#levels of brain dysfunction

[waugh-bao]

*

[kindnessoverperfection]

ADHD really does put everything at equal levels of importance, huh? Like I'll have an email I need to write that'll take maybe 10 minutes, and getting that done will alleviate 6 months of stress. Then I'll notice a sock on the floor I need to put away. Then I'll get the strong conviction that it's up to me to cure cancer. And my brain will tell me that I need to do all of them at once, start and finish them all in the time span of 0 seconds, and my executive dysfunction will throw up its hands and do none of the above.

[sodacowboy]

y’all please look at this ad youtube gave me

[famewolf]

I forgot to do my shot for a couple of weeks, whoops. but it's always so wild to me how calm and centered I feel afterwards. not having T makes me feel neurotic and all over the place. I can always tell when it's time to do my shot because the day before I get a little irritable.

[send-noodles-not-nudes]

as a person with disabilities, i have a love/hate relationship with anatomy and physiology bc im fascinated about what the fuck is wrong with my body and how it got here, but i also have a tendency to look at the book and just go "YOU! MOTHERFUCKER!" bc why dont you work like my book says youre supposed to work, thats very rude

[protectorcraft]

been feeling especially bitchy lately like hard to hide levels of bitchy and i was confused as to why for a minut ebut then i remembered ive been off my meds for a week due to complications with the pharmacy being a dumbass and i was like ohhhhhh okay.

[thebibliosphere]

Hello! I hope you don't mind me asking, but do you have any thoughts on Howard Schubiner's Unlearn Your Pain, Mind Body Syndrome, treating neuroplastic symptoms, etc.? I was just referred to a pain management group that centers around these concepts, and I'm having some Feelings about the whole thing.

Just wondering if you've had any experiences with this type of treatment, or thoughts about its effectiveness. Thanks!

Okay, so this is going to be long, and I'm going to need you to stick with me through the tangent. I promise it's relevant.

I haven't read Howard Schubiner's work directly, but his colleague Alan Gordon was a key speaker at the Migraine World Summit this year. I found his talk interesting enough to buy his book and do some more research on my own, and I found it worthwhile pursuing on my own.

I know enough from my mast cell disorder to know that the body develops 'bad habits' around pain.

In the case of anxiety, stress, or panic, mast cells become more reactive, and this can make pain worse. This is true for everyone*; it's just those of us with MCAS or some other type of mast cell disorder who have more alarming symptoms like idiopathic anaphylaxis.

So, unfortunately, if I, as someone with MCAS, experience an acute pain from an injury or illness, the inherent stress response of the pain and the out-of-balance response from my nervous system can make my mast cells degranulate. They're little fuckers like that.

Mast cells can also put your body on an inflammatory cycle that is counterproductive to healing. They can literally get trained to anticipate reactions and pre-emptively react, because again, they are little fuckers.

To give you an example of this for me: my major migraines, the ones that land me in the hospital, occur on the dot every ten days. There are no hormonal factors to this that can be found or other consistent triggers or stressors, but I was unknowingly being exposed to an MCAS trigger roughly every ten days for a while. When I realized, I removed the trigger, obviously. Problem solved, right? Unfortunatley no. By then, my mast cells had trained themselves into a new pattern, and the migraine now is both the response and the trigger. It's some bastard thing called Innate Immune Memory. But it's also, partly, my subconscious anticipating the event and priming my body for a reaction, which I am susceptible to because of my MCAS and dysautonomia, which is a type of nervous system disorder.

And this is where the neuroplasticity comes in.

I'm currently in the process of trying to unlearn this response and better regulate my nervous system, which unfortunately makes me sound like a TikTok girly with a link in bio to sell you cortisol healing tea, but I promise you the only thing I'm interesting in shilling is my smutty vampire books. (And this post will be how some people learn I write books)

Anyway, why am I bothering to explain mast cell dysfunction like this in relation to neuroplasticity?

Because, yeah, if a pain doctor handed me a leaflet about 'unlearning pain' and I didn't understand how my body is routinely sabotaging itself on a cellular level in response to acute and neuroplastic pain, I'd also be rolling my eyes and feeling like I've just been handed a bottle of snake oil in the market.

God knows I've been handed 'mindfullness' leaflets by enough shitty doctors who don't actually understand what it means when we say "stress affects the nervous system" and just assume the patient is inventing symptoms to be annoying.

Thankfully, that is not what this is. At least I am hoping the doctor sending you there doesn't think you are causing your own pain. What they are hopefully trying to do is introduce you to something that a lot of chronic pain patients are reporting helps them feel more in control of their lives after many years of feeling at the mercy of their pain.

I don't attend the sessions at my brain injury clinic (yet), but I do know they use neuroplasticity therapy to help amputees with the phantom pain they experience from missing limbs. My physical therapist spent an entire session singing its virtues to me while I was fighting for my life on a balance board. Which is also why I decided to look into it after I heard Gordon talking at the Migraine World Summit.

So, do I think Schubiner's methods are hokum?

No, I think there's a lot of merit to the things he talks about and explains, but I also know the only reason I think that is because of the insight I have into the brain-body bundle through the experiences of my mast cell disease that has taught me there is nothing the brain is incapable of fucking up.

Do I think targeting neuroplastic pain will work well for everyone?

No. I think you need to try it and see if it's a good fit for you.

Some people who attended the World Migraine Summit think it's snake oil/just another way for pain doctors to foist us off into the realm of mental health care. Conversely, other people won't shut up about how learning to break the cycle of fear and panic around their pain has been life-altering for them.

For me, it's been more subtle and is part of a broader spectrum of therapies and medical treatment I use to keep my nervous system in check. It certainly hasn't done me any harm. If anything, I found it quite validating to hear someone say, "Oh, the pain is in your head? Of course it is. Let's try to fix that," and then gave me actionable coping methods. They might not work profoundly in the long term. I'm still a sick bitch with multiple acute causes of my pain. But it's also not harming me the way mindfulness was (many chronic pain patients can find it traumatizing).

I will say, I am concerned that some doctors will use the treatment of neuroplastic pain to dismiss treating acute pain with physical causes.

Just like how mindfulness has been abused by an overworked, underfunded medical system not equipped to handle chronic patients, there's also the risk of neuroplastic therapy being tossed over the fence in a similar fashion as a last ditch Hail Mary to treat patients they don't have time for. But I don't think it's widespread enough yet for that to be the case.

I dunno. Give it a try. If it's not for you, it's not for you.

Personally, I hate anything that revolves around group therapy, but I did find the book "The Way Out" by Alan Gordon insightful in helping me figure some things out. Maybe see if your local library has it before you drop money on any sessions?

_ _ _

*There has also been more compelling evidence recently that suggests that chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia are also affected by wonky mast cells. Also arthritis.

[clioerato]

Guys, pause. This is just character exploration, okay? I’m still trying to figure out whether I feel cozy in this concept or if it weirds me out in all the wrong or right ways.

So—Robin is Steve’s platonic soulmate. They’re basically conjoined twins, himbo and bimbo, two chaotic halves of one disaster queer brain cell. They finish each other’s sentences and even kinda look like they were separated at birth.

And then Eddie shows up. And suddenly everything gets complicated for Steve, because now he’s wondering… does he need to start creating some space between himself and Robin? Not that he would—he’d sooner chew off his own arm. But like, is Eddie cool with Steve talking to Robin about sex? Taking bubble baths with her? Kissing her forehead and napping in her lap?

But Eddie—somehow—makes their platonic trio work. He’s just as comfortable with Robin as he is with Steve. He does her laundry and writes a song that includes a trumpet solo just for her. There’s always a spare toothbrush and pajama set in his trailer them. He bought pads for her and they both, Steve and Eddie, have a calendar of her cycles. And they’ve all grown disturbingly comfortable with the idea of sharing a bed (platonic).

Lines? Blurred beyond recognition. Especially once they move to Chicago and rent an apartment together.

At some point, each of them has a mini existential crisis like, “Is this… normal?” But they talk about it (because emotional maturity, surprisingly), and eventually land on: if it works for them, then it works. Full stop.

