathy #autistic pride #being queer #queer pride #the changeling theory of autism #fandom history

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yeonchi · 5 years ago

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Kisekae Insights #2: The Doctors, Protags and Prototypes

These are the characters who form the core of the Kisekae Project. Of course, being a Doctor Who-inspired project, there is always the Doctor, but this Doctor is different from the Doctor you know on what I like to call BBC Doctor Who.

Introduction and origin story

Being the egotist I am, the other protagonist of the project is a character based on myself. He’s been through many incarnations under the same name, but in his final incarnation (shown above on the left), he prefers to be known as Hiroki Ichigo. He has a twin brother (on the right), who used to be known as Zhuge Liang, but for the latest revision of the Kisekae Project, prefers to be known as Parker Zhou. Imagine him as Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, but with black hair.

In my reviews of Resolution and The Timeless Children, I outlined my origin story for the Doctor and here, I will expand and elaborate on it. No, of course he’s not the Timeless Child.

During the Time War, the Time Lords were desperate for more soldiers and resurrecting their dead wasn’t enough for them. As such, Lord President Rassilon invented a virus, suspended in Mako energy, and spread it on Earth at some points in history. While the virus would have no effect on the infected, it would sometimes result in the souls of their offspring being harvested and transported to Gallifrey, where they would become new Time Lords. The human “shells” would be left with corrupted chromosomes and/or brain activity as a result. Other humans documented these genetic and neurodevelopmental disorders over the years, resulting in what we know today as disorders like Down syndrome and autism (though I should note that the Time Lords probably didn’t cause every disorder known to mankind).

At essentially the same time, the Shinra Electric Power Company worked on the Jenova Project, injecting a number of people with Jenova cells in the process. By chance, one of those people had a child with someone who was infected with Rassilon’s virus and also a twin that they were unaware about until its birth. Unfortunately, in the present-day view of the project, Shinra had already fallen and there are no plans for a “reunion theory”.

After the twins were born, they had to be taken to another hospital due to complications. In the middle of the night, the Time Lords were extracting the child’s soul (the other babies in the nursery were chanting an angelic prayer in the process) when the twin suddenly emitted a blast of Mako energy, causing everything to go silent. In reality, that soul was knocked out of the Time Vortex and landed on Gallifrey long before the Time War. That soul became the Time Lord who would be known as the Doctor. My backstory is that he was found by Omega and raised like any other Gallifreyan.

The child would later be diagnosed with autism. Uniquely, due to the Time Lord and Jenova DNA in him coupled with whatever remnant Mako energy there was (I dunno), the child also had the ability to regenerate, but it would create another body in the process and he was also susceptible to regenerating following emotional distress (like a broken heart or something, think Takotsubo cardiomyopathy). The child would keep on living as the “archetype”, while the new body created would take on a separate identity and live as a “prototype”. The process varies each time; either the child would regenerate into the prototype and the archetype (or real self) would manifest sometime later, or the child would regenerate into his next incarnation and the prototype would manifest later. As for the twin, well, everyone forgot about him because of the Time War, so he was put up for adoption as if he were an orphan. However, he did not share his brother’s regeneration abilities. In the story, they meet each other again and basically, all is well.

So now, let’s look at the different incarnations for the Doctor and the child. Now, both of them are subject to the 12-regeneration limit, but there are some points where more than one regeneration was used. There are a couple of exceptional circumstances regarding certain regenerations, which I will elaborate when I get to them.

The different incarnations of the Doctor

Remember that the Doctor in the Kisekae Project version of Doctor Who is different to the one you know from BBC Doctor Who. In this version, there are only five numbered incarnations of the Doctor, but by this point in time, he has used up all of his regenerations. The image of the five Doctors at the top of the page is only representative of each incarnation’s main counterparts; some Doctors may have influences from other Doctors. It should be noted that these versions of the Doctor look like children because they are played by children, with the exception of the Fifth as time passed.

