#poisoning children

[coochiequeens]

This is why I hate it when men complain about how it’s unfair that they can just be sent into war. Women in war zones face rape, forced marriage and seeing their children die so men don’t want to go to war then stop causing them.

Abducted and enslaved by Boko Haram. Coerced into an abortion by soldiers. Two children dead. The ordeal of Aisha shows how women's lives have become a battlefield in the 13-year war between Islamist insurgents and the Nigerian military.

By LIBBY GEORGE and PAUL CARSTEN

Filed Dec. 14, 2022, 11 a.m. GMT

AISHA vividly recalls her family’s last time together. It was a pleasant evening in the summer of 2014, in her Nigerian village near the Cameroon border. The rainy season had nourished her father’s grain, pushing the stalks knee-high. Her father, mother, two brothers and a younger sister were all at home.

The village had been repeatedly attacked over months by armed Islamist insurgents seeking to expand their territory, she told Reuters. Aisha’s father had ordered the sons not to leave their house, lest they be caught up in the violence. That evening, their mother stepped outside to cook.

Gunfire erupted about 5 p.m. and continued for hours, Aisha said. Amid the shooting, her mother collapsed, struck in the chest by a stray round. Aisha, then 18, and her 14-year-old sister made frantic efforts to bandage the wound, but their mother bled out and died.

“My mother’s death is the first thing that pains me,” said Aisha, now 26, weeping quietly. By her account, that night marked the end of a secure childhood in a loving family – and the beginning of a hellish ordeal at the hands of both the Islamist militants and the Nigerian military, who have been locked in a 13-year war over control of the country’s northeast.

That war is being carried out, in part, upon the bodies of women and children. Thousands of women and girls have been kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by Boko Haram and its Islamic State offshoot. The Nigerian military has responded to insurgents’ brutality with brutal tactics of its own, as revealed in two recent Reuters investigations.

Citing witness accounts and documents, the news agency reported on Dec. 7 that the army has run a secret abortion programme in the northeast, ending the pregnancies of thousands of women and girls freed from insurgent captivity. On Dec. 12, again citing dozens of witnesses, Reuters reported the army has intentionally killed children in the war, under a presumption they were, or would become, terrorists.

Nigerian military leaders told Reuters the abortion programme did not exist and said children were never targeted for killing in the war. They said the Reuters reporting is part of a foreign effort to undermine the country’s fight against the insurgents.

Aisha’s ordeal encompasses some of the most extreme hardships the war has inflicted upon civilians: enslavement by Boko Haram, forced abortion by the military, the loss of one child in a military bombing and another, she suspects, to poisoning by soldiers. The war also took the life of a brother, in addition to her mother, and all but destroyed one of her arms, Aisha said.

Dozens of women in northeast Nigeria told Reuters of similarly wrenching experiences during the ongoing strife, which has claimed more than 300,000 lives, including those of civilians killed by violence, starvation and disease. Like Aisha, they said they chose no sides in the war but were targeted by both.

Reuters could not reach representatives of Boko Haram or its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province, for comment.

Major General Christopher Musa, who leads the Nigerian counterinsurgency forces, said Aisha’s story, as described to him by Reuters, could not have happened. “No,” he said, “not by us, not by Nigerian Army troops, who don't have any reason to do that.”

Aisha spoke to Reuters on condition that only her Muslim name be used, citing fear for her safety. Reuters is not naming her village, as well, to protect her identity. Her story was corroborated in part by her sister; a friend and fellow captive; one of her brothers; and a neighbour. Each said they witnessed some of the events or heard about them afterward from Aisha. These people spoke on condition they not be fully named.

Aisha related her experiences in interviews over the course of more than a year, often speaking in a numbed monotone, occasionally breaking down.

“I saw it, exactly, with my own eyes, and I heard,” she said. “That’s why I don’t have any hesitation to share with you my account.”

Aisha smiled as she recalled her younger days, when she would pound, roll and fry “kuli kuli,” a peanut treat she sold with her mother at the market near their farm. Her family was sustained both by her mother’s work and her father’s cultivation of maize, guinea corn and millet.

“They showed me the way to look after myself, to seek out knowledge, how to be in and to live in the world,” she said of her parents. “We had everything we needed, really.”

Unlike some fathers in the region, she said, hers had made a priority of securing an education for his girls, and he never beat them. In high school, Aisha had a boyfriend in a neighbouring village whom she hoped to marry. She said she dreamt of becoming a soldier, an accountant or even a doctor – a secure livelihood in the economically depressed region. She hoped one day to have children.

But after the 2014 attack, school was out of the question: She was trapped in Boko Haram’s then-spreading caliphate.

At first, she said, the insurgents didn’t show “any signs that they were going to kill people.”

But after the attack that killed her mother, they started to kill the adult men in the village, she said. One brother vanished; she heard later that he died. Another brother fled elsewhere in Nigeria and survived. A third brother had already sought safety in Cameroon before their mother was killed.

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Aisha and her younger sister stayed with their father, who told them not to leave. At first, Boko Haram did not disturb villagers in their homes.