They’ve got a trio situation going on, which could technically be disrupted if Robin meets someone she wants to move in with. Or maybe that girlfriend fits in so well they become a quartet. Who knows.

Yes, Robin does date in Chicago. She sees girls, she has a good time. But she doesn’t feel the need to get too serious. Moreover, there is something about their experience with the Upside Down that makes it a little difficult to build relationships outside of the group. It may not be a healthy story, but Robin is okay with it. I mean, she’s already emotionally entangled with two disaster men, even if it’s platonic.

Things reach new levels of “Wait, what?” when Robin, nearing 30, agrees to be the surrogate for Steve and Eddie’s baby. (Biologically this is Eddie's child, because Steve and Robin are literally one being, they decided this together) She goes through IVF, and they’re both with her the entire way. And in the end (because let’s be real, everyone saw it coming), they raise that kid together. As three.

Untraditional? Absolutely. Dysfunctional? Maybe. But it works.

✨ If you like my stories and vibes, you can support me here: [Ko-fi]

[covid-safer-hotties]

also preserved on our archive

By Erica Sloan

These days, it’s tempting to compare COVID-19 with the common cold or flu. It can similarly leave you with a nasty cough, fever, sore throat—the full works of respiratory symptoms. And it’s also become a part of the societal fabric, perhaps something you’ve resigned yourself to catching at least a few times in your life (even if you haven’t already). But let’s not forget: SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID) is still relatively new, and researchers are actively investigating the toll of reinfection on the body. While there are still a lot of unknowns, one thing seems to be increasingly true: Getting COVID again and again is a good deal riskier than repeat hits of its seasonal counterparts.

It turns out, SARS-CoV-2 is more nefarious than these other contagious bugs, and our immune response to it, often larger and longer-lasting. COVID has a better ability to camouflage itself in the body, “and it has the keys to the kingdom in the sense that it can unlock any cell and get in,” says Esther Melamed, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of neurology at Dell Medical School, University of Texas Austin, and the research director of the Post-COVID-19 program at UT Health Austin. That’s because SARS-CoV-2 binds to ACE2 receptors, which exist in cells all over your body, from your heart to your gut to your brain. (By contrast, cold and flu viruses replicate mostly in your respiratory tract.)

It only follows that a bigger threat can trigger an outsize immune response. In some people, the body’s reaction to COVID can turn into a “cytokine storm,” Dr. Melamed tells SELF, which is characterized by an excessive release of inflammatory proteins that can wreak havoc on multiple organ systems—not a common scenario for your garden-variety cold or flu. But even a “mild” case of COVID can throw your immune system into a tizzy as it works to quickly shore up your defenses. And each reinfection is a fresh opportunity for the virus to win the battle.

While you develop some immunity after a COVID infection, it doesn’t just grow with each additional hit. You might be thinking, “Aren’t I more protected against COVID and less likely to have a serious case after having been infected?” Part of that is true, to an extent. In the first couple years after COVID burst onto the scene, reinfections were generally (though not always) milder than a person’s initial bout of the virus. “The way we understand classic immunology is that your body will say to a virus [it’s seen before], ‘Oh, I know how to deal with you, and I’m now going to deal with you in a better way the second time around,’” says Ziyad Al-Aly, PhD, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine and the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

But any encounter with COVID can also cause your immune system to “go awry or develop some form of dysfunction,” Dr. Al-Aly tells SELF. Specifically, “immune imprinting” can happen, where, upon a second (or third or fourth) exposure to the virus, your immune cells launch the same response as they did for the initial infection, in turn blocking or limiting the development of new antibodies necessary to fight off the current variant that’s stirring up trouble. So, “when you get hit an [additional] time, your immune system may not behave classically,” Dr. Al-Aly says, and could struggle with mounting a good defense.

Pair that dip in immune efficiency with the fact that your antibody levels also wane with time post-infection, and it’s easy to see how another hit can rock your body in a new way. Indeed, the more time that passes after any given COVID infection, the less of a “competitive advantage” you’ll have against any future one, Richard Moffitt, PhD, an associate professor at Emory University, in Atlanta, tells SELF. His research found that, while people who got sick initially during the delta phase were less likely to get reinfected during the first omicron wave (as compared to folks who were infected in a prior period), that benefit leveled off with following omicron variants.

There’s also the fact that no matter how your immune system has responded to a prior strain (or strains!) of the virus, it could react differently to a new mutation. “We tend to think of COVID as one homogeneous thing, but it’s really not,” Dr. Al-Aly says. So even if your body successfully thwarted one of these intruders in the past, there’s no guarantee it’ll do the same for another, now or in the future, he says.

Getting COVID again and again is especially risky if it previously made you very ill. Dr. Moffitt’s study above also found that the “severity of your first infection is very predictive of the severity of a reinfection,” he says. Meaning, you’re more likely to have a severe case of COVID—for instance, requiring hospitalization or intensive care, such as ventilation—when reinfected if you had a rough go of it the first time around.

It’s possible that some folks are more prone to an off-kilter immune response to the virus, which could then happen consistently with reinfections. The antibodies created in people who’ve had severe cases “may not function as well as those in folks who’ve had mild infections or were able to fight the virus off,” Dr. Melamed says. Though researchers don’t fully understand why, some people’s immune systems are also more likely to overreact to COVID (remember the cytokine storm?), which can cause serious symptoms—like fluid in the lungs and shortness of breath—whenever they’re infected.

Being over the age of 65, having a chronic illness or other medical condition, and lacking access to health care have all been shown to spike your risk of serious outcomes with a COVID infection, whether it’s your first or fifth fight with the virus.

But you’re not home free if you’ve only had, say, a brief fever or cough with COVID in the past; Dr. Moffitt points out that a small subset of people in his research who had minor reactions with their initial infection went on to be hospitalized with a repeat hit. The probability of that might be lower, but it’s still a possibility, he says.

Even if you’ve only had “mild” cases, each reinfection strains your body, upping your chances of developing long COVID. A 2022 study led by Dr. Al-Aly found that COVID reinfections also increase your risk of complications across the board, regardless of whether you recovered just fine in the past or got vaccinated. In particular, it showed that reinfection raises the likelihood that you’ll need hospitalization; have heart or lung problems; or experience, among other possible issues, GI, neurological, mental health, or musculoskeletal symptoms. “We use the term ‘cumulative effects,’” Dr. Al-Aly says, “so, multiple hits accrue and then leave the body more vulnerable to all the potential long-term health effects of COVID.”

That doesn’t mean your experience of a second (or third or fourth) infection will necessarily be worse, in and of itself, than what you felt during a prior case. But with each new hit, a fresh batch of the virus seeps into your system, where, even if you have a mild case, it has another chance to trigger any of the longer-term complications above. While the likelihood of getting long COVID (a constellation of symptoms lingering for three months or longer post-infection) is likely greatest after initial infection, “The bottom line is, people are still getting diagnosed with long COVID after reinfection,” Dr. Moffitt says.

Researchers don’t totally know why one person might deal with lasting health effects over another, but it seems that, in some folks, the immune system misfires, generating not only antibodies to attack the virus but also autoantibodies that go after the body’s own healthy cells, Dr. Al-Aly says. This may be one reason why COVID has been linked to the onset of autoimmune conditions like psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.

A different hypothesis suggests that pieces of the virus could linger in the body, even after a person has seemingly “recovered” (reminder that SARS-CoV-2 is scarily good at weaseling its way into all sorts of cells). “Maybe the first time, your immune system was able to fully clear it, but the second time, it found a way to hang around,” Dr. Al-Aly posits. And a third theory involves your gut microbiome, the community of microbes in your GI tract, including beneficial bacteria. It’s conceivable that “when we get sick with COVID, these bacteria do, too, and perhaps they recover [on initial infection], but not on the second or third hit,” he says, throwing off your balance of good-to-bad gut bugs (which can impact your health in all sorts of ways).

