#because yeah dude has some serious trauma himself regarding that

[handfulofmuses]

Bluebell man.

Unlike Holly, he was underground when it all happened. Keep in mind, he is also the ONLY survivor from the rabbits who were underground. Holly said he can only imagine what it must have been like, but Bluebell interrupts him, saying that he can't and takes over the story.

Bluebell telling about everything that happens underground is the only serious moment in the book with him.

He was in the poisoned burrows. He was there when the does did not want to leave their kittens and attacked any rabbit that came close. He was there when rabbits were desperately trying to get out, clambering over each other and even ending up killing each other in the process. The cries for help. Kittens who were screaming for their mothers. Owsla trying to give orders during all that. The dead rabbit that came tumbling towards him - the same dead rabbit that he had to tear at to get out. Pimpernel trying to help him out, but constantly confused over everything and Bluebell biting him out fear that he might die and block the way. The guy has most likely PTSD himself from the event but he needed to keep himself and Holly going so he coped with jokes.

Just - the strength that must have took.

[vios-rockland-corner]

RoR Article 2: Do Nothing

To make things easier on myself, I’m splitting up my thoughts on the Rumors of Rockland second article.  I already gave an overview of this game.  Here, I’ll cover whatever random thoughts and observations I had for the events that occur when you choose to do nothing.

 [Major spoilers below for Rumors of Rockland Article 2]

First off, it’s not unrealistic that the MC passing by might not choose to do anything about Callum’s situation.  They’re not wrong that they could get hurt or be a hindrance.  Shame they wouldn’t think to go get help but let’s be honest…a lot of people prefer to stay out of trouble and leave people to their own devices.

If it makes you feel better, you could always imagine up an MC who has a bit of a deeper reason why they would choose to do nothing in this situation.  The MC may suffer from extreme anxiety that won’t allow them to think properly if they try to invest themselves in the situation.  This could even be related to trauma in their past. Maybe they even did try to either help directly or get help for someone else in a similar situation like this before…but it ended poorly.  Or maybe the MC has the belief that people need to be able to take care of themselves? Could be a lot of reasons you could come up with for that line of thinking, good or bad.

Or yeah, people do just pass by a lot of stuff daily without inserting themselves.  Like I said, not unrealistic.  At least we know Callum turns out fine here regardless.

When you choose to leave Callum alone though, there’s not much one-on-one interactions that occur afterwards.  You pretty much get stuck listening to the chatter in the bar because there’s no real good way to insert yourself from here on out.  I think that makes sense that if the MC wasn’t feeling up for helping Callum out, they also really wouldn’t have the confidence here to interject in whatever’s being said.  Not to mention, Avery clearly did not like strangers trying to start gossip with him.

Regarding this gossip in particular, there isn’t a whole lot for me to comment on.  This feels more like trivia about Trevor and Heidi, who clearly didn’t have a good relationship.  I don’t know about Heidi, but we might see Trevor in the future.  But otherwise there’s not much else to take from that.

I don’t think the subject of the conversation is the main takeaway here anyway.  What’s more important is the lesson about gossip and rumors.  By the way, yes I love that the creators actually utilized a “rumor” in this series. Now the title fits.  

What happened here is that Avery didn’t get all his details straight.  There was definitely some truth being said, but some of the facts were fabricated or exaggerated.  It’s a good thing Foal came along when she did to correct Avery.  If she hadn’t, rumors and gossips like that could have easily spread further among Avery and Callum’s friend group and reputations and events could have gotten worse for the wrong reasons.  

It would have been bad if they kept assuming that Trevor was using, and it would also been bad if they assumed Heidi was providing drugs.  Yes as bad as Heidi sounds, it’s very important that you judge a person for what they have ACTUALLY done, not an assumption.  People should be judged only for the crimes they actually commit.  Don’t ever make up stuff more than what’s been done (even if you hate a person, that’s still not fair regardless).

Brief real talk, this definitely applies to real life.  It’s never a bad idea to fact check something very serious if it’s something you’re especially concerned with.  If you’re not careful, lots of information about a person or event could end up being exaggerated about or misconstrued along the way.  What’s worse, there are people who WILL deliberately lie about something to sway an audience their way.  For example, we all know abusers and other toxic people exist.  You can even have a person who cheats on their S/O and then gets caught…who will THEN go to their friends or on social media and play the victim saying the S/O was the one who cheated on THEM.  I have a particular disgust for people who do that, and unfortunately as long as you act out the part of the victim properly, you can sometimes get people on your side without even providing evidence.

If you can ever find solid research and evidence to support claims made, that’s always best.  Getting everyone’s side of the story is good too. I understand though that it’s nearly impossible to NOT form an opinion or have certain emotions about something you’ve just heard.  I think what’s more important though is your actions after the fact.  I’m not a fan of people who act viscerally to the point where they take extreme measures without having tried to get the details from all sides.  But that’s just me.

I’ll stop there with the real talk though (this can be a touchy subject for me for a variety of reasons).  Let’s get back to the game.  What does mean now as the player?

Basically, it confirms that you can’t ALWAYS trust what some of these characters say to you. Admittedly, I made the mistake of actually believing every word Avery was saying before Foal stepped in. Why?  Because I don’t know these characters or this world very well yet, so I’m relying on the characters we’re presented to give me the low down.  Yes I know, very bad of me that I wasn’t even following my own advice.  But hey, it’s not like I was going out and flipping picnic tables or anything from stuff I heard, so no harm no foul.  It’s just a game.

If you’re like me, you were expecting every character to be knowledgeable about the goings-on in Rockland. Unfortunately, it seems not EVERY character’s words can be taken at face value.  From now on when a character talks, there’s going to be three types of information they’ll provide us:

-        Honest Truth

-        Misinformation

-        Deliberate Lie

Pretty self explanatory. Honest truth is provided by characters who are both knowledgeable about a subject or person AND see no reason to misconstrue facts to the MC or in an open setting.  Misinformation is provided by characters who aren’t INTENTIONALLY trying to lie, but are not actually as knowledgeable about a subject or person as they think they are.  The information they have could be an understatement, overexaggerated or misconstrued in some other way such as being taken out of context.  Avery serves as a good example of that here.  I stated in my previous post that I consider Avery a very honest person.  I still do. He was not TRYING to mislead Callum about what had happened.  He just had his facts wrong, so not a deliberate lie.  

Deliberate lies are provided by people who characters who are indeed knowledgeable about a character or subject, but choose to actively provide false information for their own purposes.  No we have no idea yet if we have come across any deliberate liars in RoR.  I wouldn’t be surprised though if the MC or other characters are lied to about “certain activities” other people commit to avoid a panic.  Especially if it has to do with murder or another crime.  

It may not always have to do with crime though.  Maybe some characters hate each other and will be trying to spread some nasty rumors so we view their enemy/rival in a more negative light when said person is actually not that bad.  Or it could be the opposite case where someone knows a person who is VERY messed up, but they will paint them in a good light because they are either a friend or just trying to cover for them.  Maybe they’re even trying to lure people into a false sense of security…

From the characters we’ve seen, here’s my guess list as to what I THINK these characters will provide us so far:

-Whesker: Honest Truth or Deliberate Lie

-Foal: Honest Truth or Deliberate Lie

-Avery: Honest Truth or Misinformation

-Callum: Honest Truth or Misinformation

-Tyler: Honest Truth

-Dylan: Honest Truth

- Shane: Honest Truth or Deliberate Lie

- Sydney: Deliberate Lie?

 I don’t have much to go off of here.  My reasoning goes as such: If they’re a much older character or appear more sound of mind, they’re likely more knowledgeable.  The younger ones I think are more likely to be honest or misinformed, and ones that are more likely to engage in criminal activity or more likely to lie.  Foal is the only one of those I don’t THINK engages in anything criminal, I see her more likely just KNOWING what some other people do.  Tyler and Dylan I don’t know much about, and I’m only going by how they seemed to view Avery in a different light than Callum does.

Speaking of Callum, I won’t be surprised if there’s a big chance of misinformation from this dude. I’m already thinking he treats Avery a little too lightly at times.  “Puppy dog” isn’t really what I’d describe Avery as…more like a “bull dog.”  I still have gotten no vibes that he does anything criminal other than use drugs he probably shouldn’t be doing.  I’m starting to doubt he even knows what his own brother Quill does on the side.  That means even more chances for misinformation.

What does this mean for me writing these posts then?  Well, despite everything I just said…I really will just be taking everything at face value.  Just like the MC said.  I know that sounds crazy, but unless I’m aware of a character’s actions and mannerisms from another game, there’s no way for me to know whether what I hear is accurate or not.  So in future posts, just know I will be treating nearly all information received as a fact to make it easier to discuss.  BUT, I may still entertain the possibility of the information given being false from time to time.  Probably not everything because that’d just be too much work, but things I guess I feel would be very interesting if they were false.  If that makes sense.

What else happened here? I did notice that I THINK what Avery was applying to Foal was that she’s been the victim of rumors before?  I’m not entirely sure to be honest.  It wasn’t very clear what Avery was implying (he was kind of tripping over himself there).

Finally, while we don’t connect with any characters this route, we get the little bonus at the end with Sydney and Shane Dixie.  Again, you can get their names if you check the website and scroll over their pictures where you would download the game.  The Dixie family is something in Rockland, but I don’t have enough information to really be able to guess what their deal is. Only other Dixie I think I remember is August Dixie.  It’s also interesting to note that Sydney’s last name is Dixie, but his father is named Dante Stryker.  Sydney’s mom and brother also have Stryker for their last name.  Not sure what to make of that yet.

Shane is apparently Whesker’s brother, so more proof that Whesker knows a LOT of dark stuff going on. We don’t have a lot of context in the scene for what just happened other than Sydney was helping a friend and Shane had to either help or completely bail Sydney out of a situation.  I won’t be surprised if we see similar situations like this in future where you have the older dubious folks having to keep the younger dubious kids in check.  Hey, lots of bad stuff happens in Rockland, but the older ones know they can’t let the younger ones grow up thinking they can get away with ANYTHING without getting caught.  That’s not going to be good for the town if it gains a bad reputation OUTSIDE of Rockland.

I could see the younger characters acting out a lot on their emotions or off a high that they can get away with whatever they want because they know people that can clean up after them. But yeah, the older folks need to teach them before it’s too late to use their head or else.  That’s probably why this game brought up a lot of names of people who keep things straight around town like Sergio.  There’s some order in this chaos.

I’m happy Shane didn’t see the MC as a liability here at least.  That’s a relief.

With that, I believe I’ve reached the end of my thoughts on Rumors of Rockland Article 2.  See you next time.

[thanksjro]

Eugenesis Part Three, Scene Seven: Nightbeat’s Battle With Cancer

While the Quintesson camp gets ready to break the Geneva Convention over its knee like a cheap plastic ruler, our Quintessential Flying Fucks are watching the POWs pour into the building.

Ryknia- not a part of the comic canon, unless there’s something I missed looking him up- is twitchy about getting all these Cybertronians hooked up with Inhibitor Chips as soon as physically possible.

We get an explanation for the shotgun-style red paint job, and it’s even worse than my initial hypothesis.

The Quintessons are planning to reduce the identities of each individual robot to essentially nothing, so they won’t be able to fight back.

Someone teleports into the room, loaded up with the Chips. Oh happy day! Jolup decides to test them out, by way of stabbing the delivery boy in the neck with one. Yeah, they’re using Transformers to run their errands. Ryknia establishes himself as the serious one, yelling at Jolup for playing around when they still have an entire camp full of robots to beat into submission. Jolup responds… well.

Just kidding, he threatens Ryknia with death if he so much as looks at him funny again. Jolup is the wildcard.

Meanwhile, over in the collapsed tunnel, the Quintesson troops pull Sunstreaker, Hoist, and Grapple out of the rubble. No life-signs from Nightbeat or Optimus, so it’s to be assumed that they’re both dead.

You’d think it’d be common knowledge by now that Optimus Prime is completely incapable of staying dead for more than ten minutes. Nightbeat’s plot armor shoulder also still be protecting him, at least until we figure out what exactly shoved that stick up his ass.

Literally the next paragraph is catching up with Optimus and Nightbeat.

The mental image this creates is simply delightful. Don’t get too cozy now, Optimus, you still need to figure out how you’re going to escape this predicament.

The two of them are stuffed into a very small pocket in the debris, in the catacombs that line the underside of the city, having been used during the pre-war fighting to move non-combatants and the like to neutral territories.

The two have a little time, since they’re effectively trapped down here, so Optimus takes the opportunity to reflect on just how bonkers the last couple of hours have been for him.

Then he asks where his current self is. Nightbeat doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s dead. Luckily, he doesn’t have to, because Optimus immediately retracts the question.

Geez, Nightbeat, tell us how you really feel about the guy.

Optimus instead asks about just what the hell is going on that they would need him in the first place. As Nightbeat explains the situation, he starts getting cryptic again.

Nightbeat, all this dancing around the subject better be frickin’ worth it. It’s almost maddening how little I know about your character at this point.

After flubbing through his explanation, Nightbeat says ‘fuck it’ and just outright shows the mind-wiper to Optimus, who takes it surprisingly well.

Then the question regarding the ethics of this mission comes up. Good thing Perceptor and Prowl aren’t here, they’d hate this. Optimus is confused as to why Nightbeat would take this mission on if he didn’t agree with it.

The answer is that glowing orb thing from Part One. Looks like we’re getting some answers.

Fucking finally.

Okay, so Nightbeat was a Headmaster, right? His head came off and turned into a smaller dude, it was a huge gimmick for years within the Transformers franchise. He had a few of these, one of them being his very best buddy Muzzle. I mentioned Muzzle in Part One, Scene Four.

So, Muzzle got colon cancer.

Towards the end, they shipped both Nightbeat and Muzzle off to Antartica, and then he died, exposing this nigh-immortal robot to mortality.

Nightbeat, what the 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔.

Fortunately, his chest orb doesn’t contain the rotting corpse of a cancer-riddled man, just his helmet. It’s all he’s got left of Muzzle, and he misses his friend terribly.

