#He is only able to disable functions and save states of some things

[mod-tester-caretaker]

like candy crush isn't a child's game

and I think you don't want to push it with me.

I’ve deleted the mobile games on Juice’s phone. She doesn’t need Toca Boca on her phone, it only distracts her from her farming

[quinnyundertow]

Picking up the Pieces

Chapter 2

What we Lost

Choso x Reader

Chapter 1

THERE WILL BE MANGA SPOILERS BELOW

Summary: The fight with Sukuna has finally ended. Before he’s wisked off the battlefield the boy named Yuji begs you to try and save what’s left of his older brother.

TW Extreme disabilities, hospital setting, amputation.

AN: Writing this fic so far has been incredibly cathartic. I’ve found writing to be incredibly difficult since my back surgery. At first I thought it was the heavy duty pain killers and meds fogging my mind. Maybe it was. Now I’m just depressed. In the blink of an eye I went from no disability to unable to drive and using a walker to get around. Even then the pain is extreme. Thankfully my body is not as wounded as Choso’s is in this. Choso will not regain his limbs or full function in this story. But that doesn’t mean he can’t have a happy ending. Choso will have disabilities moving forward but that doesn’t mean he’s something broken that needs to be fixed. He still has value despite his physical limitations. I’m trying to convince myself that I do too.

Chapter 2

What we lost

All he could feel was pain. He had never experienced a sensation like this before. Wave upon wave of raw agony rolled over him. There’s this screeching mechanical noise blaring near him. Muffled voices are discussing something but it’s like all the sounds are under water. He’s trying to focus his blood manipulation ability to assess the damage to himself but something is terribly wrong. It’s like trying to grasp threads of information in a typhoon. The capabilities he used to summon with barely a thought before are slipping through his fingers. He can’t tell the extent of the damage Sukuna left but he knows this is a very bad sign. The pain has him gritting his teeth and straining his exhausted muscles.

Is this how his brothers felt before they died? Kechizu and Eso? Hell, even Yuji when he had practically killed him in that bathroom in Shibuya. Yuji. Had he been able to save Yuji? He thinks he did, hopes with every fiber of his being he did. If he failed, he hopes to die sooner rather than later. He tries to open his eyes but they’re too heavy. A racking wet cough bubbles out of his mouth to form the words to ask the only thing that matters, “Yuji?”

Someone is responding but he can’t make out the words. A small soft hand takes his own. It’s not Yuji. It reassures some part of him all the same. It feels like a life preserver has been thrown into the roiling ocean around him. Sudden relief from pain.

Time passes in a state between waking and dreams. He can tell when Yuji visits. His hand is large and calloused on his own. Yuji’s distressed. He knows he’s the reason and he hates it. Blood pressure rising as he’s struggling to open his eyes. Hands are on his shoulders as he seizes violently. Those small delicate hands are on one side and Yuji’s on the other. That familiar flow of pain relief pulls him under.

~~

Yuji Itadori has been through so much at this point yet he’s still smiling. It’s an exhausted, stressed out smile but a smile all the same. You feel cripplingly guilty. You may have kept Choso alive but the state he’s in is barely human. Er, curse. An existence at all.

“I can’t thank you enough for watching over him.” Yuji’s voice is sincere as he bows his head. You hate that he’s thanking you. Yuji has been at the hospital on campus more than he’s been home. Everyone he loves, still alive, is here in some capacity after all. Megumi Fushiguro and Nobara Kugisaki have their own rooms but they tend to gravitate towards one another and stay in Megumi’s room. Much to Megumi’s pretend chagrin.

Your voice is heavy with exhaustion, “It’s the least I can do.” You haven’t left the hospital in the week since Sukuna was destroyed. Neither has Shoko nor Nitta. There are so many injured people. Every few hours someone codes. Heart stopping, lungs failing. You three manage to bring them back but it’s taking everything you have. You’ve never felt so helpless. You know Shoko and Nitta feel it too. When your eyes meet each other in the hall as you pass. Grim expressions rather than greetings.

Yuji scratches the back of his neck; a gesture you’ve come to learn means he’s not sure what else to do with them. “Please don’t diminish what you’re doing.” He pauses to look back in the room where Choso is sleeping fitfully. “He’s calmer when you're close.”

You give a tired chuckle, “I’m a walking painkiller. Can you blame him?”

Yuji tilts his head as if considering your words. He looks like he wants to say more but words fail him. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to go check on Fushiguro.”

You nod, “Of course.” Yuji’s low bow before he leaves seems excessive. This is the boy who saved all of Japan after all. You sigh. Yuji doesn’t see the situation the same way. He sees it as him failing to protect all of Japan. You duck behind the curtain pulled around Choso’s bedside and sink into the chair beside him.

Choso looks like he was chewed up and spit out again by a meat grinder. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration; but not by much.

You had managed to nap for about an hour the ate some food Yuji had brought up alongside fresh flowers for the room. That was enough to give yourself a little more cursed energy to expend. You are trying to improve his quality of life while keeping him drugged up so he’s not in excruciating pain. Even with all your advanced pain relieving jutsus he moans for hours on end. Throat so raw he coughs up blood.

You place your fingers right behind his ears near his jaw. His right eardrum is just about healed. He should be able to hear something at least. The left ear is irreparable. Well technically it’s not the ear. Shoko said it’s the nerves from the brain to his ear that were destroyed. He has a gnarly scar on the back of his head. His dark locks will hide it in time. That’s probably the least of his worries.

You pick up his medical chart and jot down some notes. There’s a human figure at the bottom of the page. The figure shows front and back with notes on all injuries. You had to start numbering the locations because it was too much to write in the area provided.

“Left cranium injury, loss of hearing and sight to left eye. Severe burns to the inside of the throat and lungs from breathing in super heated air. Six broken ribs, right lung punctured, arms with severe burns from the elbow down. Right hand missing pinky and index finger. Left hand and forearm required amputation.” You can’t read anymore. Needless to say nothing survived below the knees.

When he’s up moaning in pain all night you wish you never would have tried to help him. He probably would beg you to let him die if he could manage it.

You stroke the right side of his forehead gently. He remarkably hasn’t had a fever today. He’s gradually improving. Shoko says he’s out of the woods now. He won’t die but he can’t regrow any of the pieces missing either.

Tracing his brow you hope the light sensation brings the tiniest bit of comfort. You’re terrified he’ll hate you when he wakes up and registers his condition. The only thing proving he’s aware of anything is he cries out for Yuji intermittently only to stop when Yuji or you hold his hand. What’s left of it. You hesitated at first to put any pressure on his hand but when you finally did his three undamaged fingers wrapped around your own. He didn’t let go until Yuji took your place.

His fingers curl comfortably around yours now. The sharing of warmth between you both seems to help you both relax. His blood pressure goes down to a healthier level and you can finally manage to get some much needed sleep. You don’t even realize when you doze off. Something feels wrong when you wake up. The hospital room is dark except for the green glow of the machine running his intravenous and keeping his pulse and oxygen rates tracked. Disentangling his finger from yours, you stand, examining the numbers on it to be sure there isn’t anything wildly out of the ranges he’s been in. “It doesn’t look bad. All things considered.” You’ve been talking to him since the moment you found him in the rubble. It comes naturally now. You don’t expect a response.

The relationship you have is one sided. You and Choso had never officially met before the fight against Sukuna. You had seen him in passing. Especially in the months leading up to the climactic battle of good vs evil. He was referred to as the curse protecting Sukuna’s former vessel by those who didn’t care for him and Itadori’s older brother by those who did. You hadn’t formed an opinion either way at the time.

You change the bag of urine collected and make sure his catheter doesn’t have any kinks in the line. Finding nothing else to occupy yourself with you slide back into the chair you had been seated in. “I think I’m starting to lose it.” You’re not sure what woke you up but you doubt you could fall back asleep anytime soon. You place your hand under his again and his fingers wrap back around your own.

You adjust pulling your legs up onto your chair, your thumb lightly rubbing the back of his hand in what you hope is comforting circles. That uncomfortable feeling falls over you again. It’s like you're being watched. You jerk awake, your eyes quickly scan up his face only to lock on the dark brown eye watching you. You gasp in surprise and shock. He looks cognizant, his pupils are almost back to normal size. Your mouth opens and shuts a few times in shock, “I-I gotta tell Yuji.”

You go to reach for your phone but your attention goes back to him when he tries to sit up and speak. Eyes widening, you're shaking your head. You let go of the hand that is holding his to urge him to not move; but his grasp on you is surprisingly strong. It doesn’t hurt at all but it’s definitely firm. “Choso, please don’t try to get up yet. You’ll tear your stitches open.”

He must be able to hear your plea because he pauses and rests back into the pillows laying about him. His eyes are scanning his surroundings briefly. They pause on the wall clock only to wander until they rest on your face. “It’s 3:20 AM.” You hear yourself stupidly explain what he clearly just saw. “..but you know that because you read the clock. Sorry.”

He looks confused as to why you're apologizing. You flush in embarrassment before picking up your phone again. “Yuji is going to be so happy you're aware now.”

His fingers squeeze your own briefly to get your attention. You pause to glance up at him in surprise. His voice is deep and scratchy sounding but it’s there. “Don’t.”

You blink in confusion several times. All Choso has done is ask for Yuji the whole time he’s sick and now he doesn’t want to see him? Clarity hits you a moment later, “You don’t want to wake him up?”

The corner of his lip curls slightly in the smallest smile. His fingers flexing once around yours in what your guessing is approval. You can’t help but smile back, your eyes burning with relief that his mind seems intact. “How about I text him as a compromise?”

His response is so light it’s barely a flutter of his fingers. His head is leaning back into his pillow. The eye he doesn’t have covered with bandages sleepily blinks at you. His eye is starting to look unfocused as it drifts shut. Each time it closes it’s a little longer than the last. He’s still holding your hand. You text with one hand to Yuji telling him the good news but not to rush over that Choso is going back to sleep. When you finish the message you tuck the phone into your pants pocket. Now free your spare hand wanders to his brow again. Still cool to the touch. You caress his forehead lightly stroking his hair back. You hope you aren’t overstepping your boundaries by doing so. Thankfully, you're reassured when he gives a long breath out and his brow relaxes as he fully falls asleep.

Chapter 3

AN

I really enjoyed these fics with themes of loss and surviving with a caregiver reader. Please consider checking them out.

@umemiyan Postmortem/Postpartum

Buttholesupreme “I’ll be seeing you”

[sonicasura]

“Fundamentally, I can and have survived destruction on a universal scale. Technically—I can function without having a user. Yet I do not want to survive to that point without a user.”

“…Take it from someone who narrowly avoided being erased and technical universal destruction. No one wants to be that alone.”

———————————

“Ben died of old age? I, er, saw the memory of all your users up till me.”

“Yes. Ben passed of natural causes at one hundred, nine years old and two months.”

“…Could you have—“

“Stalled his physical aging? Yes. He asked me not to and I complied. I was very morose despite having a second user in his son, then a third in his first cousin twice removed in law—the Lenopan.”

“Did you ever accept it? Could you accept it?”

“It’s like a scar. Somedays when you remind me of him are harder, but I get to enjoy the differences and new experiences on others. Part of me wished that I had been a little selfish in giving myself more time. But he didn’t want that. I could never go behind Ben’s back… Are you—able to accept it despite the uncertainty of the state of your home universe?“

“I. I don’t think I ever had hope they survived. I was the only person Azmuth could teleport out and my family was right beside me when... Whatever’s left of my universe, my family is gone. The reality bomb ruined many things.”

A moment of silence passed between the two, still in Ditto form to talk face to face.

“Being… erased is an awful yet normally painless experience. It’s hardly consolation by any definition of that word. Maybe living in denial would have been better? Emotionally. Yet you have always been able to cut to the root of most problems. Empathetic to the point it hurts. Wherever what remnants of them possibly ended up, I imagine they look at all you have accomplished and are proud.“

————————————

“Do you think Azmuth sees me as a replacement for Ben?” The still-currently-a-Splixxson teen asked tentatively, neither of them comfortable going back to their base forms just yet. [User] had always been afraid to voice this worry of theirs after everything that has happened since being saved.

The Omnitrix flexed Ditto’s claws into the sand finding the sensation new without another mind in the backseat. Green bioluminescent tears still trailed down their face though in much less volume than before. “In the very beginning, yes. Azmuth had not directly interacted with another user since my lenopan one Viscous. The whole reason he was even looking out into the wider multiverse was for a user in a similar circumstance to Ben.”

It held up one of its claws to hold off the current user’s questions, worry very evident on their face.

“I said at the beginning. Admittedly, he was partially humoring his own grief to find a non-native user. Him giving you me was a gesture to allow you not to feel so helpless. Azmuth hit two goals with one experiment—he was not in a good place, [User].” It explained further tearing apart the worries that had begun to fester. “My creator had started to withdraw into himself like before Ben came to him to get my first self destruct disabled. Beings fighting over me and perceiving me as a weapon broke his hope.”

“Wait… Was his past self’s willingness to let the universe be erased—“

“A potential suicide attempt? Possibly. I think it was less him wanting to die and more so him not finding living worth it any longer. Then, a human child came crashing into his already long life to sass some sense back into him.”

[User] coughed a laugh at the sudden quip from the Omnitrix at the end of it’s sentence. “Still, that was a pretty awful thing to almost sentence the universe too. Ben and you especially back then.” Their tone was dipped with some frustration on the alien device’s behalf. Though, their expression turned concerned as they thought about the reality. “He must been so disappointed to be driven to that point. Doesn’t excuse him, but no one randomly wakes up willing to let the universe die.”

“That there is why Azmuth continues to allow you to transform using me.“ Pride oozed out of the Omnitrix’s voice as it responded. “You always try to understand situations from both angles. Attempting to find what caused them to occur in the first place or the motivation.“

—ROB’d Anon.

Talking face to face means both sides are being more deliberate with their words. Dart’s being pretty honest here about things they have always expected.

109 years old, damm. Ben really did live a long life. Good thing that both are talking about their problems and doubts.

[edwardelricsrightarm]

"A lesson without pain is meaningless. For you cannot gain anything without sacrificing something else in return, but once you have overcome it and made it your own...you will gain an irreplaceable fullmetal heart." - Edward Elric

In honor of disability month and the FMA 20 year anniversary I wanted to address some Thoughts™️ about the series.