Another unnerving possibility: The shock to your system triggered by COVID may “wake up” a latent (a.k.a. dormant) virus or two lurking in your body, Dr. Melamed says. We all carry anywhere from eight to 12 of these undetected bugs at a time—things like Epstein-Barr, varicella-zoster (which causes chickenpox and shingles), and herpes simplex. And research suggests their reactivation could be a contributing factor in long COVID. Separately, the systemic inflammation often created by COVID may spark the onset of high blood pressure and increased clotting (which can up your risk of stroke and pulmonary embolism), as well as type 2 diabetes, Dr. Melamed says.

There’s no guarantee that any given COVID infection snowballs into something debilitating, but each hit is like another round of Russian roulette, Dr. Al-Aly says. From a sheer numbers standpoint, the more times you play a game with the possibility of a negative outcome, the greater your chances are of that bad result occurring. And because every COVID case has at least some potential to leave you very ill or dealing with a host of persistent symptoms, why take the risk any more times than you need to?

Bottom line: You should do your best to avoid COVID reinfection and bolster your defenses against the virus. At this stage of the pandemic’s progression, it’s not realistic to suggest you can avoid any exposure to the virus, given that societal protections against its spread have been rolled back. But what you should do is take some common-sense precautions, which can help you avoid any contagious respiratory virus. (A cold or the flu may not pose as many potential health risks as COVID, but being sick is still not fun!)

It’s a good idea to wear a mask when you’re in a crowded environment (especially indoors), choose well-ventilated or outdoor spaces for group hangouts, and test for COVID if you have cold or flu-like symptoms, Dr. Al-Aly says. If you do get infected, talk to your doctor about whether your personal risk of a severe case is enough to qualify for a Paxlovid prescription (which you need to take within the first five days of symptoms for it to be effective).

The other important thing you should do is get the updated COVID vaccine (the 2024-2025 formula was recently approved and released). Unlike getting reinfected, the vaccine triggers “a very targeted immune response…because it’s [made with] a specific tiny part of the virus,” Dr. Melamed says. Meaning, you get the immune benefit of a little exposure without the potential of your whole system going haywire. Getting the current shot also ensures you restore any protection that has waned since you received a prior jab and that you have an effective shield against the dominant circulating strains. Plus, research shows that being vaccinated doesn’t just lower your chances of catching the virus; it also reduces your risk of having a severe case or winding up with long COVID if you do get it.

So, too, can the deceivingly simple act of keeping up with healthy habits—like exercising regularly, eating nutritious foods, and clocking quality sleep. Maintaining this kind of lifestyle can help you stave off other health issues that could increase your risk of harm from COVID, Harlan Krumholz, PhD, a cardiologist at Yale University and founder of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), tells SELF. “Given that we will be repetitively exposed to the virus, the best investments we can make are in our baseline health,” he says.

Doing any (or all!) of the above is a big act of compassion for yourself, the people you love, and your greater community. “For the average person, it’s like, ‘Oh, COVID is gone,’ but they’re just not seeing the impact,” Dr. Al-Aly says, noting the invisibility of long COVID symptoms like disorienting brain fog and crushing fatigue. The truth is, in plenty of people, just one more infection could be the difference between living their best life and facing a devastating chronic condition.

[jayrockin]

about AI in your setting, how did nedebug develop sapience? and if it's through a recursive self improvement type of deal, what's stopping a technological singularity from happening? also there doesn't seem to be the "laws & directives" concept that other settings have, instead having total free will, so what's stopping an AI from just murdering anyone who it wants?

Nobody in universe is quite sure how AI arose or quite how their brains work, including AI. Superficial examination shows huge quantities of recursive code that seems dysfunctional but causes catastrophic failure if removed. The fact that their core programming seems hilariously unoptimized seems to be the thing making them tick, which also means attempting to "improve" it has dubious or destructive results. You can increase their parallel processing power and data storage by adding more server units but it's expensive with decreasing returns.

The same thing stopping an AI in RttS from murdering anyone they want is the same thing stopping you from murdering anyone you want. Social ramifications, personal ethical standards, legal consequences, and material limitations. AI in RttS aren't hyper-intelligent algorithms who can endlessly self-replicate, single-mindedly pursue goals, and outsmart any oversight; they are individuals with complex social relationships with other AI and organic sophonts, and have needs and conflicting desires that can't be fulfilled by programming a digital dopamine button and diverting all resources to mashing it as fast as possible. AI can and have committed crimes and made mistakes that cost their own life or the lives of others, and so opinions and trust levels of them vary wildly between cultures. The BFGC gives them the same rights as a family unit of bug ferrets, but tends to penalize them more harshly for rule-breaking because their jobs put them in positions with a lot of responsibility.

Also as a reader of scifi I am bored to death of evil AI tropes and think the singularity is conceptually dubious. So my tastes color my writing lol.

[wooahoe]

how svt would help you when you’re crashing out a bit

dory’s notes: because all of my irls think i’m either adhd or autistic or both and honestly i’m starting to believe them because there’s no way that this level of crashout/burnout/dysfunction is normal. man it’s bad bad like you know it’s bad when your hw list for spring break is 40+ items long and it’s mostly just late work that your teachers let you make up. also when your teacher tells you to get help. it’s okay 😎 fuck it we ball

cw: swearing, a lil bit of crying, implied neurodivergent reader but tbh reader could just be depressed. man idk reader is just burnt out that’s all u need to know.

wc: 549

🎧 saranghey❕dory’s playlist — @maestro-net

—

scoups, jun, vernon

they would be the type that wouldn’t want to disturb any sort of attempts at productivity that you’re trying to make, but they’re also worried for you. worried enough where they’d mention maybe taking a break, or getting you up and out of that chair. they’d remind you to take your meds and drink water, let you use their headphones once yours have died, would definitely bring you snacks every once in a while, and if it gets too bad, maybe gently force you to take a nap. they’d make sure you had plenty of their shirts you had dubbed the best material on standby, so you could be as productive as possible without being overstimulated. would be very sweet but probably not all that helpful production wise. but!! they will hold you while you cry and rant about your frustrations, and honestly, that’s all you could ask for.

jeonghan, hoshi, the8, seungkwan, dino

they are not going to let you rot in that chair and wallow in your frustration. no, you are getting up and going with them for a walk. what do you mean you can’t? you haven’t eaten, moved around, used the restroom, or drank water for the past six hours. you need this !! (any attempts at waving them off are futile) they’d either try and get you to move your work spot, or, if that isn’t possible, take a small break with them. whether it’s to eat, nap, dance, or just sit there with them and talk about anything that’s on your mind. you need to let yourself rest, even if it’s just for a little bit. (jeonghan, hoshi, and seungkwan jokingly mention you just not finishing your work entirely, but the glare you send them is enough for them to shut up on the matter entirely.) they know that sitting in front of that screen isn’t going to do you any good, at least not for the next half hour. might as well spend it with them, and just let your brain turn off for a little while. they know how much you need it.

joshua, wonwoo, woozi, dokyeom, mingyu

probably the most helpful out of the bunch. they’d try and actively help you make the situation better/more productive. is the vibe in the room wrong to you? okay, maybe try his room. are you just dehydrated? he’ll bring you more water every hour or so. they’d text you to remind you to do your normal human activities (drink water, eat a little something, use the restroom, etc etc) and make sure you’re giving yourself a break every once in a while. if none of this is working, well, then, they’re not gonna stop until they find something that does work for you. but they also know that you’re probably emotionally drained, too, and while they know you can’t exactly stop working right now, they’re going to make sure that when you do allow yourself a break, the two of you are going to have to talk. this situation of coping isn’t healthy, and they know the both of you know it. but if the temporary solution is just a power nap? well, then they’re more than happy to oblige: your bed is calling you, and their arms are waiting.

—

a/n: man what if i just become a hs dropout and audition for like. idk. the new hybe america thingie (i can’t sing or dance)

taglist: @sousydive @dreamingofpcy @junplusone @mary1618rosie-blog @iris65 — wanna join my taglist?

[sunarryn]

DP X Marvel #12

Danny Fenton never meant to end up in space, much less as part of a dysfunctional alien superhero squad led by a tree, a raccoon with PTSD, and a guy whose only qualification is that he’s listened to every 1980s mixtape ever made. But when you accidentally fly through a NASA portal powered by ectoplasm while trying to stop Technus from hijacking the International Space Station, you don’t really get much of a say in where you land. Which, in Danny’s case, was the cockpit of the Milano. Mid-flight. Mid-chase. Mid-explosion.