Now that Nightbeat’s shared his emotional trauma, Optimus decides that he’s going to return the favor, telling him about why exactly he joined the Autobots. Nightbeat believes what everyone else does- it was ★𝕕𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕪™★.

Yeah, no, it wasn’t, actually. Optimus just didn’t want to make things awkward when folks started heralding him as the robo-messiah.

So back in the day, Optimus Prime- back then he was Orion Pax, naturally- fought in the State Games as a gladiator. Megatron was also a gladiator, as he often is in Transformers. They faced off against each other, and Orion lost… because Megatron cheated, using an illegal fighting style. A few weeks later, the war kicked off, with Megatron giving the “Peace Through Tyranny” speech. During said speech, Orion rushed the stage, in what looked to be protest.

He just wanted another chance to kick Megatron’s butt, actually. Optimus Prime is who he is because he wanted to punch a guy in the face. Outstanding.

Meanwhile, back with Prowl and the Autobots, Quark’s discovery of an alternate route to the AMC rears its ugly head- the Quintessons are already there. Prowl assembles a small team and they go in. Tacker, Rad, Rev-Tone, Quark, Spindle and Chromedome all follow Prowl. Kup does not.

They catch up with the old-timer in front of Rodimus’ room, where they discover that absolutely nothing’s happened to him. Rodimus is perfectly fine- in a Quintesson-related fashion at least. He’s still completely jacked up and hanging on by a thread.

The other Autobots in the hospital aren’t so lucky.

Part Three’s friggin’ dark as shit, y’all.

They see Red Alert, miraculously still retaining his head, shoved off into a corner. Prowl isn’t taking any of this terribly well, entering a fugue state, while Chromedome gets to work resuscitating the head of security. Chromedome for Prime 2012.

After some explosive defibrillator action- Chromedome is literally thrown across the room by burst of electricity that’s created- Red Alert comes to, and so does Prowl.

Prowl decides to check on the rest of the wards while Kup and Chromedome get Red Alert talking again. He promptly runs into Perceptor, who I guess just decided to waltz into this war zone of a hospital on his own. He gets to IDW Shockwave-levels of ice-cold logicalness, noting the strategy the Quintessons are taking here, which kind of proves that dumping all your points into Intelligence is worthless without a little Wisdom so you know when to shut up.

Rad’s found something- Perceptor brought him along. They go into the operating theatre and find a scene that belongs on the cover of a Cannibal Corpse album.

I think First Aid might be dead, folks. Just a guess, though.

Up above, the Quintesson forces are rounding up the last of the Autobot war prisoners. Quantax calls, demanding that the Matrix be brought to him, seeing as the last team that went down to the AMC didn’t seem to be able to grab it. Maybe because they were too busy stringing up the medic like a holiday lanyard.

Back down below, most of the surviving Autobots are clustered together in the waiting room. Of course, Rev-Tone’s decided to be ornery, and has dragged Quark away from the throng so he can have company while he tries to break into some mysterious locked room.  

Next thing you know, he’ll be stabbing himself in the brain and removing his memories of his husbands just to not have to deal with the torment of it all.

Rev-Tone manages to get the door open, and finds someone inside. A survivor! Who could it be?

GODDAMMIT THROWBACK

Throwback, of course, asks just what the hell’s happened. Rev-Tone answers with his usual tact, stating that everyone’s dead.

Pipes just isn’t allowed to stay alive in a Roberts’ story. That’s just the rules.

The dream team unhook Throwback from his mess of cables and carry him back to the foyer, where Mommy and Daddy are fighting. Kup’s furious with Prowl, who believes- correctly, but we won’t tell him that- that the Quintessons will be back for Rodimus, and that they need to stay put and get ready to defend the Prime. It’s a right screaming match, and everyone has to watch it and be uncomfortable.

This really has been just the worst day.

[momoyomaki]

Could Five realistically be autistic based solely on what we see on the show?

I stumbled across the theory that Five is autistic, and as someone with autism I find that very interesting. I’m not yet convinced he does have autism, but I’m not convinced he doesn’t either.

So let’s take this apart. :cracks knuckles:

First off, a couple things to keep in mind:

-No two autistic people are exactly the same.

-I am drawing on my own experience living with autism, and what I’ve witnessed from my sister and the kids I work with.

-Disabilities that affect the brain overlap. Many different things can affect the same areas of the brain, and we just categorize things for ease of assigning coping mechanisms. For example, if you were to take a brain scan of my brother who has PTSD, my sister who has brain damage from childhood trauma, and myself with autism, the scans would look very similar.

-Whether or not Five has autism, he most definitely has PTSD.

-Please chime in with your own theories and experiences, I’d love to open this TED talk up.

Ok here we go:

Klaus calls Five addicted to the apocalypse and he’s not wrong. Through an autistic lens, obsessing and hyper-fixating is like our bread and butter. My hyper-fixations have driven me to all sorts of extremes, like staying up for 24 hours, and giving myself heatstroke by hyper-fixating while outside. Whether Five is autistic or not he can obviously relate. His obsession with stopping the apocalypse drives him for 40+ years. He carries an eyeball around the entire time. His fixation on returning to his family keeps him going through his career as a hitman, something he makes clear he didn’t enjoy. On that note, he spent an episode walking around with a goddamn bullet wound. Talk about mind over matter, and also another tick in the hyper-fixation column. Again, when he checks on Klaus after he time travels to the Vietnam War, he’s clearly concerned for him, but gets sidetracked once again by his need to stop the apocalypse. Which is honestly valid, I mean, it’s the apocalypse.

Dolores. Anybody whose seen a decent therapist will probably have been told “yeah I know it sounds crazy, but try talking to yourself.” Being your own sounding board is a very healthy thing believe it or not, and Five uses Dolores for this purpose. Those with autism in my experience have crazy good imaginations. If I try hard enough I can fabricate fake memories to the point where I can’t quite remember it’s not true. I think this has a lot to do with the way autism thinks in pictures. Imaginary friend anyone? So Five finding Dolores and talking with her as if she were real for so long that he actually sees and hears her as a person? Totally believable and something I could see having happened to myself under the right circumstances. That being said, I feel he’s probably perfectly aware that she is, in fact, a mannequin. Dolores can be seen as a sign of Five having snapped or as a brilliant way of keeping his sanity while isolated for decades.

Coffee. Five’s caffeine addiction is probably not related to autism in anyway whatsoever, but boy can I relate. Coffee is my holy grail because it calms my personal blend of brain chemicals down enough for me to focus on things like driving. Of course that’s my ADHD talking. It’s not uncommon for those with autism to also have ADHD, but that’s a whole other post. So let’s just say Five’s relatable and leave it at that.

Sarcasm and Snark. Possibly the most common coping mechanism ever for any problem in existence. Probably just a part of Five’s glorious personality, but let’s say he developed it the way I did. As a way of taking on the world, sarcasm makes everything more bearable. It’s also a form of humor and nothing is as good as humor to cover social missteps. It takes you from being a weird outcast to being the Funny/Sarcastic Friend™️.

Five and routine. The first thing Five does when returning to the past is make his signature sandwich. Here he is, back with his family after all this time, and he doesn’t allow himself to bask in that, because the count down to the apocalypse has started. There’s no way he isn’t thrown off though, come on. 13 years old again with his family alive. When feeling shaken, most people with autism will absolutely fall back into routines even if they’re old ones. And who wants to bet he drove past at least one other perfectly serviceable shop with coffee on his way to Griddy’s and ignored them in favour of familiarity? And of course he works to get Dolores back right off the bat. When upset over the lab getting blown up he returns to what we can assume was home during the apocalypse; the library.

Five and his ability to take people at face value despite his overactive paranoia. From my experience working with those with autism, autistic people are some of the most forgiving people you will ever meet. This doesn’t have to come from a place of kindness. It’s more our black and white nature. Something used to be this way, and now it’s that way. We tend to just accept it where others might have a million questions. This goes hand in hand with our people sense. Oh we suck at reading social cues, but our instincts in regards to a persons trustworthiness are generally bang on. You see this in Five’s chat with Hazel. He doesn’t seem to have a problem buying what Hazel’s selling. Same with Klaus, who he acknowledges more then his other siblings even if it’s in a snarky manner. (He didn’t shoot Klaus down when he talked about conjuring their dad unlike Luther, and despite his angry reaction he took Klaus’ point about being addicted to the apocalypse seriously.) He gets angry when Vanya doesn’t believe him about the apocalypse but when it becomes clear that her disbelief is not malicious he doesn’t take it out on her. In contrast he doesn’t buy the Handler’s bullshit. To sum it up, Five is a practical people person, with good instincts but an outdated copy of Social Cues for Dummies. Is this autism or an effect of 40+ years alone? Both?

Five, the pragmatist. As the Handler says, Five is a first rate pragmatist which fits how a lot of those on the spectrum are very blunt, black and white thinkers. Where my family can debate politics for hours, my opinion is always the straightest path to whatever outcome I’m arguing for.

Five and clothes. Those on the spectrum tend to be hypersensitive, and clothing can be a Thing™️ for us. Certain materials feel like they're made of needles as opposed to just itchy, jeans are too tight, turtlenecks feel like a noose, etc. This is common, but sometimes it’s less about comfy sweatpants and more about familiarity. I have an undercut and if I don’t have time to get it shaved at the usual point, I get panicky. My hair feels slightly different, it looks slightly different, and it all just doesn't feel right. Five grew up wearing the academy uniform, and while he didn’t have the luxury of a suit and tie in the apocalypse, wearing a suit was clearly important to him during his time with the Commission. Even the Handler took notice, and gifted him a suit. And the second thing he does after making a sandwich in the past is find a suit that fits him. Ok, he didn’t have any options, but he didn’t have to wear the whole outfit. He could have mixed and matched. He could have stolen something from the department store. But no, he’s got to wear a suit jacket and tie. He even grabbed his tie off the guy he strangled at Griddy’s before he took care of the last dude. (Badass power move btw.) So I find it believable that the uniform was partially about appearances and partially about Five’s comfort zone, physically speaking.

(But wait, I hear you say, how can you throw in hypersensitivity when back up this post you claimed Five could have ignored his bullet wound via hyper-fixation? Here’s the thing, hyper-fixation basically mutes the notifications our bodies send us. We can be uncontrollably hypersensitive and still not clue into our bodies screaming at us while we fixate on something. But boy, we sure notice when we snap out of it.)

Five is all or nothing, ride or die. Oh boy is he ever. And most autistic people are too. We put our all into everything we do. Doesn’t always translate to doing it well, but we definitely give it our all. (In fact, we tend to over do things and need some serious recouping time after.) This can cover things already in the hyper-fixation section, like his obsession with the apocalypse. But going all in for something is different from the magnetic pull of hyper-fixation. It’s a conscious decision for one thing. The biggest example for Five is his commitment to his family. The Hargreeves are a dysfunctional family, and Five didn’t escape this by jumping to the future. He’s hardly the perfect brother but he’s the most invested in his siblings nonetheless. He became a killer for them, threw morals out the window for the slim chance he might be able to save them. And as is established pretty quickly, he put his all into being a hitman, becoming the best there ever was. That fight scene in the diner speaks for itself. And slicing up his own arm to get at the tracker? Well, it’s pretty clear that when Five commits to something he doesn’t mess around.

Five and math. Here we hit a stereotype about autistic people and their ‘special interests.’ Yeah, it’s really common, but what most people don’t know is that the majority of those on the spectrum are not math geniuses, or geniuses of any other kind. My sister’s ‘special interest’ is still relatively useful, being science, but she’s not a genius. Mine is ‘stories.’ Books, movies, theatre, music, etc. I can devour fiction forever. It’s basically useless to society though, because I’m picky af. But okay, Five fits the stereotype and is a math genius, or at least where it applies to time travel. We see this in the flashback already. Ok, time travelling didn’t work out as he’d hoped, but he managed it at 13 when even Reginald didn’t think he could. This makes me think that his tendency to spend hours working out equations didn’t start in the apocalypse.

Does Five stim? If so, we don’t really see it. That doesn’t rule out autism though, because, well, it’s a spectrum. I only stimmed as a toddler. Some people don’t stim at all.

Vanya. Another theory I’ve seen thrown around is that Vanya is autistic. I’m not going to address that here, but I do want to say that if she is, that wouldn't affect whether or not Five is autistic. Autism is not personality after all, and they are very different people. Again, autism is a spectrum and nobody displays all the same traits. If you’re thinking it would be unrealistic for Reginald. To have adopted two kids with autism, think again. That one autistic sister of mine? Adopted as a baby before we had any idea that she was a mini me.

Five doesn’t appear obviously autistic. What most people don’t realize is that autism is at the end of the day an invisible disability. Most people will know someone at some point on the spectrum and never even realize it. Because sure, sometimes you’ll see us rocking under the table or otherwise displaying what movies have stereotyped as autistic behaviour, but most of the time you won’t notice. We’re the slightly overly bright cashier at Walmart, the quiet bookworm at school, your favourite author that writes emotions so well, the person at comic con who can recite their favourite movie line for line, that kid that gets along best with those older or younger then them. If Five is autistic we may never know, because he’s perfectly functional, but that's hardly and argument against autism either.

And finally; people relate. Nobody knows autism better then those with autism themselves, so I’m inclined to take all the posts I’ve seen about Autistic!Five as a pretty big point on the autism column.

To summarize; none of these points taken alone indicate autism, but together well.... it’s an option at least.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I will now open the stage to audience input before this monster grows any longer.

[sceptilemasterr]

Catalysts Play Open Heart: Chapter 4

Summary: The Catalysts, too impatient to wait a week for the next chapter, come up with an incredibly irresponsible and dangerous solution in order to start Chapter 4 of Open Heart. Meanwhile, Raj and Furball are on the roof, enjoying some ‘substances’ and having a deep chat...

Previous Chapter: Link

Note: The things in bold are scenes from the actual Choices chapter. Ian and Alyssa are my twin Endless Summer MCs, who I’ve given some additional abilities here (as in my script rewrite), mostly for rule of funny.