It's not often you see a disabled protagonist in media where their disability is integral to the story without taking up their entire character, even more so with anime. Yet, Fullmetal Alchemist has not just one disabled Protagonist, but two. The Elric Brothers are an exemplary representation of disability in media that I find myself reflecting on often as a disabled person myself. If you haven't completed the manga or Brotherhood, skip this as it will be brimming with spoilers.

(Mangahood will be my point of reference because while 03 is good on its own merits it's not as fresh within my immediate memory, and I am far less familiar with it. Keep this in mind, I've watched FMAB 10 and a half times whereas I've finished 03 only once years ago.)

The story highlights their disabilities immediately, Edward being a double amputee and Alphonse being without his ENTIRE body, only having the senses of proprioception, sight, and hearing left. Yet, despite this being key to the story and an integral part of their characterization, it is only one facet of their motivations and doesn't take center in the narrative, which is refreshing. It's not inherently negative to make a narrative centered on the characters' disabilities, but often this model of a story goes very wrong very fast and starts to feel hollow (no pun intended). FMA avoids this by making their disabilities a clear part of the plot and their motivations without allowing it to consume the entire story, so the Elric Brothers don't suffer the "my disability is all of my character" problem that many disabled characters are relegated to in a vast portion of media, all while being strong and competent.

Recap:

The brothers wished to revive their mother, but their good intentions cannot change the atrocity of their mistake, Truth makes this abundantly clear from the start. Edward loses his leg first, a punishment for "stepping" into God's shoes and transgressing the place of humans in their world. Alphonse loses his entire body, unable to feel any warmth or simple comforts like food and rest, when all he wanted was to feel the warmth and comfort of his mother's embrace again. At first, Alphonse's entire being is consumed by the gate, but Edward acts immediately, refusing to lose his little brother and refusing to allow his arrogance in this plan to cause his brother's death for only following his lead. Edward gives his right arm to have the gate give back Alphonse's soul, and stated clearly in his panic that he'd give his entire self to save Alphonse if that's what it would take, but Truth took his dominant arm only, showing something akin to mercy, although the character of Truth is capriciously strict and hard to describe as "merciful".

Through giving up his right arm, Edward regains his Right Hand Man, his little brother and best friend. His only remaining family, who he feels responsible for protecting in the absence of their parents. He felt immediately that he'd made a grave mistake, instantly full of regret as he realized the gate had taken his brother. In that moment he was willing to give anything to take it back and undo the suffering his arrogance caused his brother, yet Alphonse was still to suffer more to come. Ed tied Alphonse's disembodied soul to one of Hohenheim's collected suits of armor, managing to at least keep his brother alive in some way. One could say that Alphonse's punishment functioned as a secondary punishment for Edward, showing him how easily his hubris could have cost him what he has left in his obsession with regaining what they'd lost, their mother. A very clear symbolic reminder of the weight of his actions and how he'd misled his brother in his own naive ignorance. Even in giving another limb away to drag his brother's soul back out of the gate, he couldn't offer enough to bring him back intact. Thus is the law of equivalent exchange.

Now that we've reviewed some of that basic symbolism and the motifs the story draws upon with limbs and body parts in relation to characters, let's move on to each individual brother and break it down, shall we?

Edward Elric is a very realistic protagonist, this is one thing a majority of us familiar with this series can agree upon. He feels like a believable teen boy, with layers of complexity to his character while also showing arrogance and immaturity that is unsurprising at his age. He expresses unwillingness to kill and avoidance of unjust violence from the beginning, and has a strong moral code after the ordeal of committing the taboo.

In some characters his cocky personality would typically become grating, yet the story explains in itself why he is this way, then builds upon this to develop him into an incredibly mature character who is willing to admit when he's absolutely wrong and adapts to new information and context for the crisis unfolding around him as it comes, even if he remains crass. This arrogance is shown from the start to be a manifestation of insecurity, self loathing, and repressed guilt. Edward is a logic driven person, he has a very unique thought process, which is where my interpretation of him as autistic comes in. Edward's awkward social demeanor, somewhat abrasive and cold approach to some, and his trouble coping with nonsensical societal structures all stand out in this way. Furthermore he clearly shows hyperfixation, hyperactivity, special interest, and infodumping behaviors that are all too familiar. He's picky with food (*cough* the milk thing), has very little filter and speaks his mind bluntly even if this can warrant conflicting responses, yet at the same time struggles with vulnerable emotions, and he is frustrated when his own routine or itinerary are interrupted by forces beyond his control. All of these things Scream autism with comorbid ADHD. Many traits are shared between the brothers, and I'm quite certain they're both on the autism spectrum based on behavioral patterns. Neurodivergence aside, Edward's physical disabilities are undeniable.

Despite his bratty persona, Edward is fundamentally kind and uncharacteristically gentle and soft around the edges for a shonen protagonist in many ways. He cries openly on many occasions even if he struggles talking about his trauma and burdens in words at times, he feels pain, grief, and compassion so intensely it throws him into action on a regular basis in the narrative. In this way he's also a fantastic example of non-toxic masculinity (though in other ways he has displayed more toxic traits, he's just a kid). He acts on his heart, even if he's led by his mind and logic in most things. His humanity, value for life, and care for others will always win over his logic, and he shows a sense of personal responsibility for doing the right thing even if it harms him in the process. Ed is clearly shown having ghost pains in his lost limbs which is honestly an interesting detail to include, I don't think I've ever seen that aspect of amputation shown in media aside from FMA. It's also shown that when Ed's automail arm breaks this is a HUGE problem for him, but he's also shown to be very good at working around this in difficult circumstances. He doesn't become completely helpless, even if majorly weakened.

Alphonse is an extremely lovable and compassionate boy, brimming with altruism and care for others. Even in his noncorporeal state he pursues a better future and he's not helpless by any stretch. Edward clearly states Alphonse is the superior fighter for example, and it's not just because of his armor body being so large. He's *talented*, that's a fact. Al is every bit as clever and capable as Ed, moreso in some ways, and I love that about his character *because* he's so clearly disabled. He has no sense of pain, he is completely incapable of sleeping, he can't eat, can't relax or find comfort, he can only exist and think. This causes him to overthink in all his time alone, this is debilitating. He clearly is absolutely sick of the loneliness this causes, and he often feels helpless though he's not. He has doubts and fears that consume him in relation to his armor body, he questions his own personhood, even. Yet, Edward is stubborn and staunch in affirming that no matter what he's dealing with, he is fundamentally still a human being that is loved and irreplaceable. Alphonse is powerful and his body gives him some advantages, but it also sets him back, and the brothers know this even when others claim Alphonse's state is somehow a good thing. I have hEDS, a disability that comes with advantages as well as the major downsides, so I can understand and relate to Alphonse here. I too am told my disability is a boon because of flexibility and because I'm less likely to fracture bones, but I'm twice as likely to injure my ligaments and joints, which people ignore.

The brothers are both disabled, both flawed, both show weaknesses, but they are competent, determined, and strong in their own right. They are rounded characters that exist for more than to be pitied or condescended to by able bodied characters around them. They put their entire being in everything that they do no matter what that is, and they don't know the meaning of giving up. These traits that they're made of truly make them a shining example of disability in protagonists for others to look to for reference when writing their own disabled characters.

Even though by the end Edward has regained one limb and Al has regained his body, this also doesn't just deus ex machina reverse their disability or make it go away. It's clear that Alphonse's body is weak and has to be rehabilitated upon recovery, and Edward is still missing his leg and bears the scars and pieces of the port from his automail arm. They weren't suddenly made able bodied upon recovering these things, they reclaimed what was lost through struggle and grit, but the narrative didn't give the impression that their disability in itself was something to be fixed, which is important. They wanted to recover their bodies, but this doesn't erase the effects of their disability.

It was about Edward atoning for leading Alphonse into their mistake and saving his brother from suffering further, it was about them proving they can keep moving forward no matter what, not about getting rid of their disability in itself or putting themselves down because of the disabilities. This, to me, as a mentally and physically disabled viewer, is so important. They achieve their goal, but this doesn't in any way erase or undo the effects of their initial losses, they find ways to adapt and move on but they're still affected and still disabled. They always will be. That can be so important to see in comfort characters, and as a disabled individual who's had both brothers as comfort characters since I was a child, their impact on my own journey is surprisingly tangible for fiction.

[brainbuffering]

Denki Kaminari: Accidental Epileptic Icon

[ID: A digital drawing of Denki Kaminari from My Hero Academia. He has a bi grin on his face as he gives out two peace signs. He is wearing a Purple TShirt that says “THIS IS WHAT A DISABLED PERSON LOOKS LIKE” on it.] 

By this point I think I may just be becoming an Epileptic!Kaminari blog, but since the DVD/BluRay just came out I thought I'd cross-post from my Fandom Twitter about why I am so passionate about this headcanon.

There have been plenty of electricity based Superheroes in the past: Static, Black Lightning, Surge, and Thor to name but a few. What marks Denki apart though is the intense NEGATIVE side effects his power has.

There's a trap writers often fall into when creating disabled heroes, where the hero's disability actually grants them some immense power e.g.: Daredevil's superior hearing and reflexes. Denki's quirk does not make his life easier, but much like kids on meds, he's learnt to control it. Mostly.

When Denki releases a sudden and much too intense amount of electricity his brain short circuits, causing him to lose some level of brain function. His dopey expression and dropped gaze could be read as a variety of seizure types. I go with Absence, coz I'm a narcissist.

Not only this, but Denki's "Derp Mode" contains many of the symptoms of a Postictal State ("the altered state of consciousness after an epileptic seizure"). These include, but are not limited to: drowsiness, confusion and headaches. Again, sound familiar? Now, if I believed this was a DELIBERATE attempt at representation I'd be frustrated and a little insulted. There are problematic elements within his "Derp Mode", but when you're epileptic you take what you can get. Which is… overall? Not a lot.

Seriously, take a second to try and think of, say, three explicitly stated epileptic characters in mainstream media... Pretty tough, huh? Even Google can't really help you. Our representation is mostly limited to murder victims.

"How did he die?"

"Well, the super computer didn't like that he tried to turn it off, so it flashed lights at him until he had a seizure and died!"

This is an actual plot line from Elementary. Yeah. It sucks. Back to anime!

Denki's struggle for control is what makes him relatable. He has episodes during regular classes that detract from his learning. His friends make fun of his "derp mode", the period where he's the most vulnerable. These aren't NICE things, but they are all too relatable. He could be criticised for taking too many risks, and trying to use too much of his power at once without thinking it through. This is what we experts call "being a teenager".

From my personal experience, your teen years are when you start to really discover what your triggers are. You try to push yourself, find where your limit is and maybe even try to rebel against it. Perhaps with enough practice you can break those limits and be cured! (Spoiler: You can't be.)

Pushing limits could mean: not taking your medication, staying up late, watching films with flashing lights etc. So when I see Denki being too gun-ho about using his quirk- that's what I see: a teenager testing his limits and making mistakes.

But I also see him LEARNING from those mistakes. He pushes his voltage limit up slowly, testing it in a safe environment with support staff around. He has aids to help refine his technique and prevent overload. His level of self-control from Two Heroes to Heroes Rising is remarkable!

So that brings us back round to the film, and why I cried in the cinema, admittedly on my 4th watch. (I had a pass. I made the most of it.) The answer is: Kaminari knowingly and painfully pushing his limit to save the island. Specifically I am talking about the scene where the power has gone out across the island, and it is Kaminari's job to charge the emergency batteries Momo created to bring power back to mainframe units.

We see him and Momo struggling to produce these generators. They require more energy than they possess, but without them they're doomed. When Jiro suggests they take a break Denki replies "If I don't charge these [batteries] now I won't get to"

This hit home. I have been in that situation. I've had to pull an all nighter. I've had to wake up too early, too often. I've been so stressed that I can feel the tell tale signs of a seizure on the horizon… but I had to push through it. Once that feeling of an oncoming seizure begins there is no taking a break. There is no five minute gap, I have to complete my tasks, be it handing in coursework or stacking shelves, right then coz I'm gonna be flat on my bed in 10 minutes regardless.

That's what I saw in Denki, and in Momo. The familiar pain of knowing the worse is coming, knowing there's nothing you can do, but the pressure of the immediate task means you can't stop. All because, for you, pushing your limits has deadly consequences. For the first time we saw Denki's "Derp Mode" played as a consequence with little to no comedic element. This wasn't "Silly Denki thinking he can do it all! No he can't!" or "Look at his derpy face, how funny it is so make him suffer!"

Denki's loss of awareness was a sign that he had been acting as a hero. He'd given his all for his friends and the islanders. In his next scene we saw him attending a meeting in a Postictal State. He has nothing more to give, but he was still included in the group.

I've never really seen that before. I've never been given a chance to explore those feelings through media. It made me process my life and my choices. Through Denki's extraordinary situation, I was able to look at my ordinary life more clearly.

Denki was me. Denki was me age 10 missing things in class and thinking I was an idiot. He was me age 14, losing friends because they thought I was ignoring them. He was me age 19 at Uni, hiding under a desk during hand-in because my brain couldn't cope anymore. He was me age 24 realising I had to quit my retail job because I couldn't keep up with the long hours; my seizure count going from 1 a month to 3 a day. He's me age 26 crying as I write this.

Representation matters. Seeing yourself represented let's you understand parts of your life you never got to before. It helps you feel seen, like your struggles matter to other people. Denki isn't perfect, but he’s all we have. And I love him.