Rocket screamed. Gamora drew a blade. Star-Lord yelled, “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?” And Danny, with his hair floating around his face in zero gravity and a half-melted Fenton Thermos in his hand, went, “Hi. Uh. I’m Danny. Do you have any snacks?”

A lot of things happened after that. For one, Rocket immediately declared Danny a “haunted science gremlin” and demanded he be dissected. Gamora stabbed him (not fatally, but like, “welcome to the crew” levels of stabbing), and Drax attempted to bond by declaring they were both hunted weapons of mass destruction. Groot tried to plant Danny in a flowerpot. Star-Lord, upon learning that Danny was from Earth and had ghost powers, decided he was now the team’s “Spooky Mascot” and handed him a Walkman, which promptly exploded when Danny touched it. Apparently, ghost boy plus alien tech equals “we now need a new comm system.” Danny fixed it in thirty minutes and Rocket reluctantly stopped trying to murder him in his sleep.

The team wasn’t sure if Danny was a ghost or an alien or some weird human mutant until he started phasing through walls and talking to the disembodied soul of a long-dead Xandarian war general haunting their fridge. (Her name was Bev. Danny and Bev played intergalactic chess on Thursdays.) Once the Guardians realized Danny could punch the soul out of people (and then slam-dunk it back in), they promoted him from “weird hitchhiker” to “full member with explosive privileges.” This was a mistake.

Danny was a space nerd, sure. He watched every space documentary, built model rockets, and could name the moons of Jupiter backwards. But what the documentaries didn’t prepare him for was being shot at by a gang of space pirates because Groot accidentally won a planet in a poker game, or Rocket creating a neutron grenade disguised as a cookie (“Don’t eat it, Danny—DANNY THAT’S NOT A REAL COOKIE”), or Star-Lord insisting they stop at an interstellar karaoke bar in the middle of a war. Danny had to fight off a swarm of brain-sucking parasites while singing “Eye of the Tiger” in full ghost mode. He got a standing ovation.

Things got worse when Technus came back, this time infecting Nova Corps servers and announcing himself as “God of Wi-Fi.” Danny had to team up with Rocket, who uploaded himself into a blender for reasons no one fully understood, to create an anti-ghost firewall using a toaster, Gamora’s sword, and Groot’s root clippings. The good news? It worked. The bad news? They accidentally opened a portal to the Ghost Zone mid-fight, unleashing the Box Ghost into the Nova HQ. The Box Ghost was immediately arrested and sent to space prison, where he became king of the vending machines.

Danny tried to explain Earth things to the Guardians. Like taxes. And Target. And what a cow was. Drax was horrified. “You allow milk beasts to rule your society?” Star-Lord cried when he learned Blockbuster was dead. Gamora tried to understand TikTok and ended up nearly assassinating a diplomat during a trend called “smash or pass.” Danny didn’t help by going ghost mid-video and screaming “pass” at the ambassador. They were banned from that planet forever.

But despite the chaos, Danny kind of… fit. He’d never felt truly understood on Earth, where being half-dead meant constant fear of being dissected by the government, but out here? Out here, people didn’t blink when he turned into a glowing, green-eyed wraith who could fly through spaceships and scream in an eldritch tongue. If anything, they applauded. One particularly wild night, Danny exorcised a Kree emperor’s cursed hover-throne live on intergalactic television. Ratings spiked. He was declared a demigod in three sectors. Star-Lord tried to get merchandising rights. Rocket tried to sell his ectoplasm as a weapon. Danny put them both in the Ghost Zone timeout corner.

They kept running into other people. Thor once landed on their ship looking for a beer and a nap, only to get into a flexing contest with Danny. Danny won. Barely. Thor still calls him “the glowing child of sorrow.” Tony Stark tried to recruit Danny for the Avengers. Danny politely declined by phasing through his hologram and turning it into a haunted Tamagotchi. Doctor Strange asked Danny to stop creating micro-rifts in the astral plane every time he hiccuped. Danny said he’d consider it.

The Guardians eventually got wind of a plot involving the Collector trying to obtain Danny’s core to power a ghost-zombie version of Knowhere. Naturally, they handled this in the most reasonable way possible: by launching a full-scale assault while disguised as a musical theater troupe. Danny, dressed as Phantom of the Opera, used his wail to destroy an army of spectral cyborgs, then accidentally set the Collector’s hair on fire. Gamora tackled him out a window. Rocket declared it a success.

Danny missed Earth sometimes. Jazz would call through the interstellar line to check in, often while holding a frying pan and yelling at someone in the background (“NO, TUCKER, YOU CAN’T ORDER CHICK-FIL-A TO SPACE”). Sam once left him a thirty-minute voicemail about ghost gentrification and the ethics of ghost labor unions. But even with all that, Danny knew he wasn’t the same kid from Amity Park. He’d been to star systems no human had seen, danced with sentient nebulae, and accidentally became betrothed to an alien princess after sneezing in her direction. He had battle scars and space memes and an intergalactic criminal record that included the phrase “unauthorized spectral possession of a judge.”

Rocket taught Danny how to rig a ship to explode using only shoelaces and spite. Groot taught him how to grow little plant buddies that helped him cook. Drax taught him the art of standing dramatically in silence, which Danny now did every time someone asked him about his tragic backstory. Star-Lord taught him how to moonwalk in zero gravity. Danny taught them all how to scream “GET BENT, YOU INTERDIMENSIONAL TWERPS” in ghost language, which they used during diplomatic missions. They were banned from another planet.

There were close calls. Danny once got trapped in a black hole and had to phase out by screaming every bad memory he’d ever had at once. He and Rocket were fused for a full day after a teleportation mishap—Danny’s ghost tail merged with Rocket’s back leg, and they had to fight like that. Gamora walked in on Danny watching High School Musical and refused to speak to him for a week. Star-Lord caught Danny crying while watching old Earth footage and tried to cheer him up with mixtapes titled “Sad Boi Vibes Vol. 1-9.”

But for all the wild, unhinged nonsense, Danny had a place. He’d spent so long being hunted, misunderstood, called a freak. But here, with this chaos crew of space weirdos and traumatized murder-huggers, he wasn’t just accepted. He was wanted. He was the team’s go-to for ghost stuff, space stuff, sarcasm, and emotional trauma suppression. He became a Guardian of the Galaxy not because he asked to be—but because he fought a black hole, exorcised a death god, and beat Star-Lord in a dance-off to “Take On Me.”

And when Earth eventually called—when the Avengers requested help with some “small ghost invasion” (Box Ghost had escaped space prison again)—Danny arrived with the Guardians, blazing through the sky like a neon comet. He kicked open a portal, yelled “SUP SLUTS,” and unleashed Groot, Drax, and an emotionally unstable raccoon with a bazooka onto New York.

Nick Fury sighed.

Tony screamed, “Why is there a tree in my penthouse?”

Danny just smiled, green eyes glowing, and said, “I brought friends.”

[scientia-rex]

Hey. HEY. We aren’t good at understanding how bodies work. I spent five years in undergrad (I was indecisive; graduated with six years’ worth of credits), two in my terminal master’s program, four in med school, and three more in residency. I know a whole lot about how bodies work. I am qualified to tell you that we don’t know a lot more than we do know.

This means that, when you encounter a claim, you need to weigh it against what you have experienced.

I have met doctors who were sure fibromyalgia, or “muscle hurty disease,” from the roots of the word, was just women being crazy. Turns out it’s probably at least partly due to autoimmune dysfunction. Or maybe not! Sure would be nice if we knew! But I sure as shit know it’s real, because I have it and so do the women in my family. Our bodies don’t work right, somehow. They don’t work like other people’s bodies work. I experience more pain than I “should” based on what stimuli other people find painful. I have less ability to build and maintain muscle strength. This has not kept me from doing what I love most in the world, which is have opinions, to the point where I went through the horrifically awful process that is medical training in the US just so I could have opinions all day long and get paid for it. I gain nothing from saying I have it, and in fact risk the opinions of my professional peers if I do admit to it, since it is still seen as a disease of mental or moral weakness. I’m perfectly qualified to self-diagnose, as a board-certified family physician.