Warnings: Marijuana use (guess who). Also, discussions of childbirth and trauma, as was found in the actual Open Heart chapter.

“Dude… what’s it even like, being you? Y’know?” asked Raj.

He was sprawled out on a deck chair on the roof of the Celestial, smoking some weed he had brought from somewhere. Beside him, on the floor, lay Furball, on his belly with all of his limbs splayed out to the side, the open bottle of catnip in front of him. Every so often, the blue fox would look up, spray out a jet of ice at another piece of nearby furniture, then lay back down again. “Baaaarararmmm,” he answered, making a very un-Furball-ish noise.

“If I could do that… I’d… like, you could be your own air conditioner! Or, like, a great prankster… oh man, that’s the best idea!”

“Brriaaaaarr,” agreed Furball, freezing a decorative plant.

“...Wonder if they started the next chapter of that story yet. That was pretty fun last time. Man, Furball, you should join in for the next one!”

“Wraaaaaa…” Another blast of ice flash-froze Raj’s shoe, which he had kicked off onto the floor a while ago.

“You could join the drinking game too! Wait… can you… do you even… get drunk?”

“Briiii? Rarammm?” Furball looked at him quizzically, then turned and sneezed, freezing a few of the string lights overhead.

“Guess we never tested it. That does it, I’ve got some good stuff for you to try… Later, though. And maybe just a little bit, to start out with, huh?”

“Smrrrmr,” nodded Furball sagely, rolling over onto his back and breathing another stream of ice onto the other lounge chair.

“What would be your signature drink, I wonder? I’m thinkin’... like… definitely some blue curacao cuz, y’know,” Raj said, gesturing to Furball’s blue fur. “Over ice of course. Hmm, what else to add…”

As Raj continued talking to himself about Furball’s signature drink, the ice fox looked up at him for a moment, before laying back down on his back with a sigh. As he did so, he blew out another burst of icy breath-- that shot straight for the door to the stairs leading back down, freezing the handle solid. Raj looked over at the door for a moment. “Huh. Wonder what we’ll do about that…” he muttered vaguely, before settling back down into his chair. “Ah, it’ll fix itself later.” He looked back down at Furball. “Alright, now for the real question. If I had some kinda power like that, what d’you think I’d have?”

“Barrrrrrrmma,” Furball replied.

“Fire? Yeah, I can see that,” Raj answered. “Sure would make cooking easier…”

“Okay, has anyone seen Raj?” asked Michelle, walking briskly back into the lobby. Everyone was munching on a variety of snacks, mostly leftovers from the previous night’s dinner. “I’ve looked everywhere.”

“No, why, you gettin’ impatient, Maybelline?” asked Jake through a mouthful of shrimp.

“I mean, it is a pretty big resort,” Sean pointed out. “Maybe he fell asleep or something? I mean, it’s Raj, he wouldn’t do anything too crazy.”

“True,” admitted Michelle. “Still, I don’t want him to miss too much of the story! We’ve got to continue the next chapter soon.”

“After the way the last chapter ended? For sure!” agreed Diego.

Estela shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m excited to continue too, but-” She stopped talking as everyone but Ian stared at her incredulously. “What? I’m not allowed to enjoy a cheesy hospital story once in a while?” Craig started to laugh, but went silent when Estela fixed him with her trademark death glare. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Jake held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, no objections here,” he assured her.

“Honestly, these chapters don’t take too long to get through,” Quinn pointed out. “It hasn’t been that much time. Let’s just go ahead and start, and Raj will probably come down later, right? We can catch him up on what he missed!”

Everyone muttered to each other for a few seconds, but finally agreed to continue. “Alright, I guess we’re doing this,” Michelle said, taking Quinn’s phone and opening up the app. She scrolled back to the Open Heart book… and stopped, frowning. “Oh no!” she exclaimed.

“Yaaaah!” screamed Craig, but Zahra didn’t react thanks to her earmuffs. “...Wait, what’s ‘oh no?’” he added after his brain caught up to the situation.

Michelle laughed and shook her head. “Nothing that serious,” she reassured him. “It’s just… this says the next chapter doesn’t release until next week!”

“Let me see!” said Diego, walking over and looking at the phone. “Huh, you’re right. That sucks.”

“...Diego, the screen is already available in the same location as before,” Varyyn told him.

Diego blushed, looking up at the projector screen, where, indeed, the phone screen was being shown as usual. “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“Aww, but we can’t leave it there!” complained Quinn. “Not for a whole week!”

“We won’t even all be here next week!” groaned Jake. “Drinking games are a lot less fun by yourself, y’know.”

“...Are you speaking from experience?” Alyssa asked him. Jake blushed but said nothing.

“Well, what exactly do you propose we do about it?” demanded Aleister. “The chapter does not exist yet, and that is that. We can either leave this as it is, and be done with this ridiculous game, or begin a new story. We have no other choice.”

“...Actually,” said Jake, with a knowing look in his eye, “we do have another choice.” He shot a meaningful look at Alyssa and Ian.

It took a moment before everyone realized what he had in mind. “No. No way. Absolutely not,” said Sean incredulously.

“You want us to use our Vaanu powers… for this?” demanded Ian. “Jake, are you insane?!”

“Don’t be so boring, Ian,” Alyssa argued. “It’s genius!”

“More like ‘irresponsible’ and ‘dangerous!’”

“What are you, my father?”

The room erupted into shouting, with everyone quickly taking sides with one twin or the other regarding Jake’s ridiculous plan. After several minutes of this, Aleister stood up, pulled out a megaphone, and shouted, “CEASE THIS CACOPHONY AT ONCE!”

“...Where did you get a megaphone, and can I have one?” asked Craig. Zahra slapped him.

“I came prepared for just such an occasion,” Aleister explained. “Jacob, allow me to clarify. You wish for Alyssa and Ian to use their powers to irresponsibly manipulate the entire space-time continuum and reality itself… in order to continue playing a mobile game… a week early?!”

“I’ve never heard a stupider idea in my life, and I live with Craig,” Zahra said.

“Yeah!” agreed Craig, before frowning a few moments later. “...Wait…”

“Whoa, hang on, Malfoy, calm your knickers,” said Jake. “I didn’t mean all of reality. Just, like… a focused blast. Just on that phone. I don’t think any of you wanna miss an extra week of work, anyway.”

“I… guess that's more reasonable,” said Grace hesitantly.

“Oh, not you too!” complained Aleister.

Estela shrugged. “I… maybe,” she admitted. “Ian, you’ve aged objects before, it could probably work.”

“I dunno, it feels like a waste somehow,” Ian argued.

“The powers of Vaanu are not to be used lightly,” agreed Varyyn sagely.

Beside his husband, Diego pouted. “But just this once… it can’t hurt, right?”

“It’s my phone, and I’m okay with it,” said Quinn. “But if they age it to dust, the twins owe me a new phone.”

“That’s fair. Come on, Ian. It’ll be fun!” Alyssa said, making her best puppy-dog face at her brother.

Ian rolled his eyes. “That hasn’t worked in years, ‘Lyss, and it’s not gonna work now.”

“Not even from me?” asked Estela, winking at Alyssa before doing the same puppy-dog face.

Ian frowned. “Okay, that is completely unfair,” he complained.

“Well, guess we leave it up to the Time Twins,” Michelle said, glancing over at where Estela was rapidly wearing down her husband’s resolve. “But just a small burst, okay? One week.”

“We’ll be careful,” Alyssa assured her as Ian sighed and shook his head.

“Alright, Estela, you win,” he told her.

“Don’t I always?”

“Oh, FINE! Let us proceed to utterly BREAK REALITY because someone got slightly impatient for a PHONE GAME!” yelled Aleister dramatically. “Don’t blame me if the universe implodes into nothingness as a result. I am certain if Raj were here, he would be levelheaded enough to talk you all out of this utterly irresponsible and frankly RIDICULOUS scheme!”

Meanwhile, on the roof, Raj leaned over, running a hand along the now ice-coated floor. “What if I had time powers, like the twins…” he said to Furball. “I could, like… fast-forward time to make rollercoaster lines faster… or, watch new movies a week early… or make food cook itself instantly… The twins never do stuff like that, those dudes are missin’ out…”

“Brrrrmmmm,” agreed the blue fox.

Back in the lobby, Alyssa and Ian stood, holding hands, looking at Quinn’s phone on a nearby table, still attached to the projector cord. “Here goes nothing,” Ian said. “Three…”

“Two…” continued Alyssa.

“One!” the twins said simultaneously, concentrating. A burst of prismatic time energy emerged from their conjoined hands, flaring out for a moment before the twins clenched their free fists and focused the beam tighter, until it had zeroed in completely onto the phone. They held their focus for several seconds as the rest of the Catalysts and Varyyn watched with bated breath. Finally, the energy flared once around the phone before disappearing into it.

“Alright, anybody got any extra heads or anything?” asked Jake. “No? Told ya so, Slytherin.” Aleister crossed his arms disapprovingly but said nothing.

“Here you go, Quinn. Try it now,” said Alyssa, releasing her brother’s hand and passing the phone back to its owner.

Quinn took the phone and turned it over in her hand. “The case is a little more scratched up than before, and… what’s this weird orange stain?” She sniffed the phone gingerly. “It’s… taco sauce.”

“Aww, YES!” shouted Craig excitedly, pumping a fist into the air. “Does this mean we’re destined for a taco night sometime this week?!”

Quinn turned on the phone and started scrolling through her texts. Everyone caught a glimpse of a text from Michelle, filled with nothing but emojis, until Quinn hit the home button and it vanished. “Uh… I’ll look at those later,” she told the group. Jake raised an eyebrow at Michelle, but she just shook her head, lips sealed.

Quinn took another moment to navigate back to the Choices app, where she saw that, indeed, Open Heart now showed up as ‘Completed.’ “Wow. The whole book is finished,” she observed. “How far forward did you take this phone, anyway?”

Alyssa blushed. “Uh… maybe a little more than a week…” she admitted.

Ian sighed and gave his sister a knowing look. “You haven’t been practicing at all, have you?”

“I practiced! ...Once! ...A few months ago,” she admitted.

Quinn stood up and smiled. “Doesn’t matter now! We have the phone, nobody’s been time-warped or anything weird, and we have plenty of chapters to keep playing through!” she said brightly. “Michelle?”

Michelle paused for a moment, then shrugged and took the phone from Quinn. “Well, no turning back now,” she admitted. “Everybody got their drinks ready? Great, let’s get started!”

Content Warning: This chapter depicts sensitive topics relating to childbirth and trauma.

“That’s… ominous,” said Diego.

“I mean, it is a hospital, the ‘trauma’ part should be obvious,” said Zahra.

“We’re all adults here, we’ll be fine, right?” asked Jake.

Grace looked around nervously. “Uh… I’m a little nervous… I don’t do so well with blood and trauma,” she admitted.

Aleister put his arm around her somewhat awkwardly. “No need to fret. I shall summarize for you what happens if you wish to keep your eyes closed, should anything too… ‘descriptive’ occur.”

Grace smiled at him. “Thanks.”

Aleister shrugged. “Not that any of this matters anyway. We are all likely about to be consumed by a space-time rift any moment now…” he added, glaring daggers at Jake.

“Hey, don’t look at me, the twins were the ones who actually did it!”

Open Heart: Chapter 4

Dolores

“...Umbridge?” asked Diego.

“Probably not,” Ian told him.

“That would be a pretty random cameo,” Diego admitted.

“She was the irritating woman with the unpleasant personality, correct?” Varyyn asked his husband.

“Yep, that’s the one,” Diego said. “We had a Harry Potter marathon a few months ago,” he explained to the others.

A couple days later, you wake up to the enticing smell of someone frying up breakfast.

“Aww, this is really making me miss Raj,” Craig said. “He makes the best breakfasts! ...Hope he’s okay.”

“We’ll go look for him if he doesn’t turn up soon,” Michelle assured him, before continuing to play.

Landry: No! Just… delayed. What’s a seven-letter term for ‘colds that last a long time?’ Fourth letter is ‘A.’

“Flu!” shouted Craig.

“That is not seven letters, and there isn’t even an ‘A’ anywhere,” Zahra said, rolling her eyes.

“Oh! Uh…” Craig said, pondering for a moment. “What about ‘Flu, A Flu!’ That works, right?”

“...I guess? Technically?” said Diego.

But when the choices appeared, to no one but Craig’s surprise, ‘Flu, A Flu’ was not an option. “Aww, man,” said Craig.

“‘Ice Ages’ is the obvious choice here,” Grace pointed out.

Michelle shrugged. “You’re not wrong,” she said, picking the option in question.

Sienna: He keeps having to cancel. His work really demands a lot of him.

“Wait! Sienna’s boyfriend is always busy… and his name’s ‘Wayne…’” said Diego excitedly. “It’s Batman. Her boyfriend is definitely Batman!”

“Oh my God, that actually works!” agreed Ian, air-fiving Diego.

“Now that would be a pretty cool plot twist,” Estela admitted.

Jake chuckled. “Estela being a Batman fan, now that doesn’t surprise me,” he told her, and the rest of the group nodded in agreement.

Estela shrugged. “What can I say?”

Michelle clicked through to the next choice. “Ooh, I totally want to meet Batman!” yelled Craig. “Pick it, pick it, pick it!”

“I really doubt he’s actually Batman, but sure,” Michelle told him, and chose ‘Well, we can’t wait to meet him.’

Jackie shuffles into the living area, still half-asleep. She yawns, pours a mug of coffee, and takes a seat.

“Zahra. She’s totally Zahra,” Alyssa said.

“Not sure if that’s an insult or a compliment,” Zahra said, “but what the hell. Sure.”

Jackie: Last thing I remember is reading a textbook on my bed and then…

“Okay, Zahra’s personality, Grace’s love of textbooks,” Alyssa amended.

“What, are you implying I don’t read or something?” asked Zahra, annoyed. “I spent all afternoon in the damn library, you know!”

“True enough, but have you ever fallen asleep while reading a textbook?” asked Michelle. “Because I’m pretty sure Grace has.”

“Guilty,” Grace admitted.