But by October 2014, the militants were enforcing extreme sharia law in her village, Aisha said. The fighters interrogated a well-known local midwife and herbalist, whom they accused of witchcraft. The insurgents took the woman, in her 50s, to the village square and, in front of as many people as they could gather, beheaded her with an axe. Aisha said she can’t forget the woman’s head and body dangling as blood spurted from her. She began to feel terrified.

Her father, who was in his 70s, fell ill, she said, and he died by the end of the year. Now the two young, unmarried sisters were living alone. Boko Haram men often came looking for them, knocking on their door and forcing them to hide.

For months, Aisha and her sister survived on the beans, maize and guinea corn that their father had stored. Then the food began to run out, and Aisha decided they should make a run for it.

Plotting her escape

They left their house in the middle of the day in search of any town nearby that was not controlled by insurgents. They hadn’t gone far when they ran into Islamist fighters.

The men forced Aisha and her sister into different open-bedded trucks, each filled with other women, she said. When the sisters were separated, “we both cried and pleaded to God,” she said, weeping.

The trucks arrived nearly a week later in Sambisa Forest, a massive woodland near the Cameroon border that served as a Boko Haram stronghold. Then her captors lined Aisha up alongside other women for militants to select as wives. One man, named Musa, pointed at Aisha.

“Suddenly you have a husband, you’ve become husband and wife, by force, without ever having seen each other,” she said.

Compelled to live with Musa inside the forest encampment, she tried to resist his advances, but her new husband repeatedly beat and raped her, and he threatened to kill her, she said. When he went off to fight in the war, she said, “I would pray to God that he’d be killed.”

Almost immediately, she was pregnant and sick nearly every day. Yet when her son, Bana, arrived, she could not help but love the boy. She longed to escape the brutality, hunger and fear that marked virtually every day of her captivity. But she did not believe she could do so with Bana, as boys were  particularly valued in the Boko Haram community. She said she also feared a boy associated with the insurgents would face stigma outside Islamist-held territory, where he would be seen as a potential enemy.

“I just prayed, constantly, looking for a way to get out, to leave Sambisa behind,” she said.

As soon as she stopped breastfeeding Bana, she was pregnant again – and asked God for a daughter. The arrival of Fatima, a happy and amenable baby girl, steeled her determination to escape.

“For Bana…I didn’t let myself have hope for him,” she said. But Fatima, she said, “was a gift from God. I thought, if God allows for it, that girl will go to school.”

In the end, the Nigerian military decided Bana’s fate. One morning about four years ago, when he was roughly 3, the military launched an airstrike on the camp. They blew up the hut where the boy slept. Aisha, who was nearby, ran to save him but was too late.

“He cried out once, then again, and then he died,” she said.

The explosion also hit Aisha, burning her severely and leaving one arm nearly useless, she said. She showed a reporter the arm, which she typically keeps hidden under her flowing hijab. She cannot use it, even to hold a drink.

Aisha took months to recover after the bombing attack. Lying in the insurgent camp’s infirmary, she plotted her escape, intent on saving Fatima from a future of hunger and rape under the militants. By then, she had been in captivity for more than three years.

In 2019, with 1-year-old Fatima tied to her back, Aisha slipped from the camp in the middle of the night along with six other women and two young children besides her daughter. They zig-zagged through the wilderness for four days, trying to avoid detection.

On the fifth day, they found a group of Nigerian soldiers, identifying them by their boots. At long last, she thought, she and her daughter were safe.

No traces of her

The troops took the women and children to a nearby encampment in the town of Madagali – a cluster of five army tents and a thatched hut, she said. There, they underwent interrogation and medical check-ups. The soldiers took samples of their blood and urine.

The following day, they told Aisha she had a vaginal infection. They injected two vials of medicine into her buttocks, without telling her what it was, and gave her an assortment of pills, she said. An hour later, she said, she was in wrenching pain and began bleeding heavily from her vagina.

Eventually, she said, she saw blood and a lump of what looked like flesh pass from her body. She had not known she was pregnant.

She realised she had been tricked into an abortion, but was too afraid to confront the soldiers. They told her later that they had done her a favour, she recalled, because a child of Boko Haram would be ostracised and a burden on her and her community.

Aisha had not wanted another child from a Boko Haram father, she said, but abortion was against her Islamic faith.

art 1. The Abortion Assault

Part 2. Smothered, Poisoned and Shot

Several days later, soldiers said Fatima needed medicine to keep her strong after being so long in the wilderness. They gave her and other children injections. Afterward, the mothers and children were piled into cars and returned to their villages.

After their arrival at the family’s former home, within hours of the injections, Fatima started acting strangely, Aisha said.

She would not breastfeed, her eyes became distant and glassy, and she developed a fever. A local pharmacist told her the child must have been bitten by a bug and gave her a syrup to lower her temperature.

Before dawn, Fatima went cold. She died in the same room where Aisha watched her mother bleed out years earlier. Aisha believes that the girl was poisoned by the soldiers.

Later in the morning, neighbours who heard Aisha’s sobs came to help her bury the tiny body in the local cemetery. One neighbour, Musa, confirmed Aisha’s account of that episode, saying he saw the girl before she died, and saw Aisha grieving afterward.