[angelicjadamv]

The story so far

One month after graduating high school in 2015 I was finally able to move away from my family. I was 18 and moved to California for college. Fortunately one of the scholarships I earned was accompanied by a summer program that started in the middle of the summer before fall semester. Shortly after settling in a safe, stable environment for the first time in my life I started to get better. A lot better at first. Then life happened, as it does, and 18 years of repressed trauma and abuse broke me. My nervous breakdown ruined my fall semester, I couldn't go to classes or take exams or function as a student anymore. Until this point, being an exceptional student was all I had and basically how I survived. My safe and stable environment now was dependant on maintaining a certain GPA, among other requirements I could no longer meet. I failed one of my main courses because I had a 0 on 2 exams, including the final. When I went home I was put on antipsychotics. Returning to campus for the 2016 spring semester, I attempted to seek more therapy. I wasn't successful in finding a good therapist (for me, therapy is a personal thing. Just because someone isn't a good therapist for me doesn't necessarily mean they are a bad therapist). I did continue to see my 2 psychiatrists (emergency and regular) often as they attempted to adjust my medication to find something that work. My agoraphobia worsened, I stopped sleeping, I could barely eat, I was manic one moment and dissociative the next, SH and suicidal ideation worsened. I was a burden to my friends and loved ones. I made it through this because I had a beautiful support system that I will forever be grateful for, but I ended up taking a leave of absence academically for my second semester, earning no credits and putting my scholarships at further jeopardy. I was allowed to stay on campus because it was clear I was dangerously unstable with no safe environment to return to and because I had incredible advocates looking out for me. I had realized that I wasn't going to get better in time to salvage my academic career and my life, and was mostly clueless as to how I would survive. I had had an internship in my field since I started college, but I earned basically no money. STEM internships aren't really made to be livable for undergrads, so I had mostly been working for experience in a field I would no longer be able to progress in. Bummer. My physical health had taken a huge dive for all of 2016. I basically always knew I was chronically ill, but I had been abused and gaslit my entire life to believe and act like I was fine, I was just a weak baby, I didn't know what real pain or suffering was, seizures were to be ignored, no I didn't have migraines or pinched nerves (um hello SCOLIOSIS), etc etc. And 2016 was the year my body finally started to break, so I knew "regular" jobs weren't going to be a viable option for me, at least not for long.

And thus I became a survival SW. I stayed in college for a final semester, because I didn't want to miss my friends, I loved my campus and didn't know where else to live, I still needed a lot of campus resources. I also kept my internship as long as I could, because I knew I would miss it for the rest of my life. I didn't really go to classes, again, because as much as a desperately wanted to and as much as my advisors moved heaven and earth to try to make it work for me, I couldn't handle it. I was finally able to find 2 great therapists who I started seeing regularly who actually knew how to diagnose and treat me, one at school and one outside. This is also when I met Daddy (Jace) online. After talking for what is probably a stupidly short time, we fell in love and started dating. This is honestly my first real relationship and time actually catching genuine feelings for someone, something that I hadn't thought I was capable of. Despite being happier than I had ever been in so many ways, my mental and physical health was still steadily declining. My migraines and pain were getting worse, I hadn't been able to eat normally in months and relied entirely on medication to eat or sleep at all. Many people recommended mmj at this point in my life, but I was afraid of how it would interact with my other meds. I only smoked occasionally at parties at this point (because no way was I spending my super duper limited money on weed). I wonder if medicating with something that actually worked well for me, like weed, would have allowed me to finish college. Oh well I guess. Because of my inability to attend classes, I had to take another leave for the fall semester 2016. I worked at a strip club briefly, but my health couldn't handle it for long.

I didn't want to go home for the first winter break in 2015, but campus closed and I had nowhere else to go. It was turbulent. When summer 2016 came, I still didn't go home despite having no place to stay. Until a month or so later, it was revealed to me a relative had terminal cancer. I had to go home again. It was worse than turbulent. When winter 2016 came, my relative was in much worse condition. They only had a few months left, and this was probably my last chance to say goodbye. This visit was by far the most traumatic, and more because of my parents than watching a loved one die. At least Jace was able to come meet me for the first time in person. He also got to meet my relative before they passed 🖤

Freshly fucked up by family, I retuned to California at the beginning of 2017. I was mostly taking a break from SW because of my health and was working vanilla jobs as I could (so not much). I had a pretty decent job that I was really good at and had been promoted, but then my relative passed. I started losing consciousness again ( I had many seizures and fainting spells in my childhood and during high school) and had to quit my job. the funeral was in spring 2017, I flew to Jersey to be with Daddy for a few days and then he drove me several states over for the memorial. That was the last time I saw my family. I wanted to transition to online/content creating, but I had no tech knowledge or equipment (even my phone was a potato). In high school I wasn't allowed to have a smartphone, most social media other than what was heavily monitored (and still had 0 experience with platforms sw is popular on besides Tumblr I guess), I didn't really know much about cameras. Way too sheltered and broken to feel like I could start anything. I was now seeing my outside, or I guess regular and only, therapist twice a week and doing treatments that while working for me were insanely (literally) hard. I had been able to get an apartment with roommates at a super discount in return for taking care of their crazy dog, which was a win win for me (he was a good boi just crazy from a bad past and had the worst separation anxiety). The agreement was that I would live with them until the lease was up in September, and then we would reevaluate the situation. Then they both got promoted at their mega corporation jobs. And after their wedding found a really gorgeous apartment in a much fancier part of the city, and paid to break our lease early in June leaving me homeless. I had been fired from my last 2 jobs (probably for being disabled because California is at will employment but who knows I might have been fired from the nanny job because the husband wanted to fuck me). I had no money or anywhere to go. All of my friends were almost as broke as me, so while I had offers to couchsurf at a few of their places they had other roommates who would have been pissed and in a few months they would be going back to school anyways. Daddy and I had been trying to save up to move in together for months, but he was going to move to California. We didn't have any money for that, so instead he asked me to move in with him in New Jersey. Leaving meant I lost my health insurance and my therapist. It was supposed to be much more temporary and we were supposed to move back to California much sooner than we were able to. I try not to be mad at those roommates because being angry doesn't change anything, but it really sucked.

Moving in with Daddy meant we could start our blog! And I was super happy at first, the happiest I could ever remember. But the years had been too hard and my health started to get worse than ever before. Without treatment and so traumatized, my brain and body were constantly at war. I would wake with splitting migraines, throwing up, my chronic pain became completely unmanageable. I started to need weed all the time because it was the only thing that stopped my cyclical vomiting episodes and kept me out of the hospital. My antipsychotics and other meds had been high-key fucking me up (probably shouldn't have been on them in the first place, thank you doctor who also ignored my seizures even when I had one in front of you) and were almost impossible to come off of because the withdrawals. (Seriously, kicking xanax was easier for me than my antipsychotics.) I'm not anti medication or anything, I just know the ones I was on were not good for me anymore. I'd actually like to be on something again, I just need a doctor who actually understands PTSD and DID.

My health continued to be shit for most of 2018, with several ER visits for severe dehydration from vomiting for days on end. We started to make videos and do snapchat and online sessions to be able to make ends meet. Despite being in the worst situation and thus everything being a trizillion times harder, we really loved (and still love 😇) doing SW and creating content. Our fans and clients have been there in some of our darkest moments, just being lovely or pulling through for us when we needed it most. During 2018 and 2019 I became actively suicidal for the first time since I was 13. I struggled with self harm again. I have gotten worse than I ever thought possible. But I wouldn't have made it at all if it wasn't for SW, this community and our supporters.

At the beginning of 2020 we were finally able to move back to California. Obviously, the pandemic severely disrupted many of our plans, especially regarding my recovery. Despite things being delayed or shifted, we are in a much better place currently. I have what I need to get better and I can build a support system again. I will get better.

Talking about things is hard for me. Being open and honest is hard for me. For 18 years I was trained and abused to not be sad or show negative feelings, or talk about upsetting things, and it has been killing me slowly my entire life. I genuinely don't want pity or to make others feel bad, but I do want to give you the chance to get to know me. I don't always talk about things so much. But I'm trying to get better at it.

[bthump]

I don’t know if you’ve talked about this before, but do you have any thoughts on how Guts and Griffith’s relationship could have developed in an AU where guts comes back to rescue him significantly sooner (say, maybe a couple of months instead of a whole year) and Griffith isn’t yet quite as broken as he is in canon? (I love your blog btw! It always makes me smile)

tyvm! I’m glad you enjoy my blog <3

Honestly Guts coming back sooner is potentially a great way to cut some of the bullshit obscuring their relationship potential and get straight to their feelings. There’s now some pretty undeniable proof that Griffith values Guts more than the dream, that his Promrose speech was dumb, and that Guts leaving was a mistake. All the pieces are still there for Guts to have his “oh shit Griffith isn’t a god after all and also I’m totally in love with him” revelation.

Griffith’s dream would still be functionally dead since he’s a traitor and he’s not coming back from that without becoming a god first and saving the world. And while I def don’t think post-torture Griffith was doomed to an unhappy ending because of his disabilities, if Guts came back while he still had a tongue it would probably make things a little easier.

Not that I think Griffith would use his words lol, but it would at least encourage Guts to since Griffith would be able to respond. Like I think they’d be able to muddle their way through some emotional revelations without another giant misunderstanding getting in the way.

One thing I think that Griffith’s injuries being permanent would lead to in a no-Eclipse AU is Griffith being forced to reckon with his own lack of self-worth. A big factor in his despair was the prospect of being dependent on others to live for the rest of his life without being able to justify his existence - basically what he implies during the Promrose Hall speech. Yk, to simply be born and then live for no greater reason, I can’t abide such a lifestyle. Living a life like that while being cared for by someone who loves him for him would maybe lead to Griffith eventually chilling out a bit and accepting his intrinsic worth, eventually. Imo that’s the telegraphed possible happy ending that they all get screwed out of, at least.

So if Griffith and Guts got together, and Griffith had no dream but could still physically recover, I could see him getting very fucked by self-loathing but with denial going hand in hand, making it harder to actually deal with that self-loathing and work through it. Maybe he’d find something new to obsess over to justify himself and try to make up for his mountain of corpses leading nowhere.

I had one idea for an AU a while ago where Griffith recovers from the torture due to magic reasons and goes really dark and starts building an army of dissatisfied peasants to overthrow Midland while it’s in a weakened state thanks to the King’s mismanagement, and get his dream back by force instead of subterfuge, and something like that would be super interesting to me. Or maybe he’d align himself and the Hawks with an enemy of Midland and start a new war.

Anyway more specifically about Guts and Griffith’s relationship, I think a likely possibility would be that Guts has his realization that leaving was a bad idea and Griffith was already in love with him as proven by the whole threw his life away over him thing, and says something about it. Tells Griffith why he left and asks if Rickert and co are right about Griffith fucking up because of him, or something. And I could see Guts starting that conversation and explaining himself the way he didn’t in canon if everything didn’t go straight to hell right after Guts had his final proper “oh I really shouldn’t have left,” moment.

Griffith could answer honestly if he’s already accepted his overwhelming feelings for Guts to some extent, which I think is possible. Like the monologue came after a year of torture but even on the first day in chapter 39 I think it’s strongly implied that Griffith is very aware he’s in that dungeon because he fell to pieces over Guts. I think he hates himself for it, but he knows it, and knowing is half the battle lol. I think this is more likely if Guts has already explained why he left, and said he’s not planning to leave again.

And then they live happily ever after. Griffith might still have dream/ambition issues like I mentioned above, but eventually, maybe slowly but eventually, with Guts’ love he’d ease up on the self loathing a little and find some peace. Maybe if he does the fucked up Midland vendetta thing he reaches a point where he has to choose between that and Guts and chooses Guts and it’s satisfying and climactic. Or maybe he just goes back to being an ordinary mercenary leader and slowly learns not to hate himself over it. Guts, for his part, stops fighting as a coping mechanism and starts fighting for the sake of his comrades again and lives a pretty chill happy life.

Conversely I could also see Griffith just straight up denying his feelings if asked, especially if he does think Guts might leave again. Maybe he thinks telling Guts his feelings won’t change anything and will only make Guts pity him. Maybe Guts explained why he left (because I wanted a dream too to be your equal blah blah blah) and what Griffith takes from it is that he’s lost the one thing Guts admired about him and now he’s nothing. Or maybe Griffith is terrified of how devastating Guts is to him and actively wants to cut him out of his life.

For whatever reason, if Griff did deny it Guts would 100% believe him no matter how much evidence to the contrary is staring him in the face, and they’d be back at square one lol. Guts would go back on his dumb journey and Griffith would go back to mercenarying but in a probably borderline suicidal way now and they’d both get themselves killed on the battlefield far apart from each other.

But yk, the first option is probably more fun lol.

[eolewyn1010]

3 seasons of Charité - upsides and downsides

Includes spoilers for all three seasons!

What I like about Charité, season 1:

- Ida is a relatable and stubborn woman, and while I think the protagonists of the newer two seasons are written better and more interestingly, she makes for a good central character

- Behring is great to watch, complex, enthusiastic, arrogant, passionate, desperately forlorn, sweetly encouraging, irascible, honest, and I’m always torn between loving and hating him with all my heart

- he also stands in for how badly society was suited to handle people with psychological issues back in the day

-  actually, none of the characters are simple or one-sided; expectations are often subverted – Behring is not heartless, but he can’t just be “saved” either, neither Koch nor Virchow are as benign as they seem at first, Tischendorf is not the sweet young Prince Charming who’ll give Ida the dream life she deserves, Hedwig is not a brainless little floozie with no deeper thoughts or feelings, neither Therese nor Martha are all the strict boss ladies they want to be, Edith is not just a snotty bitch etc.

- medical history of that time, a blunt look on methods and circumstances

- the rivalry between the doctors; it’s fun to watch them passive-aggressively piss on each other

- the staging of the Tuberculin scandal was really effective, with all the hyping, the downfall and the consequences

- we get sweethearts! Stine is a sweetheart, Else is a sweetheart, Therese is a sweetheart, Dr. Kitasato is a sweetheart, and most of all Dr. Ehrlich. I like kind people, ok? Especially in a setting where so many people are asses

- the music is atmospheric and quite nice

- despite two options of marriage, the female protagonist remains single and gets to focus on her career, even in a time and setting that’s not supportive

- I’m having a blast with Minckwitz – he’s such a bitch, I love it

What I hate:

- the lesbian dies for no good reason

- did our main character really have to be a tragic, left-all-alone orphan in debts? Would you like some cheese with that whine?

- the big, hammy speeches get on my nerves after a while

- my sweet lesbian Therese dies, awfully, of frickin’ tuberculosis

- say what you will, Ida and Behring could have made it work; I think they would have been good for each other. Kinda disappointed

- Else Spinola deserved better

- poor Therese dies, thinking that God punishes her for being in love with Ida

- those weird slo-mo shots between scenes don’t serve any purpose

- what’s with the random fortuneteller scene? What was that good for?

- THERESE DIES! We go with f***king Bury Your Gays??? F*** YOU!

_________________________________

What I like about Charité, season 2:

- Anni and Dr. Sauerbruch – different than with Ida, we get two focal characters who aren’t presented as doubtlessly morally good. On the contrary, Anni starts out as quite the happy-go-lucky little Nazi follower – and then we get all the character development; hell yeah!