Elijah: I hooked up the T.V. and stereo last night. We’re officially ready for a housewarming party!

“Now this is gonna be good!” said Craig. “As long as nobody freaks out over a tiger and ruins the whole thing.”

“That was one time,” groaned Ian.

MC!Michelle: A party sounds like…

“Umm, ‘a great idea,’ obviously!” said Quinn.

“Of course!” agreed Zahra, while Craig cheered again. Jake, Alyssa, Diego, and Varyyn all voiced their agreement as well.

“That settles it,” said Michelle, noting the obvious majority. “‘Great idea’ it is.”

Jackie: About Dr. Banerji. Word is, he just up and quit sometime yesterday.

“Whoa…” said Jake.

“The mystery deepens!” said Diego excitedly.

Michelle frowned. “I’m guessing this has something to do with the way the last chapter ended,” she said to herself. “Hope he’s okay.”

Jackie: Coffee is my breakfast.

Zahra laughed. “I like this girl!”

“True that,” agreed Jake.

“Oh, man,” said Craig, “this reminds me of this one time when I put coffee in my cereal instead of milk. That was not a good breakfast, let me tell ya…”

Several of the Catalysts mimed vomiting. “Okay, how and why did you do that?!” asked Diego, staring at Craig. “That’s...just... no.”

Craig shrugged. “In my defense, I was really drunk, and the coffee pot was sitting in the fridge where the milk was usually.”

“Craig, I told you I was gonna put it in there,” said Sean.

“Not my fault I was too drunk to remember that!”

“Okay, but the real question is… how did it taste?” asked Jake, leaning forward.

Craig shook his head. “You do not wanna know.”

“...And this conversation is officially DONE,” said Zahra.

Dr. Harper: Ethan…

MC!Michelle: (What do I do?)

“Get closer! Duh!” shouted Alyssa when the next choice appeared. “I want to know!”

“Alyssa, don’t you think we should respect their privacy, though?” asked Grace tentatively. “It’s not nice to eavesdrop.”

“Oh, come on, Grace. We’re not eavesdropping! We’re just moving closer so that we can overhear their conversation without them knowing about it!”

“...Alyssa, that’s literally what ‘eavesdropping’ means,” Ian pointed out.

“Well excuse me if I haven’t memorized the dictionary!”

“...You haven’t?” asked Aleister. “What on Earth have you been doing with your time?”

Michelle sighed. “I vote to respect their privacy… but we should, y’know, actually vote on this. Who wants to respect their privacy?”

“Come on, guys, let’s not be rude,” said Sean, as he raised his hand along with Michelle, Ian, Grace, Aleister and Quinn. Varyyn raised his hand as well, but then lowered it when he looked at Diego and saw that his hand wasn’t raised.

Michelle quickly counted the hands. “That’s six,” she said, frowning. “Just to be sure… who votes to get closer?” Alyssa, Jake, Estela, Zahra, Diego, and Varyyn (after Diego raised his) all raised their hands. “Wait, that’s six people too! Did somebody not vote?”

Everyone stared expectantly at Craig. “...What?” he asked when he noticed this.

“You forgot to vote!” Zahra told him.

“Oh! Oh, yeah. What did Sean vote again?”

“I said ‘respect their privacy,’” Sean told him.

“Okay, yeah, that’s my vote too.”

“Why not ask to follow my vote?” Zahra asked him, annoyed.

“Because Sean’s my bro, bro! And y’know, ‘bros before…’” He stopped before he could finish the sentence when he noticed Zahra's death glare. “...Uh. It’s just a thing people say.”

“Anyway!” exclaimed Michelle brightly before Zahra could find a way to get Craig to vote her way, “looks like ‘respecting their privacy’ wins. Moving on!” She selected the relevant option.

Kyra: Hey there, doc!

You turn to see Bryce wheeling Kyra down the hall on a bed.

Quinn started fanning herself with her hand. “Kyra and Bryce? Oh, my poor heart…”

“If there’s an option to flirt with both of them, we’re definitely taking it,” declared Sean.

“Fair enough,” agreed Michelle. “Though I would’ve done it anyway.”

Bryce: A lobectomy, assisted by yours truly.

“A lo-ba-da what now?” asked Alyssa.

“‘Lobectomy,’” clarified Aleister. “The surgical removal of a-”

“A lobe of the lung,” interrupted Michelle. “Aleister, you’re not the only one who knows these things, you know. I am a medical student.”

“Ah. You are correct,” admitted Aleister, blushing a faint shade of red. “My utmost apologies.”

MC!Michelle: Kyra! You’re having a lobe of your lung removed today?

“Whaddya know, Peacock Feathers was right,” said Jake.

“Well, of course,” Michelle said, smirking. “You all should know that by now.”

Kyra: I know, right? It happened kinda fast after the C.T. results came back.

“Craig’s Tacos!” yelled Craig excitedly. Silence. “No? Aww… but we’re having the Taco Party of Destiny this week! Quinn’s phone proves it!”

Quinn shrugged, turning her phone over in her hand. “Well, seeing as we sent it even further forward in time… it could probably be any time this month, or even later,” she pointed out.

“Anyway, C.T. stands for Computerized…” said Michelle, before her voice trailed off and she frowned. “Huh. To be honest, I have no idea.”

Jake shook his head, amused. “She doesn’t know a medical question?!” he asked, mock-astonished. “I think this calls for a drink.” The others looked at him expectantly. “ ...Y’all!” he added.

“We always just say ‘C.T. scan,’” Michelle admitted. “I honestly don’t know what it stands for.”

“‘Computerized Tacos?’” suggested Craig.

“What is it with you and tacos all of a sudden?” asked Zahra.

“Taco Party of Destiny, remember?”

“May I?” asked Aleister. Michelle nodded. “Very well. It stands for ‘Computerized Tomography.’”

Michelle smiled at him. “Thanks, Aleister. That’s it!”

“Wait, did he really say ‘Computerized Taco-graphy?’”

Everyone ignored Craig.

MC!Michelle: (What do I do?)

“FLIRTY!” yelled Quinn, uncharacteristically loudly.

“Wow. That was impressive,” said Michelle. “‘Flirty’ it is!”

“Aren’t we going to vote?” asked Aleister.

Michelle shook her head. “You know ‘flirty’ would win anyway, since that’s the option that lets them drink,” she told him.

“She’s got a point,” admitted Grace.

“Drink, y’all!”

MC!Michelle: But if you do see any warm, bright lights while you’re under… I’m going to need you to remember this face and turn the hell around.

Instinctively, everyone’s gazes turned to Alyssa and Ian. “...What are you staring at?” asked Alyssa.

Ian sighed and looked into Estela’s eyes. “Honestly, sounds about right,” he told the group. “While I was with Vaanu, it was her who kept me… ‘me.’ If that makes any sense at all.”

“Of course it does, mi amor,” said Estela, pulling him into a tight hug.

“Barf,” said Zahra.

“You know you like it,” said Craig, pulling her into a very similar hug. She playfully pushed him away.

“Just glad you’re home, Princess,” Jake told his wife, a huge, genuine smile on his face.

“You’re flirty when you’re drunk,” Alyssa observed.

“What are you talkin’ about? I’m flirty all the time.”

His wife sighed. “You’re not wrong…”

Bryce: Sorry, Dr. Nguyen, but I have to get Ms. Santana here to the O.R.

“Oh! I really do know this one!” yelled Craig excitedly. “That one means ‘Operating Room!’”

Everyone stared, dumbstruck and utterly at a loss for words, at Craig. Zahra grabbed her glass of whiskey and emptied the entire thing into her mouth.

“...What?” asked Craig.

“You… you got that one right!” exclaimed Michelle, astonished.

“Well, yeah, I’ve heard doctors and stuff say that one before,” Craig explained. “Like when I was in there after I broke my...uh, I think spleen? They told me not to play football but I didn’t listen.”

“...Did you have mono?” asked Michelle.

“Yeah, but like, I didn’t feel that sick, so I figured I could still play--”

Michelle sighed. “God dammit, Craig,” she muttered incredulously, shaking her head. “You idiot.” Zahra nodded in agreement as she refilled her glass.

“Craig getting an acronym right. Let’s toast to that!” declared Jake, raising his whiskey glass for a toast. The others raised their own glasses before each taking another sip, including Craig himself.

MC!Michelle: Bryce, just one more thing…

“Damn, I like both these options,” said Sean.

“I suppose that means this calls for a vote,” said Aleister. ‘Take care of her for me’ won by a close margin, 7-6.

Dr. Zaid: Get down to the E.R. and see if they need any patients admitted!

“‘Exciting Room?’” guessed Craig.

“...Aaaaaand we’re back to normal,” snarked Zahra. “Also, no.”

“It’s actually ‘Emergency Room,’” Michelle clarified.

“At least he was half right,” put in Grace.

“But emergencies are exciting! Doesn’t that count?” asked Craig. Zahra shook her head. “Aww…”

Intern: Hi, Aurora! I brought you a cappuccino--

Aurora: I drink tea.

“Geez, what’s her problem?” asked Sean. “Rude.”

“For sure,” agreed Michelle.

“She needs to lose the stick up her ass,” agreed Jake. Then the next choice appeared, and Jake laughed so hard that whiskey flew out of his nose.

Alyssa fell out of her chair laughing at the sight. “Holy shit, that was amazing,” she said through her laughter.

“Damn, Ariel, maybe your phone is psychic,” Jake said to Quinn. “Can we pick it? Please?”

“We’ve gotta vote,” Michelle reminded him.

“Oh yeah.”

But when the vote was called, ‘What’s up your butt?’ won unanimously, likely due to Jake’s reaction.

Aurora: Funny. That’s what I had to ask my last patient. It was a model train.

“PFFFFFFFFFTBWAHAHAHAA!” bellowed Craig, incredibly loudly. “Holy shit!”

“That was amazing,” laughed Zahra, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Okay, I love this story,” said Jake through his own laughter. “Even if it does predict me sometimes.”

“I still do not understand why butts are funny,” admitted Varyyn.

Diego shrugged and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Love you anyway,” he told his husband.

MC!Michelle: Pretty quiet down here…

“Alright, whoever says ‘how boring’ is an insensitive prick,” said Michelle when the choices appeared.

“Why would anyone say that?” asked Alyssa. “Isn’t it a good thing to have less work?”

“Lazybones,” Jake said, laughing.

“Should we not vote on this choice as well--” Aleister began to say.

“Nope!” Michelle said, cutting him off as she selected ‘That’s great!’

Aurora: What are you even talking about? There are no good cases.

“Insensitive prick alert!” shouted Zahra.

Paramedic: Dolores Hudson, office fire. Her coworkers evacuated in time, but she’s pregnant and couldn’t move fast enough.

“Ah! ‘Dolores!’” exclaimed Varyyn excitedly, a sharp contrast to the ominous music playing. “That is the title of the chapter!”

“Yep, it is,” said Diego, nodding.

“Hope she’s okay…” muttered Michelle, as she continued the story.

When the next choice came up, she looked back at the rest of the group for confirmation. “All you,” Ian assured her.

Michelle thought for a moment, then chose the ‘How long has she been unconscious?’ option.

Paramedic: Elevated B.P., but she and the baby both have strong heartbeats.

“Wait, isn’t that a gas station?” asked Craig.

“...Yeah,” admitted Zahra. “But I don’t think--”

“I know what happened!” he exclaimed. “The lady was ‘elevated’ on the gas station roof and tried to jump off it to test a parachute made of paper and duct tape because someone bet her ten bucks!”

Silence. “I… um… what,” said Michelle finally.

“That was oddly specific,” said Zahra.

Craig paused for a moment. “Well, okay, that did kinda happen to me once. I just broke my ankle instead. Also it was a Shell.”

“Why am I not surprised?” asked Alyssa.

“Blood Pressure, not BP gas station,” Zahra clarified for Craig. “Even I know that one.”

“...Oh.”

Aurora: Smoke inhalation? It’s all yours. I’ll wait for something interesting.

“WHOAAAAAAAAAAAA!” the entire group exclaimed at once, outraged.

“What a horrible person,” Ian said.

“She’s a person, not a goddamn science experiment,” said Michelle, scowling at the screen. “‘Interesting’ my ass.”

“We gotta do something!” said Sean, as on-screen, Michelle’s character agreed to take the patient’s case. “Good!”

MC!Michelle: So… you ran into a raging inferno to save a pregnant woman?

“Wow, when she puts it that way, this guy sounds like an action hero,” said Diego admiringly.

“He does seem like a great guy,” agreed Quinn.

MC!Michelle: I like to think…

“DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!” hollered Zahra when the full-body picture of the paramedic appeared.

“The man on the screen resembles you, Diego,” said Varyyn.

Diego blushed and looked down at his feet. “Well, uh, ...maybe? If I were like, 30 times more badass?”

“Just as you are now, then,” Varyyn said.

“I think at this point we should all be saying ‘I’d be that brave,’” declared Jake. “Given the bullshit we’ve all been through by now.”

“You do have a fair point,” admitted Aleister. “Michelle?”

“Jake’s not wrong,” Michelle admitted, selecting the option.

Rafael: Rafael Aveiro.

“Wait, is he a Ninja Turtle?” asked Ian excitedly. “This keeps getting better!”

“That would be awesome!” agreed Diego. “So he’s secretly a Ninja Turtle, Sienna’s boyfriend is secretly Batman…”

“BEST. CROSSOVER. EVER.”

“By the way… drink, y’all,” said Jake. Michelle looked at him expectantly. “Oh, come on, you’re gonna pick it,” he insisted, until finally she relented and chose the flirtatious ‘Pretty often, I hope’ choice.

MC!Michelle: (Everyone must love Mrs. Martinez.)

“True that!” shouted Estela. “She’s the best.”

“Ha, even Dr. Ramsey likes her,” said Alyssa.

Michelle laughed. “If he likes someone, then everyone does,” she commented.

Dr. Ramsey: I care for the wellbeing of the people who’ve entrusted their care to me, Rookie. That’s all.

“Huh. That’s weirdly thoughtful,” Zahra said.