First Doctor (1999-2003): Based off the BBC First, Third, Fourth and Seventh (for good measure) Doctors. This is interesting as I had two actors playing him due to “child labour laws” and as such, there are two stages to this Doctor. The first one played from the start of the series, showing his first adventure off Gallifrey, to his sentencing by the Time Lords for breaking their non-interference laws. The Doctor managed to escape his trial to farewell his companions, then had his TARDIS blown up. A regeneration was used up as a result. The second actor played the following episode to the end of this Doctor’s tenure. For most of that time, he was in exile on Earth and working for UNIT. He could technically be the 1.5 Doctor, but I prefer to just refer to him as the First Doctor, like his previous incarnation. The Doctor managed to fix his TARDIS and broke the terms of his exile, which led the Time Lords to search for him again. However, after the Doctor killed the Time Lords chasing him by tricking them into destroying a city, the Time Lords annulled his sentence and they left him alone. The First Doctor would regenerate into the Second Doctor either in his final story (which has now been retconned) or in his next story, the Doctor Who TV Movie.

Second Doctor (2003-2007): Based off the BBC Second, Fourth (for good measure), Sixth and Eighth Doctors. Originally, the Second Doctor directly regenerated into the Third Doctor, but because of the 50th Anniversary, it was retconned and he regenerated into the War Doctor.

War Doctor: Literally the same as the BBC War Doctor, down to the “played by John Hurt” bit. The War Doctor regenerated into the Third Doctor at the end of The Day of the Doctor and would forget what he did to end the Time War.

Third Doctor (2008-2009): Based off the BBC Ninth Doctor because we never skip Nine. Again, there were two actors playing the Doctor, but that was because the series changed stations (it’s a thing in my version). The second actor is the more commonly-known version of the Third Doctor, though the first actor did get to play him for a season, with influences from the Seventh and Eighth (for good measure) Doctors. This is the first Doctor where the series started spinning-on other franchises and implementing characters from them, with companions such as Fifi Forget-me-not and Angelina Mouseling (from Angelina Ballerina, in case you didn’t know). Like his counterpart with Rose Tyler, the Third Doctor regenerated into the Fourth Doctor after he took the Time Vortex into himself to save Fifi.

Fourth Doctor (2010-2012): Based off the BBC Tenth Doctor. This Doctor saw the start of the anime spin-ons as characters from Lucky Star, namely Konata, Minami, Misao, Kagami and Tsukasa, were featured as companions. Reimu Hakurei, along with Sonic, Tails and Amy Rose, were also companions of the Fourth Doctor. Towards the end of this Doctor’s tenure, a second actor had to come in and take over because the original actor was unavailable, though he managed to come back and film his regeneration scene. Oh yeah, the series changed back to its previous station. The second actor like playing this Doctor so much that he wanted to do it again, so he got a spin-off series to do so. That actor also played the next and final incarnation of the Doctor along with multiple other characters, including the other protagonist and his prototypes. If you haven’t got it already, that was basically me, and I was also the showrunner and main writer.

Fifth Doctor (2012-present): Based off the BBC Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, along with influences from the BBC Fifth and Tenth Doctors. This is, of course, the current incarnation of the Doctor and there are no further incarnations, not even a female incarnation. Eventually, this incarnation became cemented as the Infinity Doctor, though I still prefer to call him the Fifth Doctor. When the Fourth Doctor regenerated into the Fifth Doctor in The End of Time, it also created two pony versions of himself, a pony version of the other protagonist (my self-insert if you didn’t know) and separated two or three people’s souls from him. This was due to some machinations from Yuki Nagato which the Fifth Doctor later cemented as timeline splits.

You know, funnily enough, Zhuge Liang would become the Doctor in an earlier prototype of my project. It’s just as well that I like making retcons here and there, despite what I preach about artistic integrity.

The three new ponies created as a result of the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration are as follows (images to be revealed later):

Jee Gun, an Earth pony counterpart of the other protagonist. After ending up on Equestria and living a pony’s life there, he would later regenerate into Storm Dasher, a Pegasus.

Doctor Whooves, based on the Fourth (BBC Tenth) Doctor. In his final adventure he would have a meta-crisis regeneration (leading to the Doctor Whooves/Time Turner living in Equestria) before regenerating into another incarnation based on the Fifth (BBC Eleventh) Doctor.