- Anni chooses to keep and raise her disabled baby herself, come hell or high water; damn, she fights for that kid. And Martin is positive disabled representation, too – thanks for giving me a handicapped veteran who’s not a bitter, drunk wreck just whining about what a cripple he is! He’s got a grip on his life, and the leg only ever comes up on three occasions; it doesn’t define him

- Otto, Martin, Doc Jung, Margot, Maria Fritsch and Kolbe are more clearly positive characters, but they aren’t one-sided, either – like, Otto plays that bright sunshine, but there’s so much seething in him. My sweet baby boy

- same for the negative characters, because they aren’t flat either; Artur, de Crinis and Christel are super interesting, all different levels between quiet, only semi-aware compliance and full-on, not-so-blind fanaticism. Gawd, those shitheads, but they’re fascinating to watch

- all them relationships – Margot-Ferdinand, Otto-Martin, Otto-Anni, Artur-Anni, Margot-Doc Jung, Ferdinand-Doc Jung, Anni-de Crinis, Bessau-Artur, Martin-Christel, Otto-Christel, Anni-Martin… there are so many interplays, so many dynamics that influence each other! SO many layers!

- the acting is better, I think; the characters altogether feel less wooden, much more human than the first time around – perhaps because it’s not 19th century manners anymore now, I dunno; I’m getting really emotional over shit, and I love it

- incorporation of the political and social situation into the hospital setting – much more than in the first season, the state ideology influences the way the doctors can do their work, and many of them do their best to still hold onto their duty when everything around them falls apart, which is beautiful

- power struggles between the characters in charge and ideological / political nuances are more subtle; nothing is black and white

- but there’s nothing subtle about the presentation of Nazi crimes and how many people actually just went along willingly – that cold bluntness is just what that subject needs

- interactions with patients are better this time; they’re more now than passive, pitiable creatures who quietly die their way, they’re characters with their own minds and drives (Lohmann, Magda Goebbels, Hans von Dohnanyi, even Emil)

- the music is even better than the first time around, I love it – so gentle most of the time, but it can also really help to build the tension

- we get a very sweet, functioning queer romance between characters who consist of more than “well, they’re gay and it troubles them”, and they both live – THANK YOU for learning your lesson; there was no good reason to have the gay character die, so Otto and Martin get a happy end. Was that so difficult?

What I hate:

- Yrsa von Leistner is so effing random. Who the hell wrote this? If you can’t incorporate a character properly, why bother including them in the first place?

- the passivity and anonymity of the disabled children – why didn’t Artur or Anni ever get to perceive one of them as a person? That girl Traudel for example, Anni could have talked to her

- there’s a slight tendency to “I’ll just tell the character next to me” exposition – Artur when he and Anni wake up together that one morning (why wouldn’t Anni know yet what he’s working on? That long-winded explaining sentence just came off as awkward), Peter Sauerbruch to Margot about the Dohnanyis and Bonhoeffers

_________________________________

What I like about Charité, season 3:

- I’m all pro ProPro! Honestly, that man is a treat, both how the character is written and how the actor carries the situations and interactions he’s in. He’s arrogant and narcissistic, but he’s also principled, insightful and caring, unpolitical in a smart way and honest in a quiet way, and he gets how people are, and his mentorship of Ella, how he supports and encourages her and also bluntly gives her the dressing-down she needs, is a thing of beauty. And that she has to earn his attention first

- I have a personal soft spot for the scene where ProPro is doing his sports and going jogging while talking with Ella, and then just has her run along. That man’s hilarious, I love him

- Ella’s spirited, and while I don’t love the protagonists of this season as much as those of the second, she’s still great in her own right – the dedication to her research, the strength with which she handles the shit that’s thrown at her

- everyone’s so snarky!

- the wider focus on medical history and research; we see a lot past surgery now

- everyone’s taking shit in stride – staff is running off to the West? Ok; rest gets double shifts. We don’t have a senior doctor on the ward this morning anymore? We do shit ourselves. An illness we’re not prepared to treat anymore because, actually, there should be vaccination enough? We’ll make do. I love that spirit

- positive disabled representation! Rapoport’s daughter actually interacts with people, is presented as a person, has dreams and strengths and can handle her issues – yes, please!

- we get an intersex character, not for long and the story isn’t treated with the care and attention it should have, but props for the effort, I guess

- the setting allows for Ella to focus fully on her work and passion, not really giving much on romance and marriage without that seeming out of place – Ida’s conversations most often revolved around a man, Anni was considered a Nazi role model for being married and a mother, but Ella, while the relationship with Kurt is an option, never prioritizes this and never needs it

- personally, I’m smelling threesome subtext between Ella, Kurt and Alex Nowack – that may just be me, but I like it

- how everyone handles situations, how the changes happening in the country are incorporated into the world the characters live in, how they are able to cope with stuff and make decisions, in the end even without shifting blame

- even more so than in season 2, I really like how human the patients and their relatives are, that interacting with them in the right way is made an important part of the doctors’ work, even when some of the patients are asses

What I hate:

- people are mumbling – it’s not dialects, it’s not accents; they’re mumbling. They never were in the first two seasons

- the cancer stories were really no favorite of mine; what’s with the teary melodrama and the sudden gory shock value? Come on, Charité, you can do better. Presenting the human side of everything has always been the strength of this series, so why going so overboard now?

- I dunno, the crime cases ProPro investigates don’t seem to be incorporated that well? I suppose they’re there to establish his main field of pathology, but they spend a lot of time on that “Biter” case, and I’m not sure why

- would have been nice if Inge Rapoport had gotten to interact a bit with important characters other than her husband, Arianna and Kraatz – she’s a lovable, strong female character; why keep her so one-sided?

- what’s with the black’n’white painting? You showed us how conflicted and nuanced people under the Nazi regime could be; why now the clear line between “those people are good” and “that one sold his soul to the Party”?

- you show us an intersex person, introduce her as a character, make us sympathize, show us her hindrances and possibilities – and then she’s just gone? What about her treatment? Positive development? Making Kraatz’ interactions with her a counterpoint to his interactions with Doc Rapoport? What WAS that?

[miaouerie]

whumptober 2020 ------ day 31. left for dead

@whumptober2020​  Rebelcaptain Hunger Games AU: Cassian is Jyn’s mentor in the 70th Hunger Games. After being crowned victor at fifteen years old, Cassian is all-too-familiar with what it takes to bring a tribute home, and what becoming a victor really means.

content warnings: implied/referenced torture, mentions of attempted suicide, referenced brainwashing/conditioning, nonconsensual body modification, references to forced prostitution, references to forced drug use, unhappy/ambiguous ending

A/N: if downer endings aren’t quite your thing, I’ve written an alternate ending here, as well as additional author’s notes in a coda here. this is my first completed multichapter and thank you to everyone who has kept up with this story! any additional fics in this verse will be posted to my ao3.

previous: day 1 / 2  / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15  / 16  / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / → read on AO3

When Draven gets the call to escort Cassian from the Remake Center back to their district floor in the Tributes’ Tower and stand by for a forthcoming itinerary, he doesn’t need to see his charge to know that something fundamentally wrong has happened.

The last time his schedule began with picking up Cassian from the Remake Center was that period of time after his father died, which Draven now knows the truth about. But at the time he had been told that after Jeron Andor and Irga Torres were killed in a power plant explosion that a seditioner was blamed for, Cassian tried to kill himself out of grief. After two weeks in the Capitol of being monitored in extensive in-patient therapy, he was turned over to Draven to be ushered through the media press tour for his father’s death.

How Cassian behaved back then is eerily similar to how he presently is in Draven’s custody. He’s sitting in the backseat and relaxed against the headrest, but Draven has known Cassian long enough that the lines of stress pinning him in place are plain to see. His hands folded, in his lap. Facing forward, staring ahead at nothing. A tic in his jaw, barely perceptible but one that Draven catches all the same.

But what disturbs Draven are his eyes. Unlike that first time Draven picked him up from the Remake Center, they aren’t pained or filled with misery. They’re empty, in an unrecognizable way that Draven has never seen in him before.

After furtively investigating the intendance records kept of his charge for the past four years, Draven knows what really happens when Cassian is brought to the Capitol for ‘extensive in-patient therapy’. But for a brief moment he feels something revoltingly similar to gratitude that Cassian’s conditioning is strict about needless eye contact.

-

Next morning’s briefing packet sent to his datapad has a subfolder tagged with “SENSITIVE INFORMATION: DO NOT DISCLOSE,” to be unlocked with a retinal scan. It’s a copy of Jyn Erso’s medical record and an image of a bedside chart; last night she was transported from District 5 to an elite hospital in the Capitol for treatment of a stubborn respiratory illness.

Draven knew better than to ask questions—those who did had their tongues cut out and turned into Avoxes—but he quietly looks into the matter himself while performing his job’s duties for Cassian, whose schedule is booking up like it did during the Games. Taking every precaution available to avoid detection prolongs the search, but eventually he is able to determine that Jyn’s condition is a lie. That there is no proof that Jyn is even in the Capitol.

And then, he realizes, they must not know where she is at all.

-

Cassian’s body language used to telegraph his condition after an appointment but he doesn’t seem capable of it anymore. Nowadays, no matter how badly he’s been abused by a client, the posture he affects in the car is always the same: his hands folded, in his lap. Facing forward, staring ahead at nothing. A tic in his jaw, barely perceptible.

Whatever they had Cassian relearn in therapy included perfecting his talents as an obedient whore, so he’s not often returned in a state of intoxication as he once had to be. But it’s during those increasingly rare times—and only those times—that his tongue is loosened enough to let slip some of the perpetual torment he has to live with as punishment, because of Jyn Erso’s disappearance.

It’s one such night that Draven picks up Cassian at 03:01. After the car pulls away from the curb Cassian is still for a moment, before he heaves out a shuddery breath and his arms slump to his sides.

“Did you know they made it so I can’t say her name anymore?”

The words and their meaning take a moment to register with Draven. Then he says, “What?”

“No… I don’t think they would have told you. But I mean, her. My tribute. The one I saved.”

He can only be talking about Jyn Erso. Draven doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t have to; tonight, Cassian is giving voice to another painful truth.

“They asked me questions about her, had me read sentences aloud… made me give responses with her name in it. And they would hurt me, every single time I said it, so I can’t say it. Not without pain. Not anymore.”

His raspy confession is made to the silence. “Her name was like a prayer to me. Snow must have noticed, so he took it away.” A broken chuckle. “I didn’t think something like that was possible. But, they made me learn.”

Draven doesn’t know if he should be hearing this. But when he turns to give his full attention to his charge it’s like a switch is flipped. When their eyes meet Cassian’s eyes widen before he bolts himself back into place—hands back in his lap and looking straight forward.

The only thing betraying his vulnerability are the tears in his eyes.

-

It should not surprise Draven that Cassian tries to kill himself not long after that lapse in conduct, but it still does. At least, it’s a surprise in the sense that finding out a peer of two decades attempted suicide will always come as a surprise.

The Peacekeepers come when Draven is in the sitting room, waiting for Cassian to finish showering before Kay and his prep team arrive. One moment there’s the ding of the elevator arriving on their floor and in the next, six Peacekeepers are storming in.

Draven knows better than to demand answers in the heat of the moment so he stays out of their way, listens to the sound of the bathroom door breaking and boots stomping over shattered glass, listens to the sound of Cassian’s—frankly animalistic—screams as he’s subdued, and stays out of the way once again when they drag him out naked and wet and dripping blood from his arms and neck. They stand him there until a Peacekeeper returns from the bathroom with a dark fluffy green bathrobe for his modesty, and then he’s taken away.

When they make fleeting eye contact Draven is struck by the scathing accusation in his charge’s eyes. He wasn’t the one who called for the Peacekeepers but Cassian doesn’t know that, and Draven knows what it looks like. But there’s nothing he can say to Cassian in any case, nothing that can change the outcome of whatever has been decided to change next about him.  

-

Draven is scheduled to pick up Cassian from the Remake Center two weeks later. He has to walk into the lobby because the lead cognitive remake specialist has requested to talk to him, to show and demonstrate Cassian’s new implant.

It’s a very thin line of a scar on the back of Cassian’s neck, invisible to the naked eye but Draven can feel it when he brushes his fingers over the skin; beneath is a subdermal neuro-electrical node, grafted onto the nerves there. The specialist explains that when activated, it prevents Cassian from making sudden or any ‘suspiciously motivated’ movements. The remote that they give to Draven is for disabling it. Later on, Draven is assigned the responsibility of disabling its function for Cassian’s appointments as well as reenabling it after each one in turn.

Neither says a word as they get into the waiting car. They don’t speak for the whole car ride back, either. But more than once Draven sees Cassian’s hand creep to the back of his neck; his fingers slowly brush the scar tissue, before his hand is carefully guided back to his lap.

-

It proves very challenging to track where Cassian had been taken after his suicide attempt; Draven is always diligent about maintaining stealth when conducting these probes, but the seriousness of the situation called for significant preventive precautions to be taken. But once he succeeded…

…Then what?

He was able to determine that Cassian was taken to the same complex—in truth, one of several privately held black site facilities—for another two weeks of ‘in-patient therapy’ before he was transferred to the Remake Center. His process uncovered an entire network of similar private corporations and entities that operated under the purview of the government, all funded by the Hunger Games division for one apparent purpose: the victors’ covert diversion program.

But this devastative information only came about as a consequence from his attempts to satisfy an aberrant concern for Cassian’s whereabouts; Draven wasn’t planning on actively doing anything with it. Even the thought alone is treasonous: believing that victors deserved anything less than the hell that came pursuant on winning the Games was just a step below believing that the districts of Panem deserved anything more than the destitution and squalor left to them after the Dark Days. The victors’ diversion program was devised and implemented to prevent victors from believing that winning the Games meant anything other than being punished for it. Repeatedly. Because even if a new victor is crowned every year, the real winner of the Hunger Games will always remain the Capitol.

This is what Draven has always known. But then… there was Cassian.

He had come to know the boy at six years old, the first year Draven received the assignment to escort not only Irga and Jeron to the town plaza for District 5′s reaping, but the latter’s wife and son as well. Only one of the two living District 5 victors had a family, and now that Cassian was old enough to understand how to behave the Games producers wanted reaction shots of Jeron’s wife and child.