“Compared to Aurora, at least he cares for his patients,” Michelle agreed. “Even if he can be abrasive sometimes.”

“I don’t know about you,” said Grace hesitantly, “but I’d prefer a doctor who cared about their patients and was kinda mean to his coworkers than the other way around.”

“Agreed,” said Sean.

Dr. Ramsey: Did you just say Dolores Hudson?

MC!Michelle: Yes?

Dr. Ramsey: I’m coming with you.

“Ooh, the plot thickens!” shouted Diego. “Wonder if they know each other.”

“Could be,” said Quinn.

“Oh!” exclaimed Grace excitedly. “What if this is related to why Dr. Banerji quit yesterday?”

Michelle nodded. “That’s definitely possible,” she agreed.

Dolores: Ethan!

Dr. Ramsey: Dolores! What have you gotten yourself into this time?

“CALLED IT!” crowed Diego triumphantly.

Dr. Ramsey: Dolores was my very first patient when I was an intern.

MC!Michelle: Wow! Dolores, was he always so…

“Wait…” said Zahra, frowning as she read the choices, “are they really letting us flirt with Dr. Ramsey?!”

“Looks like it,” said Quinn. “I mean, not directly, but…”

“Drink, y’all!” exclaimed Jake. Craig immediately took a sip.

“Wait, wait, we haven’t voted yet!” protested Michelle. “I’d rather not flirt with Dr. Ramsey, of all people…”

Aleister stood up at the word ‘voted’ and began counting everyone’s votes. “It would appear ‘Mean’ won, 8-5,” he declared.

Craig frowned. “Aww, man… does that mean I have to put my drink back in the cup?” He started attempting to make himself vomit.

Zahra quickly slapped him. “Uh, no,” she admonished. “Just… drink it normally!”

“Oh, okay.”

Your Stethoscope: Listen to her breathing.

“Okay, ‘drink, y’all’ for real this time,” Jake said.

Craig started to take another drink, but Zahra put her hand over his cup. “No fair cheating, you drank on the last one,” she reminded him. Craig frowned but set the cup down anyway.

“Was that really the first single-option choice in the chapter?” asked Estela. “Huh.”

MC!Michelle: (What do I say?)

“Dr. Ramsey has friends?” shouted Jake incredulously. “That’s both my actual reaction and my vote for this choice.”

“Wasn’t expecting Dolores to get a full picture,” Quinn said. “That’s nice! And my vote goes for ‘That’s so sweet.’”

“Guess she stood up fast just like Kyra,” Diego pointed out upon seeing the photo of Dolores standing.

Aleister stood up, getting ready to take everyone’s votes. “If you don’t mind, Aleister, could I… maybe… do the vote?” asked Grace hesitantly. Aleister smiled and sat back down. “Okay, uh… who votes ‘That’s so sweet?’” Grace asked the group. Quinn, Diego, Varyyn, Ian, Sean, and Grace herself all raised their hands. “And ‘Dr. Ramsey has friends?’” Jake, Alyssa, Estela, Craig, Zahra, Aleister, and Michelle all raised their hands. Grace quickly counted their votes. “Looks like the second choice won,” she said.

Michelle smiled at Grace. “Nice job,” she assured her, before going ahead and picking the option in question.

Dr. Ramsey: Careful, rookie…

“Oh man, I forgot he was actually still in the room!” laughed Zahra. “This just got even better!”

Dolores: I just really wish I hadn’t lost that stuffed frog.

MC!Michelle: I have an idea!

“Okay, this being a diamond choice makes even less sense than the ‘sneaking away with Bryce’ scene last chapter!” complained Alyssa.

“But… she looks so sad,” Quinn said. “We have to buy it!”

Jake shrugged. “That’s up to Michelle. But either way… totally unnecessary diamond choice… so, drink, y’all!”

As everyone sipped their drink of choice, Michelle looked around at the others. “Sorry, Quinn,” she said, “but this is only the first diamond option, and I think we should wait.”

Quinn frowned. “Aww… that’s okay. Go ahead!” Michelle turned down the diamond choice and continued through the story.

You hand him the labs. His face falls as he reads them.

MC!Michelle: She has serious preeclampsia. Her baby’s in trouble, isn’t it?

“Oh…” said Michelle. “That explains the hypertension, at least…”

“‘Pree-what-now?’” asked Craig. “‘Hyper-what-now?’ Slow down, Meech.”

Michelle shook her head. “Hypertension means high blood pressure,” she explained to him, “and preeclampsia is a dangerous condition that can occur during pregnancy. One of the main symptoms is elevated BP.”

“That’s ‘blood pressure,’ not the gas station,” Zahra reminded him.

Craig frowned. “I know that now…”

“Oh no,” said Grace suddenly, “this probably won’t end well… Remember the warning from the beginning of the chapter?”

Everyone’s eyes widened as they realized what Grace meant. “I really hope you’re wrong,” said Sean, “I like Dolores!”

“That’s the job, though,” said Michelle. “It’s hard, but we’re all taught to always be aware that we’ll never be able to save everyone.”

Diego shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it, Michelle,” he told her, “but I could never handle that kind of pressure. That’s for sure.” The others all nodded their agreement.

“Thanks, Diego. Guess I just… do.” Michelle smiled as she continued the story.

Dr. Ramsey: This is the job, Rookie. Come on.

“Whoa, that’s like what you just said!” said Alyssa excitedly.

“Ha, yep, guess so…”

MC!Michelle: I should tell her…

“Aah! Timed choice!” yelled Craig when the next choice appeared. Michelle quickly selected ‘Gently’ before the timer could run out.

MC!Michelle: The bloodflow to the placenta is slowing. It could soon deprive your baby of vital nutrients and oxygen.

Dr. Ramsey: Your baby is at risk.

“Oh no…” moaned Grace.

“I have a bad feeling about this…” said Varyyn.

“Alright, points for the Star Wars reference, but I’m genuinely worried,” Diego said. “God, I hope we’re wrong about this. Maybe they just put in that warning as a prank? Like, April Fools?”

“Diego… it’s March,” Alyssa reminded him.

“But you two sent Quinn’s phone into the future, right? So this chapter could be from April! ...C’mon, let me have my hope,” he told her. Then he thought about this for a moment. “Wait, hang on, if the phone was sent into the future, then… Hey, Michelle, are there any photos on there from my birthday?”

Michelle sighed. “I don’t think this is really the time,” she told him. “Besides, I think we’re already messing with the space-time continuum enough as it is.”

Diego’s face fell. “Aww… you’re right.”

MC!Michelle: Babies delivered at twenty-six weeks have a good chance of survival.

Dolores: A… a chance?

“Oh, please tell me we can save the baby!” said Sean. “That’s not fair.”

“We’d better be able to save them,” Estela said, literally at the edge of her seat with tension.

MC!Michelle: He’ll have to spend some time in the N.I.C.U., and yes, there’s risk of post-birth complications--

Everyone looked at Craig expectantly. “Any ideas?” asked Zahra.

Craig thought for a moment. “Uh… ‘Nine Interns Carrying… U-tacos,’” he finished lamely. “What? There wasn’t a ‘T’!”

“Points for effort, anyway,” said Jake, as everyone laughed.

“Hey, at least it lightened the mood!” Ian pointed out. “Thanks, Craig.”

“No problem, bro!”

Dr. Ramsey: I’m taking over this case. You’re… not ready for it.

“That doesn’t seem like a good idea,” said Michelle, frowning. “He’s too personally attached to her.”

“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” asked Alyssa, curious. “To have a doctor who knows you personally?”

“Not in this kind of situation,” Michelle explained. “It’s better to have less of an attachment when a case is serious.”

“Huh. Never thought of it that way.”

Through the window, you spot Kyra, asleep after surgery.

MC!Michelle: She looks so peaceful. Everything went well with the lobectomy?

Bryce: Flawlessly.

“Oh, thank god,” said Grace, letting out the breath she’d been holding. “At least Kyra is okay.”

“With everything with Dolores, I’d completely forgotten about Kyra!” Sean admitted. “Uh… whoops.”

Michelle smiled. “Yeah, I’m gonna have to agree with my character self on this one, it’s about time we got some good news in this chapter.”

When the next choice appeared, it was a perfectly unanimous vote to hug Bryce, which Michelle did. “And… drink, y’all,” declared Jake.

“A toast to Kyra’s good health!” said Aleister, raising his glass.

Everyone stared at him. “Wait, since when were you drinking with us?” asked Zahra. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he huffed. “I do enjoy a stiff glass of bourbon now and again.” At everyone’s continued dumbfounded expressions, he raised his glass again. “Well? A toast, or no?”

“A toast!” exclaimed Estela, who was the first to snap out of it. She raised her glass of water as the others followed suit with their drinks (or glasses of water for those who weren’t involved in the drinking game).

Bryce: Wanna hit up this concert with me? It should be fun. And it looks like you could seriously use a pick-me-up.

Purchasing this premium outfit gets you a night on the town with Bryce!

“She… er, I mean me… has great fashion sense,” said Michelle upon seeing the image of the premium outfit.

“Does this count as a drink?” asked Craig.

Jake shrugged. “Outfits cost money in real life, so I’m gonna say no. Sorry.”

“Even so,” said Michelle, “are we buying it or not? I’m going with yes, but it’s up to the vote.”

“Absolutely!” said Quinn. “We’ve got to do it!”

“I agree,” said Sean.

Alyssa frowned. “What if there’s another choice to come, though? We should save our money.”

“You mean our money?” Grace reminded her. “We don’t mind paying!”

“I know, but still…”

Aleister stood up and held out his hands. “Wait a moment, everyone, we must do this properly. Who votes to purchase the premium choice?” Michelle, Quinn, Sean, Estela, Diego, and Varyyn all raised their hands. “Who votes to decline?” The rest of the group raised their hands, and Aleister did a quick head count. “It appears we have our answer. I apologize, Michelle.”

“It’s no problem,” said Michelle, reluctantly turning down the outfit. “Majority rules.”

Bryce: I hope it works out with your patient.

“Me too,” moaned Grace. “I’m nervous…”

“I feel you,” Diego said to her. “That warning at the beginning has me a little paranoid.”

Your Pager: Read the message.

“Finally! There aren’t nearly enough of these in this chapter,” said Craig excitedly, as he took a sip of his drink.

“Hey, Drax, not so fast! I didn’t even say it yet,” Jake said, making a face at Craig.

Alyssa laughed and shoved Jake lightly. “Wow, didn’t know you cared so much about your ‘line,’” she said to him.

“I care about plenty of stuff, Princess. Like you.” Alyssa blushed as he added, “Drink, y’all!”

MC!Michelle: (I slept through a page about Dolores! She’s been taken to emergency surgery!)

“Oh no,” said Grace.

“They’d better save the baby,” said Estela, scowling at the screen.

Dr. Ramsey: Dolores had a seizure. Full eclampsia. We had no choice but to deliver the baby. It’s fifty-fifty he’ll survive the night.

Michelle and Grace both gasped at the words ‘Full eclampsia.’ “What happened? What does that mean?” asked Diego, covering his eyes for some reason despite it being a text-based app.

“Judging by your expression, nothing good,” Quinn said to Michelle.

Michelle frowned. “No, it’s not,” she agreed. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. Seizures during pregnancy as a result of preeclampsia.”

“Please be okay…” muttered Sean.

MC!Michelle: And Dolores?

Dr. Ramsey: She died.

“NO!” shouted Estela, as she stared at the screen in shock along with the rest of the group.

“No… no, no, no,” said Grace.

“I thought it was the baby that was in danger!” Ian said. “I didn’t think Dolores…”

Michelle shook her head sadly. “Eclampsia is incredibly dangerous to the mother, too…” she muttered, half to herself. “But… in this type of story, I didn’t think… didn’t think they’d actually do it…”

“It’s not real, Michelle,” said Quinn softly, a tear dripping down her face. “It’s just a story.”

“I know that. It’s just… things like this do happen. Maybe it’s just a little more real to me, but…” Her voice trailed off, and she crossed over to Quinn and pulled her into a tight hug. “God, am I really getting this worked up?”

Quinn rubbed her back gently. “It’s okay.”

“Talk about whiplash,” Jake muttered. “Gotta say, didn’t really expect anything this real in a story like this.”

“That likely does explain the emotional shock the others are experiencing,” declared Aleister, though a slight tremble in his voice betrayed the fact that he wasn’t immune from the ‘emotional shock’ either. “It is one thing to go into a work of fiction expecting tragedy, but another thing entirely when it is unexpected.” He wrapped an arm around Grace protectively, as she buried her face into his side.

“Uh… that lamp… still looks like a pinecone,” said Craig lamely, but no one laughed. “Sorry, just tryin’ to lighten the mood.”

“Let’s… let’s just continue,” said Zahra, probably the most composed out of the group. “We’ve gotta know what happens to the baby.”

Michelle nodded. Pulling away from Quinn, she picked up the phone again and continued clicking through as everyone watched with bated breath.

You enter the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and approach the incubator.

Newborn: …

Your heart tightens as you read the tiny newborn’s nametag: Ethan Hudson.

“Oh, so that’s what it stands for,” said Craig, trying to cheer everyone up again. “At least it was better than my guess.”

“Did she… name the baby after Dr. Ramsey?” asked Quinn. “Aww… that’s so sad…”

MC!Michelle: Do you mind if I sit with him tonight?

“That’s so nice,” said Grace, sniffling a little. “At least you’re there to look out for little Ethan. I hope he’s okay…”

“He’d better be,” agreed Estela.

“We can’t lose the mom and the baby! We’ve gotta be able to save him,” said Sean. “We’ve got to.”

Dr. Ramsey: Would you mind if I joined you?

“ABSOLUTELY,” said Estela firmly. “How could anyone not--” Her voice cut off as the diamond choice was revealed. “Are you kidding me?!”

“Good thing we saved our diamond choice, huh, Michelle?” asked Alyssa. “We’ve got to do this!”

Aleister shrugged. “Is there any purpose at all in taking a vote at this point?” he asked. “I do believe we are all in agreement on this one?” Everyone nodded their assent.