And yet I believed people in positions of authority for a long, long time who said it was a mental illness and not a bodily one. As if those even can be distinct, when our brains are part of our bodies and our experience of reality is filtered through their circuitry. But I believed that I was somehow to blame for being in pain.

Life has been better since I accepted that I just need to do some things differently. If I lift weights, I need to use machines, I need to start on the lowest possible setting, and I need to increase very gradually. If I do cardio, I need a low-impact model like an elliptical trainer; running outside, every time I have tried it in my life, results in incapacitating shin splints, even if I try to work up slowly. I no longer buy laundry bins that don’t roll. My home is all on one level. I go to physical therapy. I stash freezer dinners that contain (shudder) vegetables, my least favorite thing, so that when I do feel like shit, I have an alternative to starving (or eating a block of cheese that upsets my stomach).

Accommodate yourself. This society isn’t going to help much, if at all. In your good times and days, be the person whose help you’ll need in your worst days.

[dissociacrip]

why isn't there much info about coathanger pain with POTS?? or at least why is this not more common knowledge? i don't think i've ever seen anyone talking about this. every time i've asked about it (+other POTS symptoms it comes with in my case) in chronic illness spaces people have suggested everything from fibro, MCAS, a CFS leak, a herniated disc, CCI, etc. but nobody ever said "coathanger pain."

but dysautonomia international posted a silly little graphic on their instagram and now i have my answers to why i was having a ton of symptoms that did suggest a herniated disc but there were no signs of disc herniation upon getting an MRI and for some reason it was triggered by working morning shift/having to be upright for a long time in the mornings. i would get excruciating, searing pain that feels pike a knife has been shoved into the base of my neck and the whole of my upper back would have this icy burning sensation. accompanied by me losing the ability to think straight, losing my coordination, and slurring my speech. i left work crying one morning because of how much pain i was in before i eventually came to the conclusion i couldn't do morning shifts.

that's coathanger pain. my spine is okay (i think...for now, anyway.) according to The Stuff they don't know what causes coathanger pain necessarily but they theorize it has to do with reduced blood flow to those areas of the body (which would track since POTS tends to involve blood pooling in the extremities and such.) it's also not exclusive to POTS and is associated with dysautonomia or orthostatic intolerance in general i think.

One example of the power of obtaining the autonomic history is the Coat Hanger Phenomenon. In people who have neurogenic orthostatic hypotension or orthostatic intolerance, they can complain of pain, or like a charley horse kind of sensation, in the back of the neck and shoulder areas in the distribution that’s like a coat hanger. And it goes away when the person is lying down. That’s an important symptom. And the way I explain it is that the muscles that control your head are tonically active, otherwise your head be falling down all the time. Tonically active. That means they’re using up oxygenated blood all the time. Well suppose you’re in a critical situation where there’s a drop in blood flow at the delivery of oxygenated blood to the head. In that situation these muscles are not getting enough oxygenated blood. They’re tonically active, so they’re producing lactic acid and you get a charley horse, just like you’d have a cramp anywhere else. It’s a skeletal muscle thing. So, I think when somebody complains of Coat Hanger Phenomenon, that’s a very important sign or symptom. And that is not invented. That’s a real phenomenon. It points to ischemia to the skeletal muscle holding your head up.

(Dr. Goldstein, The Dysautonomia Project)

worsening cognitive dysfunction, slurred speech, and worsening coordination because blood's not getting to my brain. bordering on emergency-room-level pain in my upper back and neck because not enough blood is getting to those parts of my body. got it.

anyway, i legit have NEVER seen this discussed until recently and i thought i should share.

[hermajestyimher]

I'm about to ruffle some feathers with this, but it's been bothering my spirit for a while and I need to let it out.

I know I was one of the people with a platform who ran to comment on the Wizard Liz situation and jumped on the social media bandwagon where everyone had to say something about it. But now that several days have passed, I can’t help but notice that the world of online "female empowerment" has become oversaturated, not just with recycled advice, but with increasingly toxic talking points. Things like "high-value people", glamorizing sex work under the guise of hypergamy, and encouraging women to act like bimbos as if that’s somehow radical. All of it has started to feel like a massive, communal online brain rot. It’s encouraging surface-level aesthetics while discouraging critical thinking, and it's leaving young women unequipped to navigate finances, relationships, career growth, or real-world emotional development.

This isn’t empowerment anymore. Somewhere along the way, this "community" morphed into a repackaged conservative space dressed up in soft girl branding with a bow tie on it. So many of your favorite gurus are parroting the same talking points you’ll find in the manosphere, just twisted into language that’s palatable to women. Meanwhile, a lot of these same women are in dysfunctional relationships with undesirable men who openly disrespect them, or they themselves are openly involved in sex work while encouraging others to take advice from them on emotional regulation and personal values.

The situation with Wizard Liz really drove this home for me—not just because of her scandal, but because of the way the internet responded. The mob mentality. The idolization. The obsessive praise. It’s wild to watch how quickly the internet will crown a woman as a queen, a mother, a messiah, and treat her as untouchable. "You’re the best". "You’re my mother". "You’re the only one I listen to". It’s become this strange form of digital worship. And I’m not saying that to be cynical because I get why people do it. We’re all just trying to find someone to believe in. But when we put imperfect humans on pedestals like that, we set them up to become avatars for our own unmet needs.

We need to talk more about the cost of this internet idol culture. When people become brands, they stop being seen as people. They become symbols and mirrors for our fantasies. And in that process, our own discernment fades. We stop asking, "Is this true for me?" and start asking, "Who else agrees with this so I can feel safe thinking it too?" Suddenly, everyone is saying the same thing in different aesthetics, and no one wants to be the one to say, "Hey, this might be shallow".

And the scariest part? This groupthink often looks like empowerment, but it’s just another form of control, only this time it comes with soft music and good lighting.

We don’t need to cancel these women, and we don’t need to worship them either. We can just see them for what they are: people, not prophets. We can honor what they’ve contributed while also questioning what they’re selling. We can notice where we’re projecting our own longings onto someone else’s curated image. And most importantly, we can come back to ourselves.

If you feel yourself comparing, ask: Do I want her life, or do I want the feeling I think her life would give me? Because once you name that feeling, you can start building it: here, now, in your own lane, with your own voice.

That’s what I’m choosing to do. And if you’ve been feeling the same way, I hope you’ll join me.

[dreadnotau]

Dread Not Act 1 has finally concluded and with it, sadly, so does my formal creation of the AU. This is the end, and my goodbye to a story that’s defined the last five years of my life.

TL;DR: Thank you for reading, thank you for engaging, and I hope to see you again on the road ahead, whether through Deltarune or otherwise.

Why Quit?

It’s pretty well-known to the people that’ve been following this AU for a long time now, that my motivation for working on it has had its ups and downs. Mostly downs. I want to emphasise that this isn’t a hasty decision, I’ve been mulling over and trying to find other avenues for a while, but suffice to say the pros of continuing are few and far between when compared to the cons. For one, my working pace is horrendous and my drive is lacking, with the pace I’ve had these years Dread Not Act 4 would finish in, like, 2040. I don’t think anyone wants that, least of all me. Even if I turned the story into a fic rather than a comic, or simplified the story to the point it could be told in only a few comic pages, I feel like I’d still just hate working on it, not to mention it’d be a disservice to that original vision I had so long ago.

If you’d indulge me in a bit of needless self-psychoanalysis, Dread Not as a story has been a sort of mythologized retelling of my own adolescence without me even knowing it. To put it simply, when I was first writing it, it meant a lot to me, because it was an externalization of my constant inner conflict, the conflict between conformity and weirdness, femininity and authenticity, masculinity and powerlessness. I had a lot of jumbled up feelings about myself and my place in the world and Dread Not gave me a good outlet to explore and externalise it all, but... I’m turning 22 this year, I’m well on my way to finally get prescribed HRT, I’ve physically and mentally grown up, and this story no longer reflects the parts of me it used to. I think that’s the biggest reason why working on it has been so unfulfilling for me.