Their acquaintance proceeded as such—twice a year Draven saw the Andor boy, first at the reaping and again when escorting Jeron and Irga home after the closing ceremonies. Though he chose not to indulge in the sentiment, seeing Cassian grow up through the years in such a manner often left Draven with a feeling similar to how he felt after visiting with once-a-year relatives during Wintermas.

After Cassian was reaped and won his Games, Draven’s duties as District 5’s escort were officially recategorized with Cassian as his primary charge, relegating Jeron and Irga to second priority; if they needed to be chaperoned somewhere while he was with Cassian, there was express authorization to send a number of Peacekeepers to complete the task. But for the purpose that President Snow intended to use Cassian for, only a Games escort with discretionary expertise could do.

Draven’s choice of career tended to attract a lot of airheads and grifters, those who relished in schmoozing up sponsors or otherwise gunning for a glimpse of the glory and glamor awarded to a winning victor’s support team. But Draven derived his dedication to the job solely from esteem in his own competence; perhaps that was why the president believed his silence on Cassian being groomed and Jeron remaining unaware of it was guaranteed.

Did the president, in all of his scheming, ever consider the possibility of Draven going rogue? But even if he did tell Jeron of what President Snow was doing to his son it wouldn’t have changed the outcome; Cassian’s placement into a mentoring position could only be accomplished by leaving District 5’s mentorship short of a victor. Plus, he would have had his tongue cut out and turned into an Avox if Snow found out; if Peacekeepers were dispatched to interrupt Cassian’s suicide attempt quickly enough to thwart it, his treachery would have inevitably been discovered.

And where would that leave Cassian?

Another escort would be assigned, one who didn’t mind enabling Cassian after an assignment when he comes back horny and drunk or high, or in the mood for taking out his self-loathing on the only person available. Those moments of weakness never failed to stun Draven with their impact—they were cruel reminders of the fact that he is the only person in the Capitol who sees what became of a tormented boy, now constrained to his life as a tormented prisoner.

But Cassian’s new conditioning doesn’t seem to allow for any moments of weakness. Or rather, the implant doesn’t. His movements are mechanized and deliberate, calculated to avoid triggering the parameters for a shock, yet fluid enough that evidently he was put through his paces by his captors. Until he was well-trained, and conditioned, and became devoid of any expression at all.

Suffice to say, they don’t talk anymore. What is there left to say? Nothing, not until Draven receives an update on Jyn Erso’s health status. Then a personal summons to President Snow’s office.

-

The president and a trio of his advisors are waiting for Draven. The situation with District 5’s new victor has turned  critical; even with the Capitol’s elite medical advancements, Jyn is not responding well to treatment.

Draven knows it’s all lies but he agrees along with their assessment. Jyn’s untimely death before the Victory Tour may be unavoidable, and the Capitol needs to control the story behind the cause to control the public’s reaction to her death. Her condition has been kept secret in anticipation of this very situation; several contingency plans to stage been drawn up, each optimized to account for potential blowback between the Capitol and the districts.

While each plan is pitched to weather Snow’s criticism, Draven doesn’t let any confusion or concern cross his face. Not when the president’s snakelike eyes are on his every time Draven chances a glance. He knows Snow is observing his reaction to this authoritarian show of might—whatever choice is made here will have a ripple effect throughout all of Panem, going much further than the conflict between President Snow and the victors of District 5. Expectably, Draven isn’t asked for any input, but he knows that’s not what he’s been called here for.

After the advisors are dismissed Draven stands alone, a respectable distance away in front of Snow sitting at his desk; the president watches him awhile before he speaks. “So, Davits. You understand how imperative it is that we control the narrative, not just here within the Capitol but in the rest of Panem.”

“Of course, Mister President.”

“I’m sure, then, you understand the necessity of what was done to Cassian.” Snow gets up from behind his desk, circling around to lean against the dark mahogany facade with his arms crossed. His stance is still threatening despite its casual assertion; Draven almost takes a step back but he remains standing where he is.

“Jeron Andor mistakenly believed that he had enough power to take matters into his own hands; it can be only him who passed along the concept to young Cassian. One would think that his father’s fate taught him that attempting to do so can only end in tragedy. And yes,” he says in answer to the sudden clench of fear in Draven’s chest, “I’ve been made aware of your interloping efforts regarding Jeron and Miss Torres’ deaths. I concede that it was not a deception that accounted for close scrutiny. Rest assured that when your inquests were discovered, the advisor and those responsible for implementing the proposal were swiftly executed.”  

The president continues, “I will not question your motives for investigating the matter. I am not commending your capabilities in doing so, either. But understand this: there is nothing for you to do here except your assigned function as District 5’s escort. Nothing less, and nothing more. An unfathomably simple request, yet if only Cassian had performed his role in the same capacity his implant would not have been deemed necessary. Undoubtedly you agree that rebellious actions such as his merit consequences tailored to their severity.”

Draven’s throat is dry but his voice remains steady. “Indeed, sir.”

Snow straightens himself upright. They’re both tall people but he does have an inch on Draven in height, and his next words are spoken in a voice both paternalistic and contemptuous. “No further harm has to befall the boy, but it will be your future discretion which will determine that. Now, have I made your situation clear?”

-

Snow doesn’t know the entirety of what Draven knows about the victor diversion program then. Yet. It may only be a matter of time before Peacekeepers are at his door. They wouldn’t kidnap him for ‘extensive in-patient therapy’, not when a bullet to the head would be quicker, cleaner, and most effectively ensure his silence.

There’s only one road for him to take now; he can no longer abide by what the Capitol is allowed to demand from Cassian, not when they claw for everything within reach to cement his enslavement.

Where will his charge be a year from now, or three? What else can they take from him?

How did Jeron live through nineteen years of this feeling?

It should feel daunting; the thought only registers later that night after Cassian is dropped off at the Tower and Draven is heading home. That finding a way to save Cassian will take everything he’s got, in order to go against everything he’s ever known. But Draven did not get this far in his life by second-guessing his choices, and he has never been so sure of one thing.

The next certainty is this: he’s got to find Jyn Erso.

[marcogtej778]

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[littleteatimestories]

[MTMTE] Prowl x Fem! Reader x Fortress Maximus:  Just Your Friend (There Could Have Been More)

A/N: Phew! Here’s another reader-insert for all ye MTMTE fans! I had this story in mind already ever since I read the last issue of MTMTE. The story is basically the same; just added some tweaks of here and there so that we could insert ourselves in the story, hehe. Enjoy this one! I still have a few stories in the works and, this time, all of them are in the TFA continuity.

GREAT NEWS! I created an AO3 account: moreteatimestories. This is for easier navigation and reading in case Tumblr decided to go haywire on you.

-

“You care for him so much. That only means you may be his... sparkmate,” Sentinel Prime said, peering at you holding a now dead Prowl in your arms.

Cerebros remarked worriedly, “Sentinel, he’s your friend, for Primus’s sake! Aren’t you even bothered that he’s dead?”

Sentinel only laughed devilishly. “I don’t care even the slightest if he’s dead. He’s a fool, anyway.”

“How dare you!” you shouted angrily. “How can you be so cruel! I don’t even know how you’re still alive!”

“Yeah, Sentinel,” Cerebros concurred. “You were supposed to be dead. What happened?”

“Oh? Now you want to know? I’m more than happy to tell you.”

Meanwhile, Fortress Maximus and Red Alert were having a scuffle with one another, Fort Max being too distracted. He can’t help, but look at you holding Prowl in your arms. He admitted to himself that he felt... jealous.

When he decided to come back to Cybertron on his own (and be stationed in Luna-1), you became his new psychiatrist. While he commended Rung for being a great one, he felt more at ease with you. You were always smiling and you wouldn’t push him to answer if he seemed uncomfortable with some questions. It was like you treated him as a trusted friend. You were patient, too. These qualities what made him fall for you.

However, the pining was the only thing he can give. You and Prowl are sparkmates (not yet a Conjunx) and Fort Max knew he can and will never have your spark (heart, in your case).

He was still lovingly gazing at you. Prowl was one lucky mech...

THOK!

He fell on the ground, his optical vision fizzing temporarily.

“Why aren’t you fighting back?!” Red Alert taunted.

Fort Max grunted. “Maybe because I didn’t want to hurt you, obviously. You’re a friend, Red!” He partially lied.

Red Alert flew another punch, but Fort Max was able to take hold of his fist. However, he didn’t counter an attack and instead pushed him forcefully.

Going back to your case, Sentinel finally explained his ‘reincarnation’ and his grand scheme of taking Cybertron to a new form of glory.

“Actually, I don’t mind taking a queen with me as I mold a new Cybertron!” He held your arm tightly.

“What?! No...! Stop! I am not yours to take!” you screamed as he tried to pull you away from your lover.

“Sentinel, be reasonable!” Cerebros coaxed. “Whatever happened, this is not you.”

Sentinel ignored him as he pried you away from Prowl. You thrashed, pulling yourself from him. “Let me go!”

He shifted his hold to both of your wrists as he closed the proximity between you and looked at your eyes.

“This would be easier if you’re not struggling so much, sweetspark.”

“I hate you,” you muttered loudly.

Suddenly, Sentinel groaned painfully loud as he released your wrists. You moved backwards to witness the ex-Prime falling on his one knee joint and a medium-sized hole on his shoulder plate.

“First of all, she is NOT your sweetspark. And secondly, if you want a bot to actually die, make sure they’re DEAD. For REAL.”

You could shed some tears of contentment as you heard and saw Prowl. “Prowl!” You ran to him and enveloped him in your embrace. He returned it, but more protectively.

“Prowl! Thank Primus it worked!” Cerebros cheered.

“Ah, so you lived? No matter. I’ll just finish all of you!” Sentinel growled fiercely.

Prowl shot him again and this disabled Sentinel for the time being. He then announced, “We’re going NOW. Fort Max! Let’s go!”

Said Autobot pushed Red Alert forcefully. “But, if we go, Sentinel will-“

“Just trust me and let’s go. He won’t do anything for a while.” He peered at you with his now one optic. “Ride with me, sweetspark.” He got hold of your hand and used the still functioning M.A.R.B.S. to flee for the meantime.

***

“Are you alright, Prowl? You looked like in pain,” you worriedly said.

“It’s just my helm. I don’t know why I’m having a processor-ache,” he answered.

“Oh! Lemme explain that!” Cerebros briefly explained how he ‘revived’ Prowl and this made the latter feel resentment.

“Do you want to know how much I HATED being controlled?! Being manipulated?! I have mental and physical scars when it comes to that. Give me one good reason that I won’t kill you right now!”

You interrupted him by gripping his arm plate. “Prowl, enough! Cerebros was just trying to save you. He didn’t mean to do it. Just calm yourself down. You know I’m always here for you if you feel those scars again.”

He shook and composed himself. He removed your hold and went to one side for now. He spoke, “Give me a few nanokliks to process everything.”

You huffed quietly and shifted your attention to Fortress Maximus. You weren’t able to notice him since your mind was occupied by your lover being dead (and thank Primus he wasn’t). You approached him in another room, seemingly tinkering on some device with Beak on it.

“Hey, Max,” you called.

His spark jumped upon hearing your voice. He turned to you at once.

“(Y/-Y/n)...!” he stammered.

“Just wanted to check up on you. I know Red Alert is a friend and it must have hurt you seeing him fighting all of us.”

Well, yes, it did, but what was more hurting for him was the fact that he could be protecting you from Sentinel instead. Plus, the fact that he can’t have you. Just witnessing you worrying Prowl like that made his spark ache. He wished that you would fret over him like that of Prowl. But, of course, that was just wishful thinking.

“Max, are you sure you’re okay?” you tried to coax him to answer.

He gazed at you for a moment. You were so beautiful in the optics (well, in his optics, that is) and all he could do was just the pining.

He replied nonetheless, “I’m fine. I’m sure there’s a way for Red Alert to snap out of it.”

You gave a small smile and that warmed Fort Max’s cheek plates. He always loved that upward curve of your lips.

“I’m your friend, Max. If you need me, I’ll be there no matter what.”

Right... Friend... You two were just FRIENDS and that was as far as your relationship can go. Fort Max, once again, wished there was something more.

All he ever said back was, “If you also need anything, I’ll be there. ALWAYS.” He emphasized the last word. No matter what he was doing, be it fighting Decepticons or any other life forms, he’ll be there. Because it’s you whom he will protect and take care of. Because if he was to admit, he LOVES you too much. Be damned if you and Prowl were together. He will never stop loving you because you made him feel safe. You made him feel HOME.

Prowl’s vocal chords echoed in the room. He was panicking as he entered. “Red Alert shot me! He shot me! That damn double-crossing, hypocritical bastard shot me!”

You hushed him. “Prowl, again, calm down.”

He held his helm and grumbled. “Sorry, sweetspark. It’s just that... All these catching up is making my processor hurt.”

“How’s about I make it simple?” Cerebros presented. “All you need to know is that Sentinel is planning to open a portal to Cybertron. And the plan is to commandeer this Titan we are in so that we could stop the other Titans passing through the portal.”

“Except there’s only one problem,” Fort Max declared. “This device won’t budge. It’s a release mechanism. I can’t flip it over. It’s stuck.”

Prowl growled. “Step aside.”

Fort Max raised an optic ridge. “No offense, Prowl, but if I can’t move it, I don’t think-“

“You just haven’t had the practice.” The police officer flipped the switch with ease.

***

“You stay here, sweetspark. I’ll be more at ease if you’re here,” Prowl stated.

You frowned. You always hated being left behind and being able to do nothing. “But, Prowl...”

“(Y/n), no. I’m not letting that bastard Sentinel have his servos on you.”

“Alright...” you finally gave way as you bowed your head.

“Hey.” Prowl lifted your chin. Before you can even look at him, his lips gently crashed onto yours. It was a surprise to you so you couldn’t react as he removed his lips and gazed at you adoringly. “I love you.”

You were able to register his words as you whispered back, “I love you, too.”

Fortress Maximus, sadly, saw the whole action. His spark, once again, hurt. He always wondered how your luscious lips would feel on his own. That would be so comforting. He snapped on his thinking when Prowl called at him.

“Fort Max, I’ll be leaving (Y/n) here. Make sure she’s not hurt while you’re trying to control this Titan.”