“Thanks,” said Michelle, smiling weakly. “Thanks, everyone.” She went ahead and selected the diamond choice.

Dr. Ramsey: The first patient I lost… was in my fourth week. I didn’t make any mistakes. He had stage four metastatic melanoma. He just… fought like hell and lost.

“Wow,” breathed Ian. “Wow…”

“It’s like I said,” Michelle told him. “We can’t save everyone. It’s sad, but true.” She looked down at the floor for a moment. “I’m dreading the day it happens to me. That’s one part of residency I’m not looking forward to.”

“Yeah, I’ll stick to teaching, thanks,” Diego said. “That’s just too much for me.”

Varyyn patted his husband on the back. “As she said before, not everyone can be healers. I cannot imagine that an entire village of only healers would be very successful.”

Michelle nodded. “He’s right, it’s not for everyone,” she assured him, “and that’s okay! Besides, we need professors too.”

“And video game designers!” interjected Craig. “Those are important! ...Right?”

“Uh… yeah, sure,” Zahra muttered. “Sure they are.”

“I think your games are awesome, man,” Sean told Craig. “Don’t listen to her.”

“Hey! Whose side are you on?!” demanded Zahra.

MC!Michelle: …

“Mind if I take this one?” Michelle asked when the next choice appeared. “I’m actually very curious to hear the answer to the first choice.” Everyone nodded in agreement, and she went ahead and selected ‘Does it ever get easier?’

Dr. Ramsey: Grieving a lost patient isn’t a weakness. Good doctors should value life. For itself. I’d be more concerned if you weren’t upset.

“That’s… actually a really good way of looking at it,” said Quinn. “If a doctor doesn’t value life, then why are they even a doctor in the first place?”

“Good point,” Michelle agreed. “I guess our emotions are what make us human.

“But the problem wasn’t being upset about losing the patient,” said Alyssa, frowning, “the problem was losing her in the first place! We should’ve kept that from happening! We should be better than this!”

Michelle shook her head. “People generally don’t live forever, Alyssa,” she reminded her. “As much as I’d like to be some kind of perfect super-doctor who saves everyone… I won’t be able to, and I’ve accepted that.”

“Some choices must last,” reminded Varyyn sagely, thinking of his mother.

“Ugh. Life isn’t fair,” sighed Alyssa. “You’re right.”

“He usually is,” Diego told her, and Varyyn smiled at him.

MC!Michelle: But…

“Wow, all of these choices suck,” said Zahra.

“Princess literally just said one of them earlier,” Jake observed. “Maybe we should go with that?”

“Huh? No I didn’t,” said Alyssa.

Ian pointed at the screen. “You said, and I quote, ‘We should be better than this!’”

“Oh. Right. Guess I did…”

“The third choice is even sadder,” Grace said. “She was his friend. Doesn’t that make it worse?”

“That was sort of my point about doctors not taking care of patients that they’re too attached to,” Michelle told her. “You’re right. It would make it a lot harder.”

“I suppose we should vote, then,” said Aleister, his voice noticeably softer than usual. “Shall we?”

‘I need to be better than this’ ended up winning, 6-2-5.

Dr. Ramsey: There are doctors with unlimited patience. I’m not one of them.

“You know… when Michelle says that out loud… it’s a lot funnier,” said Diego.

Everyone laughed weakly. “Ha. True,” Ian admitted. “‘Unlimited patients!’”

“There’s another Star Wars quote I could use here, but we already saw Dr. Ramsey doesn’t like those…”

He swallows and looks at Dolores’s baby. His eyes are red.

MC!Michelle: (What do I do?)

“You know, as much as I really didn’t like his attitude at first… that was a surprisingly insightful conversation,” Michelle said. “It makes sense. Patients absolutely should come first.”

“I… guess so,” Zahra admitted. “He’s still an ass though.”

“Even asses can get emotional sometimes, especially with a situation like this,” said Sean. “He needs us right now.”

“Asses are people too,” agreed Alyssa.

“Besides, asses do sometimes have a heart deep down, as we all know,” Jake said, looking pointedly at Aleister.

Aleister scowled. “What on Earth does my posterior have to do with any of this?!” he demanded, looking utterly bewildered.

“Aleister, you have a fine posterior,” Grace reassured him, then blushed and covered her mouth immediately when she realized what she’d said. “Wait, no, that came out wrong!”

“Heh, you two said ‘posterior,’” Craig pointed out.

Everyone laughed at the ridiculousness of the conversation, and the mood in the room instantly lightened. “God, I love you guys,” said Diego warmly.

“I’m not always glad you’re my brother, I admit, but that was amazing,” Estela told Aleister through her laughter.

Aleister stared, completely confused. “I still do not understand-”

“Nor do I, Aleister,” Varyyn reassured him.

Once the laughter had died down enough to continue, Michelle looked back at the screen. “Should we choose now?” she asked them. “I think we should choose ‘touch his hand,’ but we can put it to a vote-”

“No vote necessary, I think we’d all agree with that one,��� said Quinn, looking around at the others as they all nodded their agreement. “See?”

“That was easy,” said Michelle as she selected the option.

MC!Michelle: This doesn’t taste like cafeteria coffee!

Dr. Ramsey: This is from my private coffee machine. As soon as I got an office, I vowed never to drink that caffeinated dishwater again.

“Oh my god. That is brilliant,” said Michelle.

“Is hospital coffee really that bad?” asked Jake curiously. “I mean, it can’t be worse than barracks coffee, right?”

“Let’s just say ‘caffeinated dishwater’ is an understatement.”

MC!Michelle: He made it!

Dr. Ramsey: And he’s getting stronger.

“Thank god!” exclaimed Estela, as everyone sighed in relief.

“Glad Ethan is okay!” said Quinn. “Er, baby Ethan. Though Dr. Ramsey is probably okay too.”

“I just hope someone will be able to take care of the baby,” Grace said. “Ooh, what if Dr. Ramsey ends up adopting him?”

“Awww!” said Quinn. “I hope so!”

You and your friends join the growing crowd of medical interns clustered in front of Harper. Ethan stands behind her, arms folded.

“Yep. He’s definitely back to normal,” snarked Zahra.

Dr. Emery: Instead of filling that role, we will be selecting one young doctor to train as a junior fellow.

“Wow. Seriously?!” asked Michelle to nobody in particular.

MC!Michelle: Did I just hear that right?

“Wow. That was pretty much your actual reaction,” commented Alyssa.

“What do y’all think about adding another rule: drink whenever the character Michelle reacts basically the same way as real Michelle?” suggested Jake.

“Hell yeah,” said Zahra.

Jake shrugged. “Alright then… drink, y’all!”

Dr. Ramsey: We will be ranking you daily. The best performing intern at the end of your first year will be selected.

“Holy shit, this got real competitive, real fast,” observed Alyssa. “We’d better win!”

“Sounds like a good idea for a reality show,” joked Diego. “Oh! Imagine an America’s Most Eligible spin-off! ‘AME: Hospital Edition.’”

“That sounds either really awful, or really entertaining,” Michelle said. “Awfully entertaining?”

“Like in a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ way? I’d watch that,” Alyssa told her.

“I’d watch you watching that, ‘Lyss,” Ian said, laughing.

“Watch-ception!” said Diego.

“Oh! Like, how watching one watching something is similar to dreaming about dreaming, as a reference to the film ‘In-ception!’” Varyyn yelled excitedly, a little too loudly. “I understood that!”

Diego kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so proud of you,” he said with a huge grin on his face. “But it’s a real shame we haven’t done our MCU marathon yet, because you missed the perfect opportunity for another reference…”

Who will enter the competition? And can your friendships survive the heat? Keep playing to find out!

“Oh, we are definitely going to enter… and win,” said Estela fiercely.

“Well, then that settles it, because nobody beats Estela in anything,” Ian told the group. “We’ve got this one for sure.”

“This story just went from ‘good’ to ‘freakin’ awesome,’” Craig said. “It is ON!” Then he frowned. “Uh… but we might need the science nerds for this.”

Zahra laughed and clapped him on the back. “You’re not wrong. At least they’re all on our side, huh?” she said, looking from Aleister and Grace to Michelle, then to Ian.

Sean smiled at his best friend. “Craig, trust me: if this was a sports-related competition, they’d need you just as badly,” he reassured him.

“And you’d need me for a movie-related one!” said Diego. “I’d be unstoppable! Oh, man, we’ve got to have a ‘Scene It’ contest sometime, by the way.”

“Sure, but I’m on your team,” Alyssa immediately said. “I call dibs!”

“Who is ‘dibs?’” asked Varyyn. “And why are you calling them?”

As Diego started explaining the concept of ‘dibs’ to Varyyn, Michelle crossed her arms and frowned. “Alright, we just played through another chapter... after tying space and time into knots... and still no sign of Raj. Where the hell is he?!”

Ian stood up to get everyone’s attention. “She’s got a point,” he said, but no one besides Estela and Michelle paid any attention to him over the din of conversation. “We should break to look for him… uh… guys? Hello?”

Estela stood up, strode over to where Aleister and Grace were sitting deep in conversation, and grabbed Aleister’s megaphone. “EVERYONE, SHUT IT!” she yelled into the megaphone at the top of her lungs.

That got everyone’s attention.

Ian smiled at his wife gratefully. “That was awesome. Thanks.” Then he turned to address the group. “Look, Raj is still missing, and it’s been two whole chapters so far. I’m thinking we should break for now, and split up and look for him. I’m worried he fell asleep somewhere or something.”

“Good idea,” agreed Sean. “Let’s all pick an area to look, and we’ll meet back here in an hour.”

“Great plan. Alright, let’s do it…”

Meanwhile, on the roof, Raj stared at the icy doorknob, frowning. “Dude, how does this not melt… is that like, one of your powers?” he asked Furball.

“Mrrraaaaaarraraa,” said the fox, blasting some ice off of the side of the roof (since literally everything on the roof was now already frozen.) “Mrowwww.”

“Yeah, makes sense, that could come in handy… What if I breathed on it, but while thinking really warm thoughts?” asked Raj, as he pulled out his lighter and... lit another joint with it.

“Rrrram,” agreed Furball.

Raj bent down near the doorknob and started breathing smoke on it. The ice stubbornly stayed frozen. “It’s gotta work eventually, right? ...Right?”

Next Chapter: Link

Tag List: @brightpinkpeppercorn @endlesshero1122 @endlesssummerfan @marmolady

[comicteaparty]

July 29th-August 4th, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from July 29th, 2019 to August 4th, 2019.  The chat focused on Millennium by Deo.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Millennium by Deo~! (http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Remember, though, that while we allow constructive criticism, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic. Below you will find four questions to get you started on the discussion. However, a new question will be posted and pinned everyday (between 12:01AM and 6AM PDT), so keep checking back for more! You have until August 4th to tell us all your wonderful thoughts! With that established, let’s get going on the reading and the chatting!

QUESTION 1. What has been your favorite scene in the comic so far? What specifically did you like about it?

QUESTION 2. Do you believe Keith and Aaron will get their acts together as Luzio wants, or are they doomed to be thieves forever? What is your reasoning regardless? Also, how do you think the two became so downtrodden in the first place?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

1) I'll admit, my favorite scene is Luzio comforting Sage after the terrible nightmare he had. It's a small scene, but parts like that really hit me hard.(edited)

2) "Doomed" assumes that being thieves is bad by default. ;P In all seriousness, while klepto habits die hard, the two seem good-hearted, so I feel confident that whether they clean up their act or remain thieves, they'll have good intentions behind it. I think, based off bits of their story we can glean from conversations ( http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/comics/107/ http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/comics/113/ ), their state may have to do with them both avoiding their families to be together, or running off altogether. At least Aaron's dad keeps in contact, so that's something.(edited)

snuffysam

All the scenes of Luzio and Sage interacting are so pure . I agree, Nutty, this scene was my favorite (http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/comics/104/). I also love the scene of the gang fighting in the colosseum (http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/comics/44). A strong action scene is always a plus in my book!

I suppose it's nice that Aaron's dad keeps in touch, but i'm not sure that counts for much when your calls are attempts to arrest your son lol.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. At the moment, who is your favorite character? What about that character earns them this favor?

QUESTION 4. What do you think was going on in Luzio’s life when he met Keith and Aaron? How do you think the two of them helped Luzio? What other theories or questions do you have regarding Luzio’s personal life story?

RebelVampire

1) My favorite scene in the comic so far is probably when Luzio realizes Sage isn't with them and basically busts through a wall. Not only was it really comical, but it was excellent character development for Luzio both showing his power level and the depths of his ability to care for someone. But also it was badass. 2) No. Keith and Aaron gonna be thieves forever. Maybe thieves with real jobs, but still probably thieves. I don't see either them as the type to suddenly be like, "Oh yeah we should follow societies rules." I don't think they have enough respect for society for that. Which I leads me to how it happened. I get the impression that they're the type of got really down on their luck, society didn't help them, so ya know, if society wont help damn society. Or something like that.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 5. What has been your favorite illustration in the comic so far? What specifically about it do you like?

QUESTION 6. What do you think was the end goal for the experiments done on Sage? Besides plant powers and health issues, what other consequences do you think there are? Do you think Sage will grow past them (and if so, how)? Also, will Sage remain with Luzio?

RebelVampire

@snuffysam I don't see the problem. What's a few threats about calling the police between father and son? XDXDXD

3) Probably maybe Luzio is my favorite? That's a hard call cause this is the sort of comic where I'd really like more content before I can diehard settle on anybody. At the moment though, I like that Luzio has this cute blend of being strict and being the type of person who wants to let all the strays in the house. It makes for a cute and interesting dynamic. 4) Luzio strikes me as the type who left, did some stuff, and then it suddenly dawned on him he didnt really know what he wanted to do with himself anymore. Thus he was filled with wanderlust, maybe poor and stuck in emotional turmoil. If this is the case, then Keith and Aaron are at least good for being cheerful, and what better ways to cheer someone up. I am excited to find more about Luzio's home, cause compared to the others I get the impression he was relatively more privelaged. So I'm eager to see if that's the case or if Luzio is just good at hiding everything.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 7. Which characters do you enjoy seeing interact the most? What about their dynamic interests you?