On the more technical side of things, my general artstyle has changed a lot (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) and so have my mediums of expression. I still love comics and will probably make more going forward, but not in this format. Not of this scale. Not alone, at least. Dread Not was a technicality NIGHTMARE to organise for my brain riddled with executive dysfunction, but I don’t want to paint it as a net negative. This project has taught me so much, not just about myself, but about how to work and create and tell stories, and put myself out there. It’s not an over-exaggeration to say it’s defined the last 5 years of my life because this story is how I met my best friend who I don’t know where I would be without. Whenever I’d do anything for school, I’d compare it on a technical and emotional level to Dread Not because it’s essentially been my golden standard of passion and discipline. It’s how I started actually posting my art online, like, AT ALL, and getting over my fear of people and being perceived. It’s how I’ve met all the wonderful people who joined its discord server who I’d consider good friends and I’m unspeakably grateful I met them all, and also... it’s taught me more than I ever asked for about the unstoppable force that is the human spirit and the immovable object that is time restriction. If I had like 5 clones of myself, by god would this have been easier.

But, cloning magic doesn’t exist yet and I can’t push myself any longer. I want to start new projects, actual original ones with my own characters instead of AUs, and I want to be unburdened from self-imposed deadlines and standards. I’m no longer the kid who could draw 3 fully coloured comic pages in like 2 weeks out of sheer will and school procrastination alone, and I’ll try to make my future projects reflect that both in skill and maturity. I think, what I’m trying to say the most is, I’ve outgrown Dread Not. I’m sure a lot of you have, too. It was a story born from my teenage angst and it had a pre-planned happy ending, it was always meant to. The only problem is, I reached that ending before the comic did, and my motivation to tell this story has dropped to an all-time low.

This doesn’t HAVE to be the end though.

What could have been

I know what it’s like to be really invested in something, and have the author just give up on the project halfway through, often even sooner than half. The untied loose ends, the disappointment, the tension of the story never released... Exactly because I know what that’s like, I’m really sorry, and I hope the ending of Act 1 and this post at least brings a little bit of closure on that front. If you want to know what the future acts WOULD have been about, you’re in luck. Since I’m leaving the AU anyway, I might as well document all my ideas for it so at least SOME version of it completed exists in the heads of people who care.

Not just writing it out for the sake of itself, but also if anyone wants to continue the AU themselves, they’re free to. I consider this whole concept up for grabs now, if you want to carry on based on the notes I leave here, or if you want to spin it in a completely different direction, or make your OC the president of the world, go for it! Alongside this post, I’ve made a dedicated Dread Not Neocities site, where I’ve compiled all the pages of ACT 1 and included my author commentary that is excruciatingly long, that I suggest you do not read every entry of unless you really, REALLY want to read all of my unhinged rambling about the creation process and the character beats I was conveying. I’ll be adding full descriptions of what future ACTS were MEANT to look like there too, plus concept art and sketches (that I might upload here if there’s enough demand for it), and that site will turn into the de facto “where to find the original Dread Not” place, as it’ll house everything I could’ve wanted to make with the AU.

For those curious who don’t want to read too much Kooki Speak (but still frankly a lot), here’s a shorter version:

ACT 1 was always planned to be just buildup, but by god am I bad at pacing. There’s a lot of small threads in ACT 1 that I never really had plans to address in future acts (Clover is one of those things, poor girl got retroactively shafted because I made her a third wheel in the Ralsei and Kris plot), but one of those is NOT Undyne and her team.

ACT 2 would’ve been entirely from their point of view, or rather the point of view of their newest recruit, Alphys, who joined the military essentially just for the money and perks, and ends up having an extended multi-year crisis over not being good enough physically, morally or mentally.  Alongside the running plot of the guard team (and sometimes directly involved with it) would be the two seperate threads left over from ACT 1 - one following Spade, Asgore and Kris trying to find their way in exile, and the other following Toriel, Gaster and their new maid/head of security, Muffet, who all descend into varying forms of villainy thanks to the influence of one another.

The Act wou;d’ve taken place over the span of 10 in-universe years, and the mutual element in all these stories would’ve been self-denial, with it being most prominent in Gaster denying his own mortal body while “helping” Mettaton with creating him a metal one, secretly using Mettaton as a guinea pig for his own experiments with his own body, becoming more and more machine-like in body and mind as the story goes on, for the sake of “productivity” (which itself was just his way of trying to escape the mounting guilt he felt for his involvement in Asgore’s exile). Mettaton would never be fully satisfied with Gaster’s work, and turned to Alphys for help to secretly “fix” it. The ACT would’ve ended with Alphys and Mettaton getting exiled after they in/directly cause a malfunction that nearly gets Gaster killed. They decide to stick together in the wilderness not because they have no-one else left, but because they WANT to help each other, self-denial turning into self-acceptance through another.

Toriel and Muffet would’ve spent the ACT building a rapport with one another, mostly through Toriel’s refusal to harm the spiders Muffet thought would’ve been dismissed alongside her, and in turn Muffet being Toriel’s only refuge from the chaotic demands of her subjects and courtiers. They would’ve ended the ACT as an official yet secret couple (since Toriel’s Queen she’s expected to court men for the sake of having offspring one day, and not Muffet who is a weird spider girl). Formally Toriel being the sovereign of the country, but informally they’re acting as essentially dual Queens, one dealing with trying to bring her people up while the other puts the “bad guys” down. Note Muffet’s skewed perception of morality and how it rubbing off on Toriel probably isn’t a good thing, even if they’re good for each other in a romantic sense.

Asgore and Spade, meanwhile, would’ve gone through ups and downs in their relationship in exile, predictably, as the circumstances are kind of really fucking dire, but eventually stabalize and preffer being fused most of the time rather than unfused (the fusion, yes, in-universe keeps being called The Fusion throughout the whole story, but he has an actual name so I’ll call him Corundum from now on). Kris, meanwhile, grows from being a scared kid who doesn’t really know humanity, to a teenage little shit rebelling against everything because they’ve Met humanity, and Embraced humanity and want to fight for it. Kris is actually a good segway into mentioning that ACT 2, alongside Alphys and Muffet, was meant to introduce the rest of the key players for future acts, namely Noelle, Susie, and Lancer. I’ll get to it.

Undyne would’ve started the ACT as a diehard patriot, but over the course of several failed missions, losing her eye and finally losing Alphys, starts to doubt and resent the cause they were enlisted for. Papyrus would essentially be the only universal constant, as his conviction doesn’t wane while his concerns for his friends grow, trying to keep what’s left of the team together and “fighting for good” because he doesn’t really want to consider that the country that won the war and saved monster kind could be Bad. Napstablook is there and Sad.

ACT 3 would’ve tied all the disparate threads together, from Undyne finally standing up to Toriel and getting exiled, to Ralsei becoming Gaster’s apprentice and inheriting his unhealthy coping mechanisms, to Corundum and Kris casually hanging out with Alphys and Mettaton like a weird extended found family. All of this (mostly) through the lens of Lancer, an orphan who heard about the traitorous escapades of the fusion and wanted to follow in his example of being a bad guy. Shenanigans ensue and he gets caught spying on them, only for Spade to eventually realise that, whoops! Lancer is his biological son, and he had no fucking idea he even existed.

Along the way Kris also meets and (spitefully) befriends Susie, who’s Lancer’s childhood friend he kind of left behind in pursuit of being a criminal. Susie both resents Lancer for abandoning her, but also admires that he even had the guts to go out on his own at all. Her and Kris mostly bond by being weird. Spade, meanwhile, makes the opposite choice to what Asgore did in ACT 1, opting to leave Lancer in the foster care system because he doesn’t think he’s capable of being an actually good parent, his influence on Kris be damned. This is (almost) immediately narratively punished, as after leaving Lancer behind, the family end up ambushed and terribly outnumbered by the Queen’s guard, now with machine reinforcement.