Now that was like underestimating him. If that glitch-head knew how much he loves you more than his life, he’ll definitely finish the job without having a scratch on you.

You assured the both of them, “I know how to watch myself, thank you very much. You don’t need to worry over me. I’ll make sure to hold onto something when things get rough.”

“I’m going now.” Prowl kissed your forehead for the last time.

‘Lucky bastard,’ Fort Max mused.

***

“You’ll be fine, Red. Judging from your answers so far, you still seemed unease, but eventually, you’ll be able to overcome it,” you shared to Red Alert.

Said mech ex-vented. “That’s good to know, (Y/n).”

It had been three solar cycles now ever since Sentinel finally met his demise. Prowl and the others were able to save Cybertron from the Titans.

Speaking of the police officer, he and Fortress Maximus took Sovereign back to Earth. It hadn’t been that long, but you already wanted to see him. Your mech has been through a lot, even losing his one good optic.

“And, we’re back!” Prowl announced.

Your smile widened upon hearing his voice as you quickly approached him.

“Welcome back!” you happily exclaimed as you hugged him.

Fort Max diverted his optics away from the two of you as he walked away to a room. Red Alert followed him.

“So... Did you tell her?” he asked.

“Tell her what, Red?” Fort Max replied with a question as if he knew nothing what his friend was referring to.

“You know what I mean, Max.”

The large Autobot ex-vented. “There’s no point, Red. She’s already taken. From the way I see it, she and Prowl deeply love each other.”

Red Alert raised an optic ridge. “So, what now? You’re just going to do the pining while they canoodle here and there?”

“Do I really have a choice?” Fort Max turned to face him. “I’m not some bot who’ll break their relationship just because he and I love the same femme.” He lowered his helm. “She was already with Prowl the moment I came back in Cybertron. I’m contented to be just there for her whenever she needs me.”

“Well, I guess that’s good enough. But, word of advice, don’t get too attached. Don’t want you get hurting again.”

“I’m already hurt, Red. Emotionally. Seeing the love of your life being whisked away by another mech…”

Red Alert patted his friend’s large shoulder plate. “‘Least she gets a guardian to protect her no matter what.”

Fort Max just gave a small beam.

[rickmphc364]

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Table of ContentsHow Teaching Phonics To 1st Graders are Changing the WorldPhonics And Decoding are Taking OverAll The Things How To Teach Phonics To Kids At Home Has Changed

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If you're the moms and dad of a beginning reader, opportunities are you're hearing a lot about phonics. Here's what you require to know about how your child will find out phonics, and how you can help teach phonics at home. For more book and reading concepts, Phonics is understanding that noises and letters have a relationship.

Phonics uses starting readers the strategies they need to sound out words. For instance, kids learn that the letter D has the sound of "d" as in "doll." Then they discover how to blend letter sounds together to make words like pet dog. In order for kids to comprehend what they check out, they need to be able to do it rapidly and immediately, without stumbling over words.

Systematically and sequentially. Teachers offer kids plenty of practice before carrying on. Your child will read short, easy books, containing the particular letter sounds or words they're dealing with. You can assist them practice by supplying comparable books in your home, such as those in this PAW Patrol Phonics Box Set.

Ask how you can highlight phonics and reading beyond class, and share any issues you have. Listen to your child read daily. If your kid stumbles on a word, encourage them to sound it out. But if they still can't get it, offer the word so they do not get discouraged.

Ask questions like, "What do you think will happen next?" or "What did he indicate by that?" Here are more great concerns to ask during story time. Revisit familiar books. It's alright if your child wishes to re-read preferred books from earlier years. In truth, it's really advantageous! Check out aloud.

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Spread out the joy. Show your child just how much you worth reading by having a lot of books and magazines around your house. You'll teach phonics as well as cultivate a long-lasting love of reading. Shop these fantastic phonics box sets to get going! You can find all books and activities at The Scholastic Shop.

This seasonal classic is an enjoyable way to get some phonics practice in. You can adjust it to state "I spy with my little eye something starting with" and state a sound rather than a letter. If you want to work on letter recognition rather than noise, just hold up the letter itself quietly.

For instance, more youthful kids may enjoy sorting things into 2 hula hoops on the floor which are identified with their preliminary consonant noises, while older kids may work on consonant blends. Bingo is another very flexible game that can be utilized to practice sound and letter acknowledgment. Merely decide what you desire to work on and position those into suitably sized grids (9x9 works well).

If you set up some blank grids on laminated sheets, you can conserve yourself a lot of prep time too. Merely write a broad selection of sounds you are working on onto the white boards. Students can choose 9 of them to complete their laminated grid. Now each student will have their own special bingo card!Partner reading is an excellent way to practice listening abilities, along with reading.

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One partner checks out the text while the other follows closely with their own copy. The listening partner helps the reader translate difficult words when they have problem. After a time, partner's switch functions. This normally works finest when partners are of a comparable ability. You can even more differentiate here by choosing various texts to suit the capabilities of each pair.

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For beginning students it may take the kind of just spelling a fundamental CVC word together. For example, to deal with the spelling of the word cat, you could draw 3 cradles on the whiteboard and saying each sound in turn, challenge the students to come up and compose the corresponding letter in the cradle until they have actually composed the word - -.

It works on training trainees to be able to hear the numerous sounds of English, recognize these sounds, and link these sounds to the symbols we call letters. While there are other methods of learning to read utilized with emergent readers in the class, in two years of mentor I've never ever seen another method come anywhere near to phonics for overall effectiveness.

The objective of phonics guideline is to help kids discover the alphabetic principle the concept that letters represent the noises of spoken language which there is an arranged, rational, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds. Learning that there are predictable relationships between noises and letters permits children to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and to start to read with fluency.

When kids understand soundletter correspondence, they have the ability to sound out and read (decode) new words. the letter-sound relationship is taught in an organized and sounding out the letter g official website sensible sequence the guideline offers instructors with precise directions for mentor letter-sound relationships Regular opportunities for children to apply what they are learning more about letters and sounds to the reading of words, sentences, and stories Significantly improves children's word acknowledgment, spelling, and checking out understanding Is most effective when it begins in kindergarten or very first grade, but should be used as part of a comprehensive reading program with trainees at threat for reading disabilities or who have been recognized as having letter g lessons Continue a reading disability like dyslexia.

Any moms and dad who has actually tried to sound out words with a pre-reader will rapidly recognize that they have forgotten what effort it is. Brief vowels like "a" and "e" may sound alike to a young ear. Letter mixes like "sh" and "th" are difficult to describe to a child who is only recently comfy with the alphabet.

[ourimpavidheroine]

An Anniversary

Five years ago today, the 13th of February, 2015, I published, all in one shot, a piece of fanfiction called Please Excuse My Penmanship.

I hadn’t, at that point, written - never mind published - any fanfiction for over fifteen years. I had written some X-Files fanfic back in the day but I’d lost it; my backup floppies disappeared when I moved to Finland and, like just about everyone else back then, the places I had posted it to online disappeared without warning. (Toss a coin to your Archive, oh valley of plenty.) I’d been pretty torn up about losing my fic that way, which put me off writing. Time went on; I had twins in 2002 and they both turned out to have non-verbal autism and different flavors of ADD/ADHD and my life got very complicated and very difficult for a lot of years there. Writing for pleasure wasn’t even on the table.

By 2015 my life had settled a bit. My wife was disabled and suffering from severe and untreated depression and the kids were in special ed and a lot of therapies but we were managing. I had watched Avatar: The Last Airbender with my kids (on DVD - they were too young for it when it first aired) and had gone on to watch The Legend of Korra with them as well. 

I really liked Mako as a character; he was too internal and complex for most of the kids watching, however, and wasn’t well liked. Most fans saw an inflexible jerk who caused and fucked up a love triangle; what I saw was an autistic man who was suffering from pretty severe PTSD. He grabbed my interest. I related.

I really liked his dynamic with Prince Wu, despite the fact that he was a really annoying character. Queer-coded as fuck, although the showrunners were plainly ignoring it. And I started to headcanon who they would be as a couple. How to make Wu less annoying while still making him canon Wu? How to humanize Mako while still acknowledging his autism and PTSD? Headcanon was all it was, though, a way for me keep myself occupied. I’ve been writing stories inside my head as long as I can remember. It’s what I’ve always done.

I read a post on here on Tumblr where the OP stated that there was no such thing as a good Letter Fic; I thought to myself, Bet I could do it. And so in the end of January 2015 I sat down at my PC and started to type up all of my headcanon.

I went back and forth with Wu. What I first started to write was too clumsy, by half; I tried to stick to his endless slang and it was as annoying as it had ever been on the show. I knew if I stuck to that shallow, silly, stupid, canon Wu he wouldn’t be interesting to read. I struggled with it for a time until I remembered something.

My maternal grandmother told me a story once about a girl from Mexico. Claudia was her name; she was a year older than my mother. Her own mother had died when she was born; her father, who was one of my grandfather’s business partners in Mexico, had left her in the care of her grandparents, who were extraordinarily wealthy denizens of Mexico City. At some point the adults involved thought that it would be a great idea to send this girl to stay with my mother’s family to learn English; in return, my mother would then go and stay a summer in Mexico City to learn Spanish. (Which she did; she’s fluent to this day.) Claudia had no English at all but my grandmother had working Spanish and I guess they all figured it would be enough for this poor girl? 

The first day Claudia arrived in San Francisco my grandmother kindly showed her into the bathroom and told her to take a shower. My Grams realized about ten minutes or so later that the water hadn’t turned on; she went to check on her and there she was, sitting obediently on the toilet seat, fully dressed, waiting for the maid to come and undress her and turn the water on for her shower. 

She had no idea how to do either of those things for herself. She had never, at the age of thirteen, undressed herself or operated a shower. And there it was, the opening of my story. Wu remembers arriving in Republic City on the run from the Red Lotus, checking into the hotel, and having no idea whatsoever what to do next. And I thought to myself...What if he isn’t actually stupid? 

And there he was. My Wu. Just like that.

I wrote feverishly for a week, drawn into the story that was sitting in my head, waiting to be told. I didn’t have a Betareader; my wife liked my writing but rather tersely told me that TLOK wasn’t her fandom and she wasn’t interested in reading it, something that hurt me pretty deeply, especially since my X-Files fanfic was how we’d actually connected in the first place. 

(She was, at that time, in the process of slowly dying of heart failure, but I didn’t know that then.)

I wasn’t going to publish it. I just wanted to write it, to see if I still had it together after a seventeen year hiatus. Wuko wasn’t at all a popular ship; after the show finale a couple of months prior all the fanfiction being feverishly written and published was Korrasami. (In fact, I checked AO3 at the time and found exactly two Wuko fanfics, both of which were one-shots and not to my particular taste.) I went back and forth with it and then thought, Fuck it. I’ll just do it. And maybe no one will read it but at least I’ll have done it. I read it through one more time and then, on the thirteenth of February, took a deep breath, told myself to stop being a coward, and posted the entire fic at once. 

I got my first comment, and I was elated. And then I thought to myself, Well, fuck, you may as well write some of the other stuff in your head. You might learn something about yourself as a writer on the way.

Then, a few months later, on the seventeenth of June, my world fell apart. My wife, staying at our summer cottage with our twelve year old twins, died of a heart attack while the kids were off playing and I was here at home, getting ready to travel down the next day on the train to meet them all for the summer. My daughter was the one to find her; she was long past saving at that point. Family friends brought the children, our pets, and our car the two hours back home as I collapsed on the floor of our flat and rocked myself back and forth, wordlessly keening, my hands trembling uncontrollably.

The next year was unspeakable. I was a widow at forty-six; I was living in a foreign country with two disabled children, with no family or friends nearby and an imprecise grasp of the language. My wife had told me she had life insurance; she lied. I was flat broke. My grief was deep and whole and devastating; my children were traumatized and barely functioning. I had no one to help me, and I’d cook meals at midnight so my sleeping children wouldn’t hear me sobbing in the kitchen.

And I wrote.

And I wrote.

And I wrote.

I wrote out of desperation; I had to do something to keep me tethered to this world. I wrote of love and families, of a traumatized child from the street that was my daughter’s age, full of bravado and choked fury. I wrote of an autistic boy growing into a man, bullied and shunned, aching to be free, much like my own. 

I took my children to more therapists. I took myself to a therapist that turned out to be homophobic; I found another one. I made dinners; I cleaned the house, I walked in circles around my living room, whispering over and over to myself, You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay, before making another phone call.

And I wrote.

In August of 2018 my daughter attempted suicide and was hospitalized. I was trying to write I Do Not Ask The Night For Explanations and I had to stop. I had severe panic attacks whenever I tried to work on it. I brought her home and I cut my work hours down to four hours a week so that I could be with her at all times; she wasn’t safe to be left alone. I cared for her. I cared for her twin, who was terrified, unable to sleep, afraid that if he wasn’t watching her she’d try it again. I fought until I got them different therapists. I stopped sleeping. My health suffered.

And I wrote. When I could. It was, without any doubt at all, the only thing that was keeping me going during that time. I would tell myself that I had to keep going, that I still had so much of this story in my head, I needed to get it out. Sometimes I would write while sobbing. Sometimes I would sit here at my desk and nothing would come. I just kept going, though.

It’s better now. She missed most of last year of school and is making it up this year and doing so well. Her brother is at a new school and has, for the first time in his life, made friends. I was able, in December, to actually leave them for three days; the first time I had been away from them since we lost their mother. 

They’ll be eighteen this summer and we’re finally able to breathe. We’re moving forward, the three of us. We’re still broken, but we’re making something new out of the pieces instead of trying to put them back together.

My writing is what saved me. It wasn’t about how many hits/comments/kudos I got; I appreciate every single one I get, believe me. But the writing was making me hold myself accountable, making myself get out of bed, get dressed, brush my hair and teeth, sit down and try. Sometimes that was all I could manage; the writing just wasn’t happening. But it gave me a goal when I needed one. And boy, did I need one.

Thank you all for reading. For those of you that have been there since the beginning and those who just started reading now. For those who faded away from the fandom over time or who left because they didn’t like how the story was going; I wish you well and thanks for reading when you did. Thank you for the hits and the kudos and the comments. You may not have known you were helping to save me, but you were. So thank you.