QUESTION 8. Do you believe Luzio giving so many people second chances is a good or a bad thing? How do you think it will overall help or hurt Sage? What do you think the story can teach us about life and the nature of second chances?

RebelVampire

5) My favorite illustration is probably all the ones rom the nightmare sequence. http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/comics/102/ I love the vague angles and the dramatic change in color. It's a fantastic way to really drive the horror in while at the same time capturing the dream like quality nightmares can still have. 6) Given what we see happening on Kessiah's planet and with the new location, I imagine plant growth is pretty important. So important that just leaving plant's to their own devices means bad things. So the end goal of the experiments on Sage were to create plant experts who could vastly increase the speed at which colonization happens and prevent famines by being able to watch for crops. As far as consequences for Sage, there's definitely mental trauma there. Although maybe he has more than just sway over plants. Like he'll wake up one day and discover he can photosynthesis. I don't think what happened to Sage is something you grow out of though. He'll learn to manage it emotionally at some point, but it'll be a permanent scar upon his soul. Sage better remain with Luzio. I'll be mad otherwise. O_O

RebelVampire

QUESTION 9. What sorts of art or story details have you noticed in the way the comic is crafted that you think deserves attention?

QUESTION 10. After escaping John, why do you think Stitch remained with Keith and Aaron? Further, why do you think she didn’t want to tell Luzio the reason? How might her blossoming relationship with Kessiah affect her relations with the others?

RebelVampire

7) Ummm....ummm! It's a tie between Luzio and Sage and then Keith and Aaron. I like Luzio and Sage's relationship for how different then are. Luzio has the stren work thing going on whereas Sage is kind of a soft, doofy dude. So it's really beautiful to see them still manage to keep along with each other and, as I've said several time before, demonstrate the depth of their care for each other. Keith and Aaron I liked though because they do have these similar goofy attitudes. They're like a great dynamic duo and when they're together, they bring the barrel of laughs. That being said, I also like the serious moments that sneak in too, showing it's not all fun and games either. But mostly they just bring so much energy to the story and I love it. 8) I mean...I believe in second chances, but it's gotta bite Luzio in the butt one day. Cause just imagine if he invites the wrong person in and they do something to Sage. Like a mole from John or something. That being said, I also can't say its a bad thing, cause distrusting too much is also how you wind up never getting along with anyone. Overall, so far, I feel like the story shows us that a healthy distrust is good. You don't want to give everyone the keys to the city on day 1, because they might fleece you.

9) The scars. There are so many scars, so many different types, and I love it. Particularly, though, I love the shading on Stitch's scars. It's that right blend of simple and detailed that makes it look very groteque and painful. It's the sort of scar I can look at, wince, and not wanna know how that happened cause it looks like it hurt like hell. 10) Honestly, I get the impression Stitch felt a) indebted to them and b) had nowhere else to go. Cause no matter where Stitch goes, there is probably a risk of John showing up or something. As for why she didn't want to tell Luzio, maybe its a vulnerability thing. Like Stitch just didn't want to admit needing companionship cause its a sign of weakness or something like that. I can't imagine Stitch is gonna be happy when Kessiah is ready to blow the joint, and I think that will be a negative mood that with affect everyone.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 11. What do you think are this particular comic’s strengths? What do you think makes this comic unique? Please elaborate.

QUESTION 12. Do you believe John is more of an entity for good or more of an entity for evil? What do you think John’s ultimate end goals are, especially given the increasing deaths going on? Also, why do you think John abandoned Sage and the lab Sage was in?

snuffysam

My favorite character is easily Stitch. I love the way she starts out shy and standoffish, but grows into being more confident and part of the crew's family. She also has my favorite design of the cast. With that said, all the character designs in this comic are great - in fact, I think it's Millennium's strongest aspect. The way different elements work together with colors to make a cohesive design. Like, you could show me any of these characters in any outfit and with any artist's artstyle and I'd still probably be able to recognize them.

It would be a wild twist if John turns out to actually be a good guy the whole time. I suppose it's possible that he's going about a noble goal in a corrupted way? For Sage, perhaps he was created as an experiment to see if humans can... survive on sunlight, maybe? Whatever he was really going for was probably a failure, given that he abandoned the lab.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 13. What are you most looking forward to in the comic? Also, do you have any final thoughts to share overall?

QUESTION 14. Ultimately, do you think Kessiah will get the help she needs for her planet? If so, do you think she’ll go back, or will her bond with Luzio’s crew sway her to stay? Even if her planet gets help, can the planet actually be saved?

RebelVampire

11) I have to second @snuffysam on this one. The character designs I think are the strongest asset. Not just visually speaking, but also in terms of their personalities as well. They all have their own interesting role to place in the story, and see how each individually triumphs or fails is really interesting. Of course, though, the visual designs are all super amazing as well, with lots of beautiful details in them. 12) I don't think John is really either. He strikes me more as an "ends justify the means ethics be damned" sort of scientist. So he's going to drag and progree society even if that means he has to murder half hte universe. As for John's end goals, I assume part of it is out a good willed intention to bring more prosperty. I think some of it is just progress for progress' sake. And I think this latter is a lot of the reason that might have to do with why so many ppl are dying more. Progress comes with certain sacrifices at some point. As for abandoning Sage, tbh, I don't think John meant to. I think John had to flee, intended to come back for Sage, but then was under the impression that nope, everyone was lost. Or something like that.

13) I'm looking forward to Kessiah getted help for her planet, ironically. I think her intentions coming out is really gonna drive some drama and ill feelings that we'll get to enjoy. 14) I kind of feel like this is a yes and a no. Like maybe Kessiah will get the help, but the help will be too late. Or something like that. I think Kessiah will want to stay with Luzio's crew though. Not to say it'll be an easy decision but I think bonds + new experiences + bad things happening on the planet will drive her to want more. or at the very least, to punch john in the face like everyone else wants to do.

LunarDolphin

Joined a bit late but I'll answer what I can cause I really do love this comic 3) Stitch (But I recently found it it may be because she has a few similarities to one of my characters, also her character building with sage is so good) 5) Favorite illustration is page 3 of chapter 6, that whole space transition had me audibly gasp it was so pretty

LunarDolphin

That sent early but.... 7) Luzio and Sage of course, Luzio and Kessiah also have a great dynamic, Sage and Stitch's growing friendship is adorable and I love that they're opening up to each other, and Stitch and Kessiah crushing on each other gives me life 13) Luzio telling Sage "I wont leave you, okay?" after the nightmare with John is going to come back to bite them, I can feel it, something is going to happen between the two of them and John. And it's not "'"confirmed""" he's alive but I really hope he appears in the comic.

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Millennium this week! Please also give a special thank you to Deo for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Millennium, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/

Deo’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deo101

Deo’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/deoart

Deo’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/deo_101

[ladyloveandjustice]

Summer 2017 Anime Overview: My Hero Academia Season 2 and KiraKira Precure a la Mode

We return to our look at the summer 2017 anime. I’ve been reviewing the seven anime I watched from worst to best. Previously I talked about the two weakest anime I watched and an anime that was kind of mixed and middling. Now we’re going to talk about too anime I watched that I consider to be Very Good and would overall recommend (with some warnings and caveats regarding some stuff for one of them). Let’s dig in!

My Hero Academia Season 2

I found the first season of My Hero Academia to be pretty good but nothing to get excited about- but damn, this season officially sucked me in. I am now a Fan. Very unwillingly, I might add, but the show wrestled my doubting heart into submission with its endearing characters. fight-y fun and surprisingly good handling of growth and relationships (for the most part). 

The basic concept behind My Hero Academia is that in a world where most people have some form of superpower, superheroism is considered a legit profession. Nerdy teenager Izuku Midoriya really wants to be a hero, but he’s one of the few people born without superpowers. However, when he encounters his idol, the number one hero All Might, everything changes and he soon finds himself enrolled in the top-ranked superhero academy.

MHA sparked my interest by being a superhero show (I’m a huge comics nerd) and kept me interested by having a legit adorable and sympathetic protagonist (Midoriya is very earnest and also cries a lot, both things I find intensely cute and relatable), good animation and generally solid fights and storytelling. But it wasn’t really until this season that it came into it’s own as an impressive ensemble show. It subverted quite a few expectations I had, in a really good way and delivered on some pretty incredible character work and interesting world building. Also, it has a great soundtrack.

The season opened with a tournament arc, and I usually find those pretty boring in shonen (though still good, they were easily my least fave parts of HXH, for instance) but this one really mixed things up by weaving in some really good emotional hooks for the one-on-one fights and actually *gasp* developing characters and rivalries that WEREN’T focused on the protagonist. 

Rather than going the safe and expected route of having a big match-up be between Midoriya and his intimidating, violent explosion-happy rival, the series showed us a fight between explosion dude and the adorable, sweet main female character (whose superpowers were NOT well-suited for fighting his explosions) and used it to showcase her determination even against incredible odds and further her story along. 

It also explored her motive for being a hero- her family isn’t well off and she wants to make some serious cash so they can live in comfort. She worried this motive was “unheroic” but was reassured it was admirable, which was nice to see, especially considering how female characters are generally discouraged from being ambitious.

But the biggest highlight of the arc was the exploration of one character’s trauma and abuse. An arc revolved around a characrer (Todoroki Shouto) having difficulty using the powers he inherited from his abusive father. The story was heartbreaking and well-done and addressed in a very moving way with a very emotional “you are not your parents, it’s your power and body, not theirs” core- but what really impressed me was that the arc’s acknowledgement that this kid’s recovery would not be instantaneous and it was going to be a long and difficult process involving many other steps.

In most shows, once Todoroki had gotten his weird therapy session courtesy of the protagonist, Midoriya, and had been able to use his powers once, it would have been over, done, he’s fixed and he can totally use them now. But instead, the show acknowledged that being able to overcome his trauma enough to use them for a few minutes didn’t mean he’s now so recovered he can just use them whenever he wants. Todoroki realized that he had a lot of unresolved issues he needed to work through and a lot of steps he needed to take before he could recover enough to be truly comfortable with using his powers all the time. “It’s not that I’ve accepted anything, it’s just that, for a moment, I was able to forget about [my dad]”, as he put it. And the show showed us that it had every intention of following him through that recovery process.

Seeing this over-the-top show about superpowers and fights where people suffer ridiculous injuries actually approach trauma recovery in a realistic and nuanced way really shocked me and also majorly tugged by heartstrings. The whole conflict also added some depth to the show’s world building- Todoroki’s scumbag dad is one of the top superheroes out there, despite being a totally horrible person. When being a superhero is a competitive profession rather than a calling you get people who aren’t necessarily “good” or into “saving people” as much as they are in it to make a profit and show off their powers. Which went nicely with the themes of the arc that followed the tournament arc.

The way the show plays around with typical shonen tropes is also great- the show has the highly gifted, arrogant once-upon-a-time-they-were-friends rival for our main character, but he doesn’t become insufferable like most of those characters because the show makes fun of him constantly. None of the other characters put up with his bullshit or take him seriously, he’s constantly called out and made fun of for his asshole attitude and the main character finds him genuinely unpleasant to be around and tried to avoid him socially. This allows his ANGRY EDGELORD nature to be funny rather than annoying, because the show’s in on it too. 

And while Todoroki also could have also been a brooding asshole rival character, he’s pretty quickly to be revealed as a nice, kinda dorky guy who’s just quiet, awkward and introverted due to trauma and lack of social interaction. The show’s really self aware in how if plays with these character archetypes for the most part, and that makes it a pleasure to watch.

The show continued its solid character work, punctuated by dramatic and well done fight scenes, through the next arc. Almost every single kid on the show got a moment to shine this season, and you got to know them as characters and heroes and I came to realize- hey, I REALLY LIKE most of these characters.They’re being developed in a fun and interesting way, and they have lives and motivations that don’t just revolve around the main character. And the relationships and dynamics between the various characters are fun and heartwarming too.

And this includes the girls, who, while definitely outnumbered by the boys and underutilized compared to them, are really competent, interesting and have some great moments and arcs going. I especially enjoyed the mini-arc where one of the girls lost confidence in her ability to lead and thought a dude would be better at it, only for him to assure her she’s way better suited for it than him. Always nice to see ladies in command being respected by the dudes with them.

But that does bring us to the fact that while it has some good female characters, the show also has some pretty big sexism issues. All the older female heroes we’ve seen so far are basically walking sex jokes/fanservice dispensers and even some of the younger female characters are uncomfortably sexualized (Momo’s got the classic “oh she has to wear a ridiculously impractical costume because her powers require it” aka “I gave this teenage female character these powers specifically so I could sexualize her”). The fanservice gets to the point of distracting from the plot at times.

There’s a huge absence of female mentors so far (I hear that gets better later) and out of the entire teaching staff of the school, only one is a woman (and her character boils down to “bondage joke”) What’s more, while the girls are good fighters, their powers tend to be less offensive and "powerful” than the boys (this is especially obvs if you look at their official stats). Oh and there’s this fucker:

...who routinely sexually harasses and assaults his female classmates and it’s supposed to be funny and harmless. Every single time this asshole comes on screen u have to put up with a deluge of gross-ass comments and seeing the female characters repeatedly be objectified and have their space invaded. And no, them hitting him or other characters saying it’s gross does not make it okay. It’s still allowed, it’s still clearly there to be “funny” and “titillating” and it still uses girls being abused as a “fun” interlude. That’s NOT okay. It’s not funny. He adds nothing to the show, he just grinds everything to a halt and makes everything uncomfortable. It’s jarring, and takes you out of an otherwise well done story. I really want him and this type of “humor” to be ejected from the show.

But yeah, with those major issues in mind (and god I wish they weren’t there), I still really enjoyed MHA and can’t wait until the next season. The plot’s ramping up and I can’t wait to see where it goes next. 

KiraKira Precure a la Mode

Kira Kira Precura a La Mode follows a group of magical girls with superpowers based on both sweets and animals. They run a pastry shop together and protect their city from monsters who want to suck the energy of people who are happily enjoying their favorite confections.