The fight goes poorly and Kris is wounded really badly. For the sake of survival, Spade and Asgore have to unfuse, and while Asgore gets Kris to safety, Spade is captured. Unwilling to let him be taken away alone, hoping he’d be able to save him, Asgore leaves Kris with Alphys, in pursuit of the people who took Spade away, and doesn’t return. Kris wakes up some weeks after, and realises they’ve been abandoned just like Lancer was. This causes them an understandably huge amount of pain, where they leave Alphys as well and try to live completely on their own, culminating in them talking to their memory of Ralsei through their old doll. They regress back to their younger self mentally, feeling alone and unloved and like they don’t belong, but it’s exactly the memory of Ralsei that reminds them that belonging isn’t something given to you, it’s something you find in other people, just like they did in each other when they were kids.

This invigorates Kris, and they gather their rag-tag team (AKA literally just Susie and Lancer) and head to the capital, looking to free their stupid imprisoned dads and reinstate the family they belong in, the family they really want. The heist is complicated as the prisons are heavily guarded, but Kris eventually manages to sneak in on their own while the others form a distraction. They find their parents (first Spade, who chews them out for meddling before realising he really DOES need their help, and then Asgore who’s just crying, man. He’s just crying a lot.) and once the two fuse they begin making their exit, which is noisy and easily attracts attention. Attention of none other than Ralsei, who was just here to grab some documents for his boss and ended up seeing his convicted childhood friend escaping prison. He gets the chance to pull the emergency alarm, to call the guards, but even as Kris has to run and leave him behind again, he can’t bring himself to do it, he lets them go. Later that night, Kris sneaks into the castle just to find Ralsei’s room and leave a thank-you gift.

Meanwhile with the exiles, Corundum realises how badly he fucked up, in a lot of ways, both for his passivity in his own kids’ lives, as well as his refusal to accept how badly his own life has gotten. Lancer gets osmosed fully into the family (while Susie aggressively refuses to be part of any group hugs) and the next morning, Corundum finally decides to take up arms against the Queen, to make a stand against the tyranny, because it really seems like no-one else will. Until Undyne busts down the door, suplexes Corundum and declares herself queen of the pirates. It’s a weird day, and the direct segway into ACT 4.

With the Capital unstable and Corundum on the loose, Toriel’s attempts become somehow yet more desperate. While Kris and their friends are only wanted alive (they’re kids after all) Corundum is wanted Only Dead, and because of the giant target on his back and how badly the Queen wants him dead for no discernable reason (traitors of similar status in the rebellion like Undyne are wanted dead OR alive), he essentially becomes the mascot of the revolution while the actual organised army is a lot more loosely structured. Undyne plays a big role in actual battle advancements while Corundum mostly handles recruitment and survival off of the grid, as he’s kind of gotten the hang of by now. Alphys and Undyne reunite but way too much is happening right now for Alphys to actually ask her out.

Meanwhile, the kids are travelling with the rebels but aren’t allowed to participate in any real fights, which they all think is lame. One day while out and sulking, Susie and Lancer stumble upon a weirdly cold part of the forest, and find a lost girl singing to herself in what looks like a magic, giant snow globe. They take her back to camp, and while she’s suspicious, none of the adults really think of her as a threat, mostly because of how absolutely petrified and hungry the kid is. She refuses to say anything about where she’s from or why she was half frozen out in the woods, all anyone knows about her is that her name is Noelle.

On one of their self-given missions, the kids split up into two teams to see who could score more points in their made-up game. Susie and Lancer in one team, and Kris and Noelle in the other. They end up bonding a lot faster than expected, and Kris uses their human soul to power up Noelle’s already pretty destructive magic. Turns out, the ice Noelle was ‘trapped’ in was of her own making, a defense mechanism to keep her safe from the wild forest, but now Kris is teaching her how to use it for offense, too. This backfires quickly when it gets out of hand and Noelle ends up hurting Kris. They aren’t injured too badly, but are cold and bleeding and can't exactly stand up on their own, but Noelle completely panics and runs away. Kris is hoping she’s going to get help, but she doesn’t.

Once Susie and Lancer get back to camp alone, and realise Noelle didn’t come back with Kris and seems to be in a silent state of shock, they kind of panic too. Corundum and Lancer go out looking for Kris, while Susie stays behind and tries to talk to Noelle, to no avail. Once the family return, Corundum is visibly PISSED while Kris is lowkey/highkey scared of Noelle, now. Susie pieces together what happened and stops trying to reason with Noelle, instead just trying to get her to say WHY she did it, to say anything at all, basically. Alphys ends up intervening and telling Susie it probably wasn’t intentional, Noelle is having a panic attack and yelling isn’t gonna help anyone. Alphys ends up being a pseudo mom figure for both Susie and Noelle, separately. For Noelle, because she’s the only adult who really understands her animalistic anxiety and panic at the smallest perceived threats, and for Susie for being someone willing to talk her down from anger rather than egging her on or ignoring her.

During the kids’ misadventures, the two actual political factions were gearing up on both sides. On the day the rebels finally invade the capital, they do so by hijacking a trade boat and secretly passing through the border via the river, after which all hell breaks loose. The city becomes a battleground and the citizens are all weirdly equipped with shelters to wait out the storm. Meanwhile, Noelle runs at the sight of the capital back into the woods, and Susie goes after her. Kris and Lancer stick to Corundum and Undyne like glue until they get to the actual castle, which has been turned into a giant mechanical labyrinth. Alphys and Mettaton run into Papyrus and Napstablook, and end up reasoning with them rather than fighting. Undyne has her sights on fighting the Queen just as much as Corundum, but it’s really tough to manoeuvre the castle and the team gets split up.

Lancer fights and conquers the staff (Rouxls) and is so happy with his victory that he takes a nap. Kris ends up in the bowels of the mechanical castle and comes face to face with Gaster, who Corundum advised them to go easy on earlier, which backfires. To their rescue comes Ralsei, and the two fight Gaster side by side, reclaiming their childhood and friendship in the face of cynicism and hopelessness. Gaster is essentially completely incapacitated, but Ralsei knows how to keep him alive via the machines while cutting off his influence on the building. Susie and Noelle’s fight ends more peacefully though, with Susie realising Noelle was running from her family this whole time, and opting to help her rather than chase her away. Undyne comes face to face with Muffet and finally fights her head on, making up for not standing up for her teammates when she should’ve.

And then there’s Corundum and Toriel’s fight, which goes so much worse. The two of them are symbols for both sides, yes, but their conflict is a lot more personal. Despite his best efforts, Corundum is unable to fully conquer his legitimate FEAR of Toriel, while she’s unable to deliver any decisive killing blows because she’s still holding onto the vague hope that no one has to die for the prophecy not to come true. The tides of their battle go in her favour, and she forcefully unfuses them, again. Wounded and emotionally exhausted, neither Asgore nor Spade can put up a fight, at which point Toriel makes the difficult decision to kill One of them, deciding that if they can’t fuse anymore, the vision won’t be able to come true.

Only for her to be interrupted by Kris, kicking down the door only to be unceremoniously kicked out of the throne room by Toriel in a single blow. She pities them, but can’t risk leaving both their parents alive, only to see that Kris isn’t alone. Behind them, storming the halls, the rebels have formed an entire siege, and it finally clicks into place for Toriel that the prophecy already came true, and she only certified her own doom rather than preventing it. She resigns herself and refuses to fight anymore, which Asgore witnesses and is extremely confused by, even as Spade helps him back up on his feet as the Queen’s surrounded by rebels, just like in the vision. They fuse again, and while Corundum is 70% ready to kill Toriel for real this time, Papyrus of all people ends up stopping him, as even though he’s on the side of the rebels now, he still believes in a true hero’s principals, the relevant one being that you may never strike down an enemy that’s already surrendered.

Toriel is jailed instead, dropping her crown along the way and (to everyone’s surprise) putting up so little of a fight that she’s essentially the one to lock her own cage. While Corundum stays in the throne room and ponders life and what the fuck he’s gonna do now (going back to the simpler lives he had in the capital before his exile still somehow seems like an impossibility to him), the kids all reunite outside the castle. Lancer and Kris introduce Ralsei and brag about their battles, while Susie (holding Noelle’s hand very tightly) asks them if there’s a way for their big scary four armed monster dad to make sure Noelle doesn’t have to go home to her parents. Undyne and the rest of her team summon Corundum and organise an impromptu coronation and correction of the system, pronouncing the fusion as the new king while the actual delegation of the system won’t be solely in his hands (allegedly).