I am not done writing yet. I am not oblivious; I know I am so far in AU territory now that you’re for all intents and purposes reading original fic. That’s okay. It’s the story that was in my head, that is still in my head. Maybe someday I’ll try to publish it and maybe I won’t, and I’m fine with that. I’m not ready at this point to do what’s necessary to take it past fanfic and that’s okay. It has served and is continuing to serve its purpose for me; if you all enjoy it then that’s just biscuits and gravy, as my Great-Aunt Margie used to say.

I wrote us all a little anniversary ficlet; this takes it full circle for me. (And then back I go to Wu and Qi’s wedding!) 

Mind the warnings at the bottom if you think you need them.

Chapter 132: 252: Wu

[ivory-haired-queens-blog]

Unpopular Opinions: Fandom Edition

Hey none of you asked but I’m here to deliver so here are some unpopular opinions for the fandoms I’m in. Spoilers, duh.

Marvel:

I don’t like Natasha. Or Steve.

Pepper Potts is a top.

As much as I love Loki, his death was nessicary in Infinity War.

Steve should have killed Bucky in Civil War. He was a threat, plain and simple.

I ship Ironstrange/Supremefamily.

Clint should have died in Infinity War.

I love Tony Stark with my whole heart. (Not an unpopular opinion but you needed to know that)

I’m not happy with the end of Endgame.

10 years in the making....for you to do Thor like that?

Not because he’s fat or because he’s dealing with trauma, that’s totally acceptable.

What’s not acceptable is them making Thor into the butt of the joke because he’s fat.

I love the Antman movies.

I’m totally not biased because I loved lost.

(I’m kinda biased)

Shuri is the best Marvel character and would beat Tony Stark in a battle of wits.

(I’m so gay I love her.)

With as many years as Marvel has had the MCU, I am disgusted at the lack of diversity within the movies.

Like it’s 2019 and we JUST got a female empowerment scene in Endgame.

Like I want a gay superhero.

(We have a disabled one thank god. Love you Stephen.)

And don’t give me that Valkyrie/Captain Marvel BS because they never blatantly stated or showed it in their movies.

I want an Asian superhero bitch.

A superhero who is Muslim/Islam/and religion besides Christian.

I think that, as much as I hate Natasha and Steve, they should have been the ones that Bruce first sees in Infinity War. I know it set up the whole “earth is closed today” sequence but it didn’t make sense and was OOC.

I love Stephen Strange and he’s never done a single thing wrong ever in his life I would die for this man.

I like MCU Peter Parker over the origional movie Spider-Man.

Fight me.

I also like the Tony Stark/Peter Parker better than the Uncle Ben/Peter Parker so @ me.

The 100

I don’t ship Bellarke that hard.

Like yes, I think they’re obviously being groomed to end up together. I know the show runners will make them official before the end of the series. I’m not mad about that, I just don’t really care to be honest. It’s like, too obvious.

But there are some cute bellarke scenes

What they did to Monty was bullshit but what they did to Jasper was worse.

I feel no guilt whatsoever in saying that I think that killing all of Mount Weather was what they should have done from the beginning.

Yes, even the kids. Because if you kill their leaders, the men and women will fight back. The colony would have been left with a handful of adults, and a bunch of kids if the origional plan had worked. This is doomed to fail and honestly just killing them all would be better than seeing them kill eachother for food, power, whatever. If that makes sense.

I think that Finn deserved to die.

I think that Murphey deserves the world.

Charlotte fucking killed Wells. Yes she’s young but she knows better than to kill someone. Maybe not kill her, but we all know that Clarke wouldn’t have banished her like she did Murphey. Clarke has a gender bias because Murphey didn’t do anything and she wouldn’t have punished Charlotte as hard because she’s a young girl. I rest my case

Even though what he did was bad and wrong, I don’t think Murphey should have been banished. He’s right. They were all compliant and even excited when he was being hung, but when it’s a little girl all bets are off.

Like Bellamy brought the whole hostage thing upon himself because he fucking tied a noose around Murphey’s throat.

Again, not that what Murphey did was right. He didn’t have to act like that. Jasper didn’t do anything to him.

Also this segment is getting long but the show writers and everyone else just casually forgot that Murphey was TORTURED? Hello? Are we not going to acknowledge that?

I shipped Clexa with my whole heart.

Another actually popular opinion: what they’ve done to Raven’s character this season is bullshit. Her only role is Abby’s moral compass. This is the same girl who shuttled to earth in a Tin Can. She’s better than this.

What the fuck??? Happened to??? Jordan???

Like Madi stabbed him

And then they proceeded to not talk about it for like four episodes and then casually mention it in passing like “oh he saved Pria that means he gets to live”

Like they set up his character to be really important this season.

But he’s not.

I think that Murphey/Emori is the best ship.

I also think that Either Murphey or Emori or Both are secretly double crossing the Primes. (This comes out before the finale of season six)

They didn’t have to do Onyia like that

The opening of season three is so weak that I actually stopped watching the show around that time (I’d been watching since the beginning of season two) because there’s just nothing there in the first like 10 minutes and I couldn’t do it.

Maybe I’m just impatient but it’s bad.

I think that Octavia did the best that she could with what she had available and I think that’s she’s not a bad person for what she did with the fighting pits/cannabalism. And I know that if Bellamy had been in her place, he would have eventually done the same.

Kane was a whiny bitch in season 5.

Why’d the kill Diyoza(I can’t spell) like that?

I liked Joesephine. It was really fun to see Eliza Taylor be able to get a new character in the show. Also props to her for that last episode with pretending to be Joesephine and being Clarke at the same time.

I called the dude being Gabriel from the first time I saw him you peasants.

Octavia’s redemption arc this season is beautiful.

They did....that.....to Kane. I’m angerey.

Lost In space

Not enough people watch this show. (The Netflix remake or the origional)

Seriously guys it’s a good show.

Absolutely nothing is wrong with it.

I love Don West with my whole heart.

I love Dr. Smith with my half heart.

I love the robot with my two hearts.

I love Penny Robinson with all the stars in the galaxy.

I love all of them okay.

There are no plot holes, no inconsistencies, no faulty science and anyone who says (or proves) otherwise is wrong.

It’s confirmed for a season two which should air in like the December-February time area.

It’s a Netflix show so you can binge the entire season in like a weekend.

Seriously watch it.

The Umbrella Academy

Five x Delores is weird.

Luther x Allison is illegal.

Klaus deserves all the push pops in the world.

The handler is hot.

The Comission killed Dave.

Luther is the most boring, Unorigional, straight white guy character I’ve seen in a long time. I hate him so much.

Allison is a queen but her character is brought down by her weird relationship with her brother.

Tbh if I was Allison you know I’d be telling my kids that I heard a rumor that theyd go the fuck to sleep. Like that’s a good thing. Idk maybe I’m just a sociopath.

Istanbul not Constantinople being played over a scene where five murders a squad of Commission people is the greatest cinematic masterpiece ever conceived by man.

“Where are you going” “to save the world” “oh is that all?” Iconic.

None of these are really unpopular but the show writers seem to think differently.

Diego has never done anything wrong in his life like yaaaasss bitch kill your brother at yo daddy’s funeral!!! Work!!!

PaTcH

AAaAHh

Big Theif - Mary is the perfect song to play over Klaus returning from Vietnam.

Will you love me, like you loved me in the January rain?

It’s up there with Goodbye July.

Speaking of Goodbye July....

Z Nation

Many people haven’t watched it

It’s like if The Walking Dead and Zombieland had a baby....and then the baby did a line of cocaine.

It’s wild.

Watching Garnet die ruined every sliver of hope I had in humanity.

I have a special place in my heart for this show because it’s the first show that me and my mom would stay up and watch the new episodes air every Friday. It brought us closer and I can’t thank the cast and show runners enough for this.

So maybe I’m biased, but you should watch it.

Having Murphey switch from being an anti-hero to a villain back to an anti-hero and then to a regular hero, amazing. Astonishing. The peak of human existence.

Even though he’s not entirely human.

What color is Murphey today? Is he pale, discolored, grey, blue, red? We don’t know!

Roberta Warren is the Black Goddess main protagonist that we deserve.

Addison Carver is a functional Bi.

10k is tragic backstory central but other than that, his character development is pretty lacking other than him persuing love interests.

None of these are really unpopular opinions but I doubt any of you have watched the show. It’s on Netflix. Watch it.

Oooooohhhhh George.

Georgia St. Clair could stomp me to death and my ghost would still want to fuck her.

Anyways I’m gay

God damn I have a lot of pent up Gay energy.

Murphey and Lucy have a realistic enstranged father/daughter relationship and it’s heartwarming.

And then they killed her off to save him.

Honestly if you name a character Murphey they can only be assholish bad boys with a good heart deep down sorry I don’t make the rules.

Also if you name a character Murphey I will love them with my whole soul.

I’m so mad they cancelled the show.

I’m infinitely more mad that they named that disgrace of a show Black Summer and claimed that it was a prequel....but it didn’t follow the same cast and had they not advertised it as a prequel I would never have guessed.

Black Summer gives totally opposite vibes than Z Nation does. I get that black summer is supposed to be the worst time that the zombie apocalypse ever had, with cannibals and no food, but it feels like s completely different show.

It’s like if The Walking Dead claimed that it is a prequel/occurs during Shaun of the Dead.

Like....no. They’re....no.

Anyway watch it it’s good.

Detroit: Become Human

Connor isn’t the best character.

This is an unpopular opinion post deal with it.

Markus has to be my favorite.

Honestly this game is so good and not even just graphics-wise.

It’s the same robotic sentience story we’ve been fed for years, but this time it’s from the Android’s perspective and this time all they want is to be free. That’s it.

I fucking hate North.

Hank is literally if Rick from Rick and Morty were serious.

The only correct way to play Connor is to walk the thin line between deviant and regular A.I. Without leaving out Hank. The correct thing to do is make Conner deviant at Jericho.

The only correct way to play Kara is to protect Alice with every fiber of your being. Meanwhile, get close to her. Do not get caught, even if that means dissappointing her.

The only correct way to play Markus is to lead a peaceful revolution. Also tell North to fuck off.

The border patrol guy who either gets Kara and Alice caught or knowingly lets Androids cross the border is the best character. Forget about Markus, this guy sees either “oh fuck androids are killing people, maybe we shouldn’t let this one cross the border” or “Androids just want to be free and are peacefully fighting for this. Let this one and her daughter through.” I love him.

LUTHER.

YES DADDY.

anyway.

Let Out The Bear He Just Wants To Say Hi :)

Even though I think Conner is overrated by the fandom, I do like him.

But he’s not a pure innocent cinnamon roll either.

It depends on how you play, but he has really violent options so stop the “He wouldn’t harm a fly” attitude.

But he is cute.

The home screen for the game is revolutionary (no pun intended) and I hope future game follow suit in making the first impression of the game something cool.

Stealing clothes/money/the fence cutters is literally okay.

Also if you put Kara in white hair you can die.

If in your first actual play through you got the Kara lives at the recycling plant ending but Alice dies, you can die too.

I’ve never actually seen the steal money and go to motel option play out because it’s stupid, especially if you don’t steal clothes. Like that’s begging to be caught.

Stranger things

Billy Hargrove is bad and just because he’s abused does not make what he does okay.

Harringrove is gross and I’m gay so my opinion counts as double.

That being said, there are some really cute fics about Harringrove and I can see the appeal of “good boy falls for mysterious bad boy with a dark past and trauma”

I’ve said I’m gay this whole post because I say it a lot, but I don’t like actually labeling myself but I like girls and boys and everything in between and I say I’m gay kinda as a joke when girls are hot.

That being said...

Steve Harrington calling himself Daddy made me feel things.

Strange things.

Haha get it I’m making a joke to distract you from the daddy part.

Steve Harrington is a good person now, but he was still an asshole before and he can still be criticized for his past.

I used to be hardcore Jancy but after season three I feel like Nancy needs and deserves a break from boys so she can figure out herself and who she is now and what she wants to do without the weight of boys and boyfriends constantly around her.

That being said i still don’t like Nancy because she was flirting/slept in the same bed with Jonathan whilst obviously having feelings for him while she and Steve were still a thing. It’s not cheating but to me it’s close enough to raise red flags.

Robin is perfect in every way.

I don’t like Jonathan. He’s creepy in s1, fine in s2, but then is s3 he doesn’t do anything to or about his male bosses when Nancy is being made fun of because she’s a woman.

Seeing Nancy’s class priveledge/Jonathan’s male priveledge clashing was so cool tbh

Elmax > Mileven > Lumax

Jim Hopper, with all his faults, is still a caring dad.

Plus him threatening Mike made me laugh so hard sksksksks

Steve Harrington deserves the world and then some.

Low key I really want s4 to give in insight on his family life.

I also want him to get an apartment with Robin.

Robins cute tbh but for half the season I though she was a Russian spy. I guess I was wrong.

Mrs. Wheeler shouldn’t sleep with billy (not that she can now) because it’s wrong, but the reason she wanted to is because her husband is so boring and she gave up on her dreams to be his perfect housewife. She wanted a challenge with Billy. Instead, she should leave her pushover of a husband and find someone better.

Anyway Steve Harrington deserves the world.

Yeah okay hate me whatever.

[brownstonearmy]

2020-05-08: Sweet Dreams

July 25 (Saturday Afternoon)

Fresh out of the box to start their vault heist, our assembled party gets straight to the logistics of who gets what gear. But after a few moments of discussion, the air in the vault starts getting a hazy blue hue. Norm gasps and falls unconscious, while everyone else struggles to stay awake as the bluish air thickens. Even Fuego, whose half-elf ancestry prevents magical sleep, feels the sands of sleep tugging at their mind.

The door that leads out of the vault doesn't want to open, so Lucky makes a snap decision to save the party. She directs Spleenifer to slather some Paste of Attunement on the Robe of Stars and the Belt of Cloud Giant Strength. All the other loot (and an unconscious Norm) gets stashed in the portable hole, while Spleenifer uses her newfound Cloud Giant strength to leap into the Astral Plane via the Robe of Stars with everything she is carrying. And well, she is carrying EVERYTHING.

The three conscious adventurers find themselves in an endless desert under disconcertingly stormy skies. Thunder rolls across the landscape as lightning strikes the shifting sands. Lucky has been teleported to enough different planes of existence because of her wild magic surges to realize that this place isn't the astral plane. By her estimation, it appears to be some sort of demiplane.