Okay, this is still ongoing, but I think it’s safe for me to say at this point that KiraKira is well on its way to being one of my favorite Precure shows, which considering how I’m a pretty big Precure fan, says a lot.

The writing is solid, the characters are fun and well-developed and the animation and art design is well-done and adorable. 

This season added a few fun new touches to the Precure formula, including having two older girls on the team- a pair of 17 year olds hanging with the 14 yr olds (14 is the typical age for Precure protagonists). This pair is a butch and femme couple pretty clearly patterned after Haruka and Michiru- and yes, that also means they are fairly blatantly a lesbian couple. 

There is in fact an entire episode revolving around Yukari (femme cat magical girl) trying to make Akira (butch dog magical girl) jealous by threatening to marry a prince and making Akira compete with him for her love. All the while, Akira struggles with whether she should share her true feelings with Yukari. This culminates in a big love confession scene that added ten years to my life. Seeing the younger girls aggressively encourage and support their relationship is great too.

So yeah, about as blatant as S-season Haruka and Michiru- which, if you understand that reference, means there ARE some scenes that try to cast ambiguity on the relationship. This one, for instance, where Akira acts flustered in response to the prince’s suppositions about her relationship with Yukari (and his incorrect assumption about her gender), makes sense in the context of a  just forming relationship, but also didn’t add much to show and was likely included so the show could make it seem ambiguous if Yukari and Akira will truly enter a relationship.

However, it has been a long time since we’ve gotten lesbians this blatant in a magical girl show aimed at young girls. Ever since the days of Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon, gay subtext and text in magical girl shows has been much lighter (and heck, even fanservicey aimed-at-guys magical girl shows don’t seem to have the guts to have girls kiss). 

So the fact Precure is now deliberately homaging and emulating Haruka and Michiru and doing blatant love triangle/confession scenes IS a big deal and a step in the right direction. It’s sad we haven’t progressed since the days of Sailor Moon, but it’s good we’re at least not regressing anymore. And while Akira and Yukari haven’t gotten the word of god “Yes they are lesbians” confirmation Naoko Takeuchi gave Haruka and Michiru, (at least, not any we’ve heard of in the West), I wouldn’t say it’s outside the realm of possibility that could happen. (I really doubt the “lol we’re having sex” lines similar to what we got in Sailor Moon Stars will happen though, just because Precure doesn’t do sexual innuendo). 

And it’s worth mentioning, we do have an official duet song for Yukari and Akira that’s VERY blatantly romantic. “Koi” is even in the title. 

Yukari and Akira are a censored relationship for sure, and it’s obnoxious and wrong those censors are still in place (though not surprising, considering this is a big corporate studio running Precure). They should be able to kiss, they should be openly dating. However, they are obvious enough that if they were a straight couple, we’d be calling them canon at this point, so I’m gonna. Also, I have to shout out that they’ve poured on Utena references GALORE with these two, and I’m super into that. 

It should also be noted that Akira is allowed to maintain her butchness even after transforming into a magical girl- she gets a frilly PRINCE outfit.  That’s a first for a magical girl show aimed at girls (unless you count Utena, which I don’t for various reasons). She’s never derided for her lack of femininity either (in fact she’s considered cool and attractive) which is a very good affirming message for young girls. There’s also another episode that frames rebellion against enforced traditional femininity as a good thing and has women standing up for and supporting other women who don’t follow gender roles. 

To state the obvious, Precure is a show that exists in a capitalist society. So it’s focused on selling toys to little girls and those toys are often stereotypically hyper-feminine. However, it’s still valuable and positive that this show is casting non-gender conforming heroes in a positive light- if a little girl wants to play as Akira, she might have a pink compact, but she can use it to become a dashing butch prince. The lines are blurring in a good way.

Yukari is also notable as a great character- she’s not the genki girl archetype, but messy, petty and a bit cynical. She’s complex. The episodes where she struggles with whether she’s a “good girl” are pretty inspiring and carry the message girls can be heroes even if they’re not all sunshine and daisies. 

In fact, all the characters in the season are ALL pretty solid. Their relationships are fleshed out and so are their arcs. The dynamic the whole team has is great. The villains redemption arcs are strong as well.  And as always, it’s cute as heck and bursting with lady friendship feels.

My biggest problem with this show would be pacing- it suffers from being two rushed a lot of the time, and often tries to cram way too much in one episode rather than giving conflicts and arcs room to breathe. But that’s my only big issue.

It’s possible KiraPre could have a disappointing finale, but I at least feel confident it won’t end in total disaster. It shows none of the warning signs shows like Hachepre did- there’ve been no love triangles, bland male love interests or anything of the sort shoehorned in, so I don’t feel I have to worry about the worst happening (the “worst” being “the finale revolves around soothing a dude’s wounded ego, with the bond between the magical girls and their power being sidelined for the sake of really uncomfortable and contrived het romance”, if you haven’t seen HachaPre). 

Let’s hope KiraPre’s finish is as strong as the rest of it has been!

[bondsmagii]

Hey! Regarding the sixpenceee fiasco I've been reading her posts and stories for like years and it might just be because I usually skim but I don't recall any specific stories that target mental illness. Do you have any clear examples??? Rly shocked tbh bc I used to love her

I’ve been seeing the stuff go around for a couple of years now and I admit at first I didn’t pay it much attention, which is a shame because a lot of those call out posts had good links that are now all gone because of people deleting. As a result, a lot of the initial stuff that made me start thinking more critically about sixpenceee’s posts have been deleted. I’ve spent the last few days trying to source them again via people’s new urls and internet archives, but literally 90% of the links are gone.

So, I’ve done a bit of digging of my own, and I’ve managed to find some still live posts that I think illustrate what I’m saying a bit better. I’ve screencapped them all and will be hosting the images myself independently of a specific post, so the links should always work.

I’m specifically focusing on the content of this ask here, with posts that use mental illness as entertainment, or treat it in the same way as regular “creepy” (i.e. horror) content.

The case of Margaret Schilling is a post about a woman in a psychiatric hospital who died after getting lost in the building, and her body wasn’t found for many weeks. There is a short paragraph at the end about how the hospital is apparently haunted by Margaret now, but the majority of the post focuses on her being mentally ill and the suffering she must have felt being lost and dying of cold and exposure. There’s also a picture of the stain her decomposing body left, so beware of that. It’s tagged #paranormal.

The Mentally Ill Man Who Cured Himself With a Gun is a post about a man with serious OCD who tried to kill himself by shooing himself in the head, resulting in brain damage that “cured” his OCD. The photo is of a man with a gun to his head, if that will bother you. It’s tagged as a science post.

Short Creepy Story is a story from Reddit where the “creepy” event is a schizophrenic woman acting strangely because of her hallucinations. That’s it. Dude’s mum is schizophrenic and he goes upstairs to find her in the bathtub thinking she’s in The Little Mermaid. The title is “short creepy story” so like, yeah.

The Child Star is a story from Reddit which focuses on children being sexually abused and not understanding what’s going on, and the police interviews with one of the grown up children who is now clearly suffering from mental illness thanks to the trauma. (Full story)

The Suicide Orphan is a story from Reddit which focuses on an orphan that drives people insane and results in them committing suicide, and I know that this isn’t the only example where sixpenceee posts things that use suicide as the main element of a horror story, which is exploitative and also I personally think it’s inappropriate to use something that comes as a result of serious suffering and imply that it was the creepy ghosts that did it. (Full story)

“Psychopath” post includes a link to a quiz where you can see where you “fit in on the psychopath sprectrum”. I’ve seen people mention her using outdated terms in her posts and so this is here as proof that it does happen, and also because “do you have a severe personality disorder?” is a bit of a cheap entertainment trick in my opinion.

Karin Catherine Waldegrave is a post about a woman who replies incessantly to her own posts on social media, believing she is the target of a conspiracy. It’s clear she’s likely mentally ill. The post is tagged #creepy.

Chinese Water Torture is a post about the torture method that drives victims to extreme stress-related mental instability, and is here both because of that and because the fact that it’s tagged #creepy, which doesn’t seem appropriate.

The Edmonton Train attack video shows someone apparently in an altered state of mind through drugs or mental illness (or both) attacking someone on a train. She gifed a video which has since been deleted but a different video of the attack can be found on Youtube, and described it as “insane”.

Drawings of a Young Schizophrenic Boy is exactly what it says – a bunch of drawings from a young boy suffering from schizophrenia. The boy is quite obviously distressed by his hallucinations but the post is treated like the other paranormal posts, designed to shock and scare. The post is also tagged #creepy, which is inappropriate. (Close up of caption and tag, as the image is difficult to read)

Made By a Paranoid Schizophrenic Patient is another drawing by a person suffering from schizophrenia, also tagged #creepy, and this one with a self-promo in the caption.

I also found a post where sixpenceee addresses the claims of ableism. She says she agrees on the points made about films and stories portraying the mentally ill/physically disabled as “scary”, and that she tries to avoid using words like “insane”. She also asks people to differentiate between her paranormal/creepy posts and her scientific posts. However, she still continues to frequently refer to things as “insane”, both as descriptors and to self-promote her blog (1, 2, 3).

This covers the things I’ve seen people claim she does, but if anyone has any other links (especially things saved from earlier posts like this) feel free to add on.

[ganymedesclock]

Hello, I like your blog and all the metas that you have done. I'm in the process of writing a Voltron fic taking on account some of the metas that you have post and I hope that you're not offended by that. Only I have a doubt, do you think that Lance has some trigger in regards of his experience on the Castle? First was the bomb, then the cryo pod and later was almost expelled to the space. Do you think that he doesn't think about that or that experiences marked him unconsciously?

Oh dude, I’m honored if people take my meta and ideas and use them in fanworks. There’s a reason I make all this stuff available to everyone!

As far as Lance... I don’t know if the bomb would really have a big psychological effect on Lance because of the fact of- it didn’t exactly catch him off guard. He realized it was there before it went off, and his responses around the incident seem pretty mellow- Lance is the type where he virtually never bottles something. When he’s troubled, we as an audience see it.

I mean, I think you could still do some kind of follow-up writing to it. He probably does have a scar from that- I personally like the idea that the healing pod leaves faint, pale/bluish marks where it treats a wound so it might not be an obvious or ugly scar but it’d really depend on what you imagine, since not much of Lance’s state is elaborated on besides “bad” and the blast caught him in the back.

(he could’ve been struck in the back by shrapnel from the metal drone that was carrying the bomb, even- but I think in that case we would’ve seen blood and Shiro wouldn’t have laid him on his back)

The cryopod and the airlock incident, I think you could make a much bigger case for scaring Lance, because not only was he visibly unnerved both times but they had a similar theme of confined spaces. @leonawriter has kind of sold me on the idea of Lance who has never been claustrophobic before, but develops it after those incidents.

With my headcanon of neurodivergent Lance who knows himself and his brain pretty well, I could see the new addition kind of frustrating him, but also him trying to manage it more or less on his own- not hiding it, but not bringing it up unless he feels like it’s necessary, which might lead into a situation where he might agree to go into like. a mine shaft of “yeah, I’ll be fine!” and something happens like a cave-in that nobody was planning on and “oh jesus I am not fine”

It could even be that Lance might not realize the sort of lurking discomfort is part of something ‘that bad’ until it comes up one way or another and really sets him off- in which case I could see it going very interesting who you want to pair him with narratively.

Hunk would probably respond the best/easiest because he has a front-row understanding of how anxiety works, not to mention he’d be literally and figuratively in his element assuming he’s in the situation with Lance. If he’s on the outside in the hypothetical cave-in mission, he’d probably be the one digging them out via Yellow, so this could even be a relatively minor exploration of Lance and a more major exploration of Hunk, kind of like Greening the Cube was Pidge’s opportunity to save the day.

With Pidge I can imagine her initially snapping at him because she doesn’t realize quite how serious Lance’s response is, and then immediately after catching on that something’s really wrong and getting scared herself- and feeling guilty that she didn’t pay more attention or identify earlier that Lance was distressed from whatever warning signs he was giving off.

I feel like Keith is so used to a particular back-and-forth with Lance he’d catch on faster, but probably stress out more- he’d feel like he’s personally failing Lance because he doesn’t know what to say. I’m imagining Lance going uncharacteristically quiet and Keith is massively uncomfortable with this and starts chattering nervously to try and fill that void (it’s uncommon, but Keith does run his mouth when stressed sometimes- see his awfully transparent fibbing in s2e6)

With Shiro- we’ve seen with Slav that Shiro sometimes has a hard time understanding others’ trauma since he seems to be at kind of a rocky point with his own, kind of a “we can’t afford this now, we have to get everyone to safety!” but I don’t think he’d be that harsh or frustrated with Lance- because Shiro really does care about Lance, think about how upset Shiro was when Lance was hit by the bomb. So it’d probably be an interesting kind of roller coaster of Shiro being frustrated but trying not to take it out on Lance because he knows Lance doesn’t mean to do this, you don’t plan a breakdown- but it might push Shiro towards some personal epiphanies or reconsidering how he handles this situation vs. his own situation vs. Slav’s.

Allura, it’s hard to say. I think she’d try to sort of muscle through it initially because she has a bit of the same “we can’t afford this now everyone is in danger, can you try and keep it together” but if/when that doesn’t work she’d probably be more sympathetic, because Lance really is someone who works hard and carries his own weight with the team. They’d all notice, and worry, if he was having a major breakdown. 

I feel like Coran would notice fairly quickly, and probably comment on it first (“Looking a little drawn there, number three,”) and then kind of play it by ear, see if he can’t distract Lance, and in the cave-in scenario I imagine he’d be keeping Lance posted on Hunk’s progress. A more technical and slightly removed approach but one ultimately born from caring. 

Specifics of the dynamics could be jostled around with the situation and context; I’m personally a big sucker for Lance and Keith’s dynamic so if I was going to write this as a fic I’d probably have Keith, Pidge, Allura and Shiro in the cave with him with Coran and Hunk on the outside trying to dig them out. But you could pretty much tweak it to taste.