The Pony Doctor, based on the Fifth Doctor. Though left unmentioned in the story, the one regeneration he could have used was sacrificed to facilitate Doctor Whooves’ regeneration.

The different incarnations of the child

Now let’s take a look into the incarnations of the child, the other protagonist. Instead of whatever I just did up there, I can describe some aspects of each incarnation’s personality (not that it would really matter most of the time), adventures and love life (it’s a theme in my project). Oh, by the way, each incarnation looks the same most of the time; there have been some instances where an incarnation looks different to the norm.

First incarnation: Curious, yet impatient and had difficulty socialising due to his autism. If he found something he liked, he would play with it for a long time. He had a tendency to push or hurt people in his way, which his later incarnations would generalise as “he liked to kill people”. Macabre indeed. This incarnation regenerated on a trip to Hong Kong. His father wanted to take a photo of him and his mother with the Beatles wax figures at Madame Tussauds, but he, being the curious boy he was, was too busy playing with Paul McCartney’s hair to even look at the camera. His mother slapped him and threatened to leave him there. He became heartbroken and regenerated for the first time.

Second incarnation: Similar to his first incarnation, but he had a flirty side. He had crushes on a couple of girls; the first never resulted in a relationship because she became repulsed after hearing of his insubordination, while the second only resulted in a short marriage. He was also easily-manipulated by others, which was how he first learnt how to swear. This incarnation regenerated when the two girls he loved plotted to kill him and he was forced to commit suicide at Honnōji to avoid being captured.

Third (2.5) incarnation: Following his regeneration, he managed to metamorphosise his remaining regeneration energy into ice, making him into a being similar to Elsa from Frozen, calling himself the Ice King. This incarnation was vengeful and strategic, with his only purpose being to take his revenge on the girls who plotted to kill him. He almost succeeded, but he died before he could fully exact his revenge. The ice powers changed back into regeneration energy, allowing him to regenerate again without using another regeneration.

Fourth incarnation: Though he was feisty, destructive and brooding, he began to mellow upon meeting Fifi Forget-me-not, who would later become his wife. He fought in a resistance army, but in a manner similar to The Night of the Doctor, he died after he failed to save someone from a missile attack. He was revived by the Sisterhood of Karn (might get into that sometime), who convinced him to regenerate into a warrior.

Fifth incarnation: One of the longer-lasting incarnations. Despite his warrior’s nature, he had a friendly and romantic side with him as he lived with Fifi for a number of years. When she and her friends had to go back to Flowertot Garden (as it was being assimilated into Never Land), the two parted ways. He later fell in love with another girl who would later become Akari Ichigo, but it would be some time before they got married. After having his heart broken by another girl, he regenerated into his next incarnation.

Sixth incarnation: Mellow and romantic, yet assertive when he needed to be. This was the incarnation where he started a relationship with Akari, but it would lead to his demise at the hands of her cousins who opposed the relationship. After using up a regeneration in a meta-crisis to save himself, Akari helped him regenerate into his next incarnation with a kiss (this was the proposal as well). This would mix up their DNA, resulting in subsequent prototypes being considered the offspring of the two rather than his siblings.

Eighth incarnation (skipped one because meta-crisis): Cheery and spirited with a case of wanderlust and a sense of nostalgia. He took Akari to visit people and places, both old and new in his life. His demise came at the hands of his parents, who were tipped off about his relationship with Akari. Following a Christmas Carol-esque nostalgia trip, he gets locked up in his room where he regenerates. There isn’t a lot to his ninth incarnation because he uses up three more of his regenerations trying to save his twin brother, Zhuge Liang, from the Voidstation. We’re up to 10 regenerations used up at this point. Oh, and he became a magical boy as well and scattered himself through his timeline. It’s complicated. I’ll explain later.