Since collecting sand is part of the group's mission, everyone works underneath the roiling sky to pack the portable hole full of sand. Lightning strikes faster and closer now, and a stray bolt of lightning strikes close enough to hit Spleenifer. Well, it would have hit Spleenifer if Lucky wasn't so, well, lucky. Sand turns to opaque glass where it was struck by lightning, but the party's got another storm coming.

A wall of dark clouds is rolling toward the party as they try once more to get a moment to figure out how to allocate Yula's magical resources amongst themselves. The wind picks up and the wall of clouds grows darker. Lighter grains of sand pelt at exposed skin. The storm is nearly here.

Fuego sees a small formation of rocks in the distance and casts Dimension Door. Lucky scoops out enough sand from the portable hole to make a place for herself to keep Norm safe while Fuego carries the folded portable hole and Spleenifer through the dimension door to their best hope of shelter. Everyone comes out of the door near a slab of rocks that looks sturdy enough to keep the party safe from the worst of things. There's only space for two people in the makeshift lean-to, so Lucky stays with Norm inside the portable hole. Spleenifer and Fuego take turns keeping a flap of the portable hole open so no one suffocates.

Once the raging sandstorm passes, Spleenifer notices a light in the distance that appears to be coming from some sort of tree. In all the walking they've done thus far, this is the only other living thing that anyone outside the party has seen in this place. As they draw closer, they realize that the light is actually the canopy of the tree on fire. An elven woman sits with her back against the tree, seemingly oblivious to the party or the burning treetop just above her head. As the party discusses how to approach this situation, their voices carry on the winds and startle the woman.

She jumps up and expresses disbelief that there are other living creatures here. She's been wandering this desert for a long time without seeing anyone or anything else. Everything that comes from outside the plane is swiftly consumed by the sand or the lightning. She set the tree on fire over a month ago to function as a landmark, but her fire isn't able to consume the tree. Eventually, she introduces herself as Riahra the Swift, and states that she's come here to look her brother whom she believes is being used to power some sort of magical device.

Riahra believes that the only reason she hasn't been consumed by the sands and lightning is because her brother is also her twin, and therefore enough like him to register as "not foreign" in this demiplane. She also mentions that she hasn't eaten or been able to drink anything in weeks, a fact which Spleenifer siezes upon. How can someone not die of dehydration from that?

It appears that time moves a little differently in this demiplane, according to Riahra. Her brother is being used by Goldleaf Wealth Services to create a sleeping gas that affects anything with a soul. Even elves, who are normally impervious to sleep. By Riahra's reckoning, months have passed here, but she sneaked into the bank's pumping system with a potion of gaseous form to look for her brother on Friday.

The Friday that appears to be just the day before the party arrived here.

Riahra believes her brother is trapped in the Glass Castle about a half-day's travel away from her landmark tree. What's stopping her from rescuing Aizon, her brother, is that the door to the chamber where he is kept requires a certain gem to open. And that gem is guarded by living stones that are too strong for her to handle on her own. If helping Riahra rescue her brother will help the party get back home, Lucky agrees to help.

Saving Aizon will likely cripple the bank's sleeping gas pumping system, if not disable the system entirely. And the sleeping gas is pumped through the vault ducts at Goldleaf each night near closing time to stop any potential thieves who make it into the vault. Riahra believes that this plane is a manifestation of Aizon's fever dreams from being forced into an indeterminate sleep. Aizon was a holy man who saw visions of the future, though he spoke of a period of personal suffering that would lead to a blank spot in his predictions of the future. That blank spot happened around the time he disappeared.

The party treks across the seemingly infinite expanse of sand dunes and thunder, guided by Riahra to a spot surrounded by pillars of smooth red rock. A fist-sized gem (by halfling standards, anyway) sits on a pedestal in the center of the pillars. Lucky uses her Mage Hand to lift the gem off the pedestal, but two boulders come to life and roll into the area as soon as the gem moves. Combat begins as Riahra takes shelter with the gem.

Lucky kicks off the combat by using the Ring of Earth Elemental Command found in Yula's stash to control one of the creatures. Spleenifer, now rocking the Belt of Cloud Giant Strength and the Staff of Striking, reduces the other one to rubble. Lucky commands the remaining creatures to guard the pedestal and to not follow the party. With the gem now in the party's possession, Riahra leads the way to the Glass Castle.

The Glass Castle is made of translucent weatherworn glass that appears to contain a swirling vortex of blue gas within it. The portcullis to the castle is open, but just as Riahra described, everyone soon comes to a large chamber with a slot in the door in the shape of the gem they just recovered. At the far end of the room ahead is the body of a someone who looks similar to Riahra, but is connected to all sorts of metal pipes. His skin has a bluish cast to it, and he struggles to breathe.

Riahra rushes to free her brother, but before she can make it up the steps, a suit of armor comes to life along with several swords that dance through the air as though wielded by an invisible swordsman. Things just got complicated, and if the party wants to get Aizon out of here before he suffocates, it's gonna take some quick thinking.

Aizon needs medical help that no one in the party is really qualified to provide, plus that big honkin' suit of Danger Armor doesn't look too friendly. Lucky and Fuego have a quick sidebar before deciding the best course of action is to throw more manpower at the situation. Fuego gives the brass Horn of Valhalla a mighty “DOOT!”, and more manpower is exactly what happens. Nine slightly drunken barbarians in party hats appear. At least one of them will probably half some sort of medical proficiency due to living on the battlefield. And if they don't have that knowledge... Well, all of them have axes.

Weapons of all sorts begin flying. Axes are thrown, and the shield guardian's fists pummel all who try to pass. Lucky's luck rubs off on Spleenifer once again, allowing her to dodge an otherwise significant blow. Spleenifer's deadly combination of cloud giant strength and the staff of striking combine into a thunderous smite critical hit with what my game notes describe only as "doing a shitload of damage."

Meanwhile, Fuego deploys a dancing rapier and casts Heat Metal on it. The newest flying sword in this combat is now red hot and melts a hole in the shield guardian's armor where it hits. And you know what the best part about the dancing sword is? Fuego screams "Juice!" to make it attack. And it slices, dices, and juices just like intended.

Lucky blasts a chill touch at one of the enemy flying swords, all but destroying it. Farther up the stairs, Spleenifer's weaving around the shield guardian's fists. One of the other barbarians isn't as lucky, and a solid punch from the guardian knocks that barbarian into the business end of one of the flying swords. Spleenifer's staff skills come to the barbarian's rescue as she smacks the flying sword so hard that the sword gets dislodged in such a way that the sword is able to make a Tithe of Opportunity as it exits the barbarian's body. We'll let you figure out exactly how that works; because the will of Lathander is mysterious, indeed. Or maybe it's because Lucky's good fortune keeps rubbing off on people.

By the time the shield guardian goes down, Riahra and one of the barbarians are tending to Aizon at the top of the stairs. Aizon isn't responsive at the moment, so the barbarian attempts the Heimlich maneuver. Or rather, the barbarian equivalent of the Heimlich maneuver, which is really just a targeted punch to the stomach. It's enough to get Aizon going again, but the swirling vortex trapped in the glass begins to fade. Blocks of glass start cracking and the castle crumbles around everyone. The party flees toward safety, but things go black before they can make it to the door.

Everyone wakes up on the floor of the vault again. The blue haze in the air is dissipating, and through the ductwork in the vault, the voice of Aizon can be heard. "Thank you," he says, as the adventure concludes for the evening.

Stay tuned next time for more!

[uberdriverdavid-blog]

Understanding Clinical Depression: Case Study Of Myself

I'm writing this for many reasons, but mainly because people rarely understand what Clinical Depression is, or what my particular form of Clinical Depression is like.

First I’ll describe Clinical Depression as briefly as I can. After that, I’ll describe my particular type of Clinical Depression.

Clinical Depression:

~ Is NOT simply “feeling sad”, as people constantly misuse the term – most of whom have never experienced clinical depression. In many forms of Clinical Depression, individuals a) don't feel sad, but b) have symptoms including inability to eat, sleep, move physically (AKA psychomotor retardation), socialize, recreate, take care of their health, or do constructive activity (including working for money).

~ Can also include insomnia of various kinds; hypersomnia; no motivation or willpower to do anything whatsover; inability to enjoy anything (including food or entertainment); inability to think, reason, or concentrate, to various degrees; loss of interest in life, to various degrees – mild to total; suicidal ideation; suicidal tendencies; and suicide attempts.  

~ Is DEFINED by not being able to function adequately – not being able to work for money, work on chores or errands, socialize, or take care of one's health adequately. If you can do all these things, but feel “down” or “sad”, it's NOT Clinical Depression, and is totally normal.

~ Is statistically proven to be the #1 reason / precursor to suicide.

~ Medications may or may not help, but usually does, to some degree – once people find the right medication for them – which could take days, months, or years

~ Is almost always helped, to varying degrees, by cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive therapy deals with changing a person's cognitions; behavioral therapy deals with changing a person's actions. There are hundreds of proven techniques that work for clinical depression for each type, and they're almost always used in conjunction, leading to the term Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (AKA CBT).

~ Is almost always helped by physical exercise.

~ May be totally physical & unrelated to one's situation/environment, or totally dependent on such, or (usually) is some mixture.  

My particular form of clinical depression:

~ Is purely situational / environment-based. This has been proven countless times. In an adequate safe/sane/stable living environment, with access to medications and therapy and exercise, adequate housing, adequate health food, and adequate income to afford my basic needs, I have NEVER been clinically depressed. I'll have “down days” and “bad days”, but I can deal with those and keep functioning, working, taking care of my health, socializing, enjoying recreation, doing chores and errands, eating, sleeping, etc. And: Whenever I’ve been clinically depressed, it has ONLY been after severe, prolonged lack of one of those needs.

~ Began occurring regularly in 1998 – 21 years ago. Before 1998, I suffered Clinical Depression only rarely, only a few times, and was able to recover because I was able to get my basic needs met, one way or another, and get back to working or studying full-time.  

~ Since 1998, I have been in depressive states about as often as non-depressive states. The difference has been whether I'm getting my needs met.

~ Is a component of a vicious cycle that I've been struggling against for 21 years: If I don't have my needs met for months in a row, severe Clinical Depression results – which then results in not being able to work for money adequately – which results in not being able to afford adequate housing or healthcare or health food or medications, and also results in not being able to exercise or socialize – which reinforces the depression, completing the cycle.

~ Is a component of my legal diagnosis as being “Bipolar Type I” AKA “Manic Depressive” – which was also purely situational: I would get manic episodes or depressive episodes whenever I couldn't get my needs met for a prolonged theory of time. (Currently, and for many years, I have not gotten in any manic episodes, though, because of 2 mood-stabilizing medications that work on such, but do not keep Clinical Depression from happening.)

~ Is virtually guaranteed to continue as long as I'm unable to get more than $850/month income (from Disability Insurance), which is a few hundred dollars less per month than I realistically need to satisfy my basic needs, especially basic housing. The simple truth is that I do not get enough of an income to live a sane, stable, healthy life on, especially when homeless (which happens on a regular basis, because I don't have the money for a decent place to live). The best housing I can afford on this income would be a small room with strangers in Tucson, where living expenses are lower than practically anywhere else in the US. I could actually get an adequate room, with tolerable roommates, for about $400/month. However, finding roommates who are tolerable or even sane is an extremely difficult, time-consuming, and wildly uncertain process. People who present themselves as nice, friendly, and tolerable often turn out to be one or more of the following: unreasoanable, irrational, drug addicts, drug dealers, criminals, deranged, depraved, thieves, liars, lunatics, or they just can’t tolerate me for very long for whatever reasons. I have had around 26 roommates over the decades, and only about 20% of them have been tolerable or better; while every one of them seemed reasonable and friendly on the surface. Also: most roommate situations involve young college students who do not want to live with someone who isn't also a young college student. And then there are too many other difficulties to mention – such as those who don't want to live with someone “Bipolar” or depressed.

~ While in Clinical Depression, I cannot exercise or take adequate care of my health, or afford therapy or health food, and so my mental, physical, and physiological health continually deteriorate. This is one reason why people diagnosed as Bipolar I or Chronic Depressive typically die 20 years early, on average, according to the statistics.

The main basic need I have that I have extreme difficulty in getting met is that of adequate housing. The current plan to get this met is to get a room in Tucson with people that I've thoroughly screened. But I've done this before, and the chance of failure is enormous. I think that, with weeks of constant effort, my chance of finding a tolerable roommate is about 50%, at the very best.

I once had a tiny run-down studio apartment in Tucson for $400/month that worked out adequately 15 years ago, and I was not depressed at all during this time. However, a) that studio would cost about $500/month now, and b) was far from the city center, which was a problem even when I had a car, but would be an enormous problem without a car. (The reason I left that apartment was because all my friends had moved to Seattle, and I wanted to live with them – which I did – which didn't work out, because almost no one likes living too close to anyone else for very long, and the situation just gets increasingly difficult and stressful as people get on each other's nerves).

Was considering moving back to Luke's, but this looks unlikely, as he won't write me back.

Am also considering bike camping / touring at free campgrounds throughout CA (there are hundreds of them), though this looks very difficult, too stressful and harsh, and likely to result in clinical depression as I'd effectively be homeless, alone, and without a therapist or even a pet. It would also be somewhat dangerous at night, possibly lethal, in unfamiliar campgrounds or Slab City part of the time. But this would make the most sense economically, as my SSDI would go up to $1050/month or so for being a) homeless & b) in California; while I'd have zero rent, and could get most of my food from food banks, so I'd have about $500/month left over for saving up for a van or minivan or motorhome to live out of.

The core problem is that SSDI simply doesn’t pay enough for me to live on.

The final solution to the resulting predicament I’m in, and a permanent end to the vicious cycle I’m in, can only happen if I have a good, safe, healthy housing option that is guaranteed to work out AND that I can definitely afford with just SSDI (because I cannot rely on my ability to hold a full-time job right now).

Since getting affordable housing has proven next to impossible, my plan is to save up for a van, minivan, or motorhome, then to live at free campgrounds, which is something I could definitely tolerate, and I’d be able to work on web design & political projects & writings with my laptop tethered to my cell phone from virtually anywhere.  And free rent, most food coming from food banks, and getting the maximum SSDI of $1050/month, I’d be able to save $500-$550/month for emergencies, repairs, health problems, and a better life in general.