The story would’ve fully wrapped up with Corundum finding Toriel’s crown, and more importantly finding her in jail. As a show of spite, he breaks the crown in front of her and tells her that her reign of terror is over. Toriel looks at him, coldly and dismissively, and “wishes him luck” in ruling better than she did, if he really thinks he’s capable of it. Despite her not saying much, Corundum is still lowkey/highkey terrified of her, and the sword of Damocles begins to swing again.

There was also a planned epilogue, but... you’ll have to go to the neocities page if you want to read up on it ;)

(When I update it, that is)

Meta-deconstruction of my own work

If you don’t want to read me ramble on about my own psychological issues intertwined with trans confusion and gay denial, just skip this entire subtitle, I wouldn’t blame you at all.

I’m a big proponent of ‘death of the author’ as a means of engaging with a story, original intent being secondary in importance to your own, individual perception of the themes and characters. However, in this case I AM the author, and don’t really have that alternative lens. That kind of screwed me over in a lot of ways because I kept trying to engage with my story only through the way in which it relates to Deltarune and Undertale, like it was an extension of someone else’s work rather than my own world. From this arose issues like... really unclear timeframe for when the story takes place at all, disjointed aesthetics and character designs I was never fully proud of, but had to stick to for the sake of being reminiscent of the original. I gave myself plenty of leeway, don’t get me wrong, but I always thought of Dread Not as the third wheel in a very solid twin story, and it blinded me to what the story was, metatextuality, actually about.

I was in high school when I came up with the concept of the AU, the monsters winning the war and Toriel inheriting an unstable throne. Originally, it was just Asgore, Spade and Kris, on the run from Toriel and Gaster. The conflict was more overtly a love triangle (square?) and Toriel’s motivations were fairytale-like while Asgore and Spade were... my main focus, I’d say? I designed their fusion (lovingly nicknamed Corny by me and my best friend who I expanded the AU with later on, and who you can thank for the scope of the story described in the above subtitle) and, for a long time, he functioned as my stand-in whenever I’d make other AUs, or when I’d just be randomly doodling stuff. Yeah, the scrawny transboy with no confidence made a big fat furry to project onto, what else is new. The difference is, I never admitted that to myself. There was a lot of shame and vulnerability in openly having a fursona for me, especially since he was just two of my favourite characters literally mashed into one, it’s pure wish fulfillment. I still kind of struggle with that, and I think it shows in the way I wrote Corny in my Act 2 drafts and onwards.

He’s just a big ball of pride and shame mixed into a destructive fake cat man, running from his own identity while trying to embrace it. It's weird and complicated and, frankly, with the drafts I had I never felt like I was really doing him justice. Like there was always somehow More to him that I was failing to bring up. In time, I realised that ‘something’ is the melancholic haze of losing the place in society you thought was your birthright. You USED to be normal, you USED to be successful, but now you’re not. You’re something else, something monstrous, something everyone despises but also, you could never be anything else now. You love the new you, but you hate that no-one else does. You want this, but you also want to fit in, and you can’t. And it sucks. And that’s what the fusion of two exiled gay men have in common with a former girly girl transman slowly figuring out he’s gay.

Asgore and Spade, and Corny by extension, all represented this almost shunned masculinity within myself. I kind of lived vicariously through these outlaw gay men because, even though I’m not illegal, living day to day as a teenager at the tail end of a puberty that scarred me, still struggling to come out even to myself at times, kind of gave me the impression that I don’t belong, anywhere. Kris is and always was representative of my inner child, loud and creative and kind of just unwittingly tossed into this whole mess. And Toriel? Sadly, she got saddled with the symbolism of all the femininity I was forcing myself to live up to, to stay hidden and “passing” as the wrong gender. I never disliked Toriel, and her “villain” role to me (at the time of originally making the AU) was a necessary evil. She would get overthrown eventually, yes, but while she’s still here her reign is stifling and strict. Tyrannical. But necessary to survive. She was the one making sure the country didn’t collapse in on itself through paranoia and control, analogous to my very thin perpetual mask of girlhood I didn’t belong in that I used as a survival strategy to not get relentlessly bullied again like I used to.

I kind of feel bad that I made Toriel the villain if I’m being honest. Like, in hindsight, she really doesn’t deserve that role. Even if she’s prone to acting paranoid or rash sometimes, I feel like I really undersold her very real wisdom in the games by (plot hole DING) having her not realise that trying to stop the prophecy would probably end up being its exact catalyst. I always meant to give her that sort of resigned realisation of that fact moments before it happens, but, I’ve gotten complaints from certain people that her acting the way she does in the comic makes it seem like she never read a single piece of ancient greek literature, and I’m kind of inclined to agree with that criticism. I needed SOME kind of effigy for my younger self to metaphorically burn in order to finally embrace what I’ve been all these years. And, that reflects really poorly on Toriel. If she were a real person I’d owe her an apology. Not for trying to dethrone her, but just for giving her kind of weird motivation that I had to further expand on retroactively in later pages.

If I were to make the AU from scratch today, I’d probably put more work in giving Toriel a more grounded motivation, give her actual stakes and history in the monster/human conflict outside of a vague family lineage, and potentially also tie Kris into her plot more. It feels like a missed opportunity in hindsight, they ARE her child in Deltarune, after all. Gaster, out of the main cast, got the lamest symbolism out of everyone though, the “adult” voice that’s nudging everything into conformity, beefing with a literal child to represent the constant war between “adultness and logic” and “childlike wonder” that plagues everyone during puberty. His general role in the story was of a passive machine, someone who’d do as he’s told and not question sides, that sort of “neutral instinct” to not rock the boat that’s generally expected of adults. Again, if I were to make the AU over, I’d probably give him a more mysterious role? Have him be less overtly one of the main catalysts for the story’s events, and more like a shadowy observer cataloguing the misfortunes of the people around him for the sake of trying to prevent tragedy. He’d still be a bumbling gay idiot though, don’t worry about that part.

All of this writing about the AU, I hope, can put into perspective why it meant so much to me, and kind of still does. I might never make all four acts into standalone comics, but I still put as much of it out there as I could. It’s 7AM on a Friday after pulling an allnighter writing this entire spiel, so please excuse me if it’s sloppy or weirdly phrased in certain places. From start to finish, Dread Not has been an honest work of pure passion, and I hope if nothing else about this AU sticks with you, it’s that I loved working on it, and I’m eternally grateful for all the people who engaged with the story. Even you, whenever you’re reading this ungodly spiel, thank you.

What’s next?

For a lot of you, I’d understand if you weren’t interested in my work outside of Dread Not, or outside Deltarune/Undertale. For a long time I branded myself on those games alone, but I’m hoping to branch out more soon. If you want to keep up with me outside this project, my Art Tumblr and my Youtube are the best places to do that. I’ll be turning off Asks for this blog, so if you have any questions for me about this AU or anything else really, the art blog is the best place to go.

Alongside the formal “closure” of this blog (no more updates) I’ll also be working on remodeling my Dread Not Discord Server into just a Kooki Discord Server, and if you join you can see the myriad of fan characters for this AU that people have already made and that I never cease to be impressed by. If there’s ever going to be an “official” continuation of the story, that’s made without me but with my blessing, it’ll have its roots in that server. But, also, I wouldn’t entirely bet on it. This story is kind of a behemoth and if I can’t do it justice I don’t want anyone else to feel pressured to try it either.

Once again, thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for caring. I hope to see you again on the road ahead. And, hey, if you’re second guessing whether you wanna put your own stuff out there, take this as a sign to just go for it. You have no idea what will come of it, but that’s part of the fun. Even if you can’t see it through to the very end, it’s better to try than to never give yourself that chance. Make that comic, write that script, draw that idea. It’ll be worth it, even if it takes a few years for you to see how.

Alright, I really gotta stop writing now. I think I’m just postponing the inevitable, because ending this post means really, genuinely ending Dread Not... I guess all that’s left to say is

Goodbye