Twelfth incarnation (see previous): Similar to his eighth incarnation, but with a wanderlust for time travel. The Pony Doctor lent him his TARDIS for a while, but he stopped upon hearing that one of his old friends had died. He married Akari, but they barely got to start their new life when he was killed by Girl Power. He would regenerate into a female incarnation after accepting a deal from Walpurgisnacht.

Thirteenth incarnation: This was a female incarnation, played by Tavia Yeung and based on her character, Apple Lam Chung-yan (林頌恩) from the 2013 TVB drama A Great Way to Care II (仁心解碼II). This was the first incarnation who would have a different name from the original, having taken up the name of Momoka Mizutani (水��桃花/ももか) to avoid suspicion from her enemies. Like the Ice King, Momoka was bent on revenge. With Akari being taken from her previous incarnation, brainwashed and placed in a family with his prototype and a Progenitor-created child, Momoka manipulated the family into visiting her restaurant so she can get closer to them. Unfortunately, her plans were sabotaged and she was killed in the process. To be honest, casting Tavia Yeung was a bit meh on my part because of her English skills. I was going to replace her with Dodo Cheng as an older Momoka, but I decided that it wasn’t worth it.

Fourteenth incarnation: Same as the thirteenth incarnation, but with Walpurgisnacht taking further control of Momoka. She became more vengeful to the point of killing people who had wronged her in her previous incarnations. This causes her to suffer from a traumatic post-regeneration crisis, where she became somewhat psychotic. After being convinced by Zhuge Liang and Violet to give hope to others in need, she commits suicide after coming to peace with the fact that she wouldn’t have a chance with Akari. Little did she know what fate would have in store for her. Momoka would survive a shot in the head for a while and join her previous incarnations (except the Ice King) in freeing Akari from her brainwashing. The original version of the story has Momoka regenerate directly into her next incarnation, but the final version (having been revised some time after The Time of the Doctor premiered) has Momoka reset to her previous male incarnation to see Akari for the final time before regenerating to his next and final incarnation.

Fifteenth incarnation: This is the incarnation that cemented Hiroki and Akari’s names into the story as they would be known by those names from that point on. Hiroki also gave himself a makeover as part of this, leading to him basically cosplaying Hanbei Takenaka from Samurai Warriors 3 and 4, at least for the Next Gen Series. During that series, Hiroki shared some personality traits from all his previous incarnations, making him a happy-go-lucky boy with a dark side that sometimes overcomes him and makes him irrational. He is also attached to Akari because she is the only person who can control his dark side (actually, she acts as more of a crutch). In the Moushouden Series, where he becomes Kamen Rider Decade, Hiroki learns to accept and control his dark side, becoming a calmer and more enlightened, yet still enigmatic person. At this point, he’s essentially like Tsukasa Kadoya.

The different prototypes

As I stated, with each of the other protagonist’s regenerations comes a new prototype. A couple of them are based off the incarnations from which they regenerated and a few of them are literally anime characters. Some of them may have had different names in the past, but the names listed here are the names they are now known by. You might also recognise those names from the Waifu Network Tumblr.

Prototypes are listed in order of regeneration.

Richard Yang (楊子深)

Zhuge Qiao (諸葛喬)/Hayato Kisaichi (私市颯人)

Natsuki Takara (高良夏希)

Kyōko Izumi (泉京子)

Takumi Kamijō (上条拓海)

Kumiko Hayashi (林久美子)

Yamato Kurosawa (黒沢大和)

Daichi Kurosawa (黒沢大地)/Nagi Kurosawa (黒沢凪)/Marco Wong (黃翔希)

Kyōya Shinomiya (四ノ宮京夜)

Momoka Mizutani (水谷桃花)

With the exception of the Kurosawa siblings, who went off and did their own thing, the prototypes formed a family with the two protagonists, thereby known as the Zhuge family. There were also others in the family who became members not by virtue of regeneration, but by the privilege of being close friends to them.

Zhuge Shu (諸葛虪)

Katsuki Hiiragi (柊克樹)

Kai Hirasawa (平沢海)

Terry Mizukoshi (水越テリー)

Kasumi Shinomiya (四ノ宮霞)

#kisekae insights #doctor who

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