After Fatima’s burial, Aisha had no traces left of her daughter. Phones were forbidden for women in the militant camp, so she had no pictures or videos. They had escaped only with the clothes they were wearing.

Some joy, many sorrows

With Fatima gone, Aisha was alone. She made her way to a displaced persons camp in the city of Yola, a crowded and chaotic place populated with many other women as traumatised as she was. There was little food, and no money.

In the camp, Aisha found a new friend, Felerin, who held her as she cried over her losses. Felerin had suffered, too, telling Reuters she’d had a forced abortion and lost two young sons after soldiers injected them with poison at Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri. She confirmed to Reuters that Aisha had confided in her about her ordeal.

Weeks later, Aisha’s sister found her at the camp. She had escaped from another part of Sambisa Forest. The young women screamed with joy, drawing a crowd of curious spectators.

She was so emaciated, “I barely recognized her,” Aisha’s sister told Reuters. “I didn’t think it was her.”

The sister, who said she’d been a servant to the wife of a high-ranking Boko Haram leader during her captivity, had not seen Aisha since their arrival in Sambisa Forest. After they reunited, she said, Aisha shared the details of her life during their time apart – including her escape, the abortion and the suspected poisoning of Fatima.

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After leaving the camp, Aisha and her sister stayed for a short time with an aunt in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, but she treated them as a burden, saying they had “the attitudes” of Boko Haram, Aisha said. The sisters have since settled in their former village together at their old house.

Aisha says her sister is a comfort and a link to her tranquil early years. Her sister has a daughter, now 2, who entertains them both.

But with her damaged right arm, Aisha cannot pound and mix kuli kuli to sell. She and her sister now sell fried groundnuts on the side of the road, earning barely enough to live.

Aisha mostly keeps her story to herself, and has avoided most old friends. She fears being called a “Boko Haram bride,” a slur thrown at many of the women who escaped captivity.

Still, Aisha feels compelled to pray for forgiveness – for failing to save her two children, for the sinful abortion and for the anger that won’t leave her. Until September, she used to fast twice a week in supplication to God, but she became too weak to continue.

She does not know if her life will improve.

“Who can truly know, if not God?” she asked. “But we pray to see things change, for the world to become better again, like it was before.”

[craycraybluejay]

I also heavily resent the ever-present implication in mainstream media that at all touches on trauma that we cannot have any sympathy for Bad Victims. That it's evil to write a sympathetic Bad Victim. Hell, that it's bad to portray one at all at times. Writing a victim of trauma who's an addict or self-destructive is already an edge case-- writing trauma survivors who end up actually hurting someone else, being chronically "treatment"-resistant or having inconvenient ptsd, perpetuate the cycle, or are just kind of a total dick is considered an evil move. Instead of like. An actually complex and interesting artistic choice.

Idk. It pisses me off a lot how often Bad Victims[TM] are brushed under the rug and if you dare to speak of them/make art of them, let alone SYMPATHIZE with them you're an irredeemable monster. And that's just fictional characters. Don't even get me started on the way people treat actual people who have ptsd in a way that's at all inconvenient and problematic in their opinion.

[chronurgy]

Reading forgotten realms lore is just like [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [something really unique and interesting] [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [EXTREMELY WEIRD SEX THING] [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [standard fantasy worldbuilding]

Except for when it's like [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [EXTREMELY WEIRD SEX THING] [EXTREMELY WEIRD SEX THING] [EXTREMELY WEIRD SEX THING] [EXTREMELY WEIRD SEX THING] [EXTREMELY WEIRD SEX THING] [standard fantasy worldbuilding] [EXTREMELY WEIRD SEX THING]

[fuck-spock]

okay some of yall are just ignoring natives at this point where is the outcry??? how loud do we have to scream? how many of us have to go missing or be found dead before you start screaming with us?

please sign the petition to let us keep our children! and educate yourself on the true history of turtle island: hint, you gotta talk to real natives to get the true story. history is written by the victors.

[ninadove]

Hello there.

[Slides elegantly into the tags]

Do you ever think about Emotion?

Of course you do. How could you not. But do you ever think about this exchange specifically:

“You’re not Adrien!”

Because Adrien is sweet, and forgiving, and kind. In fact, kindness is his defining quality — Marinette herself made sure of it:

“I’ll never tell another boy I love him before I know everything about him! Whether he’s kind or not, thoughtful, what he does outside of school and with who… I’ll know everything.”

But.

Do you ever think about Adrien’s development in S4 and especially S5?

Overtime, he has grown resentful of a system that exploits him relentlessly.

Of the people he gave countless chances to, only to be let down over and over again.

Of the web of lies and half-truths he constantly finds himself tangled into. A web that is only growing bigger, stickier, and trickier to escape.

And the Senticousins. Do you ever think about them?

Do you ever think about how they are each other’s reflection, identical and opposites all at once?

“When you bring a living being into this world, you have a responsibility towards them. Your duty is to protect them, love them, help them discover the true meaning of their existence. To deprive them of that… is monstruous.”

“To have a child is to help them blossom, to grow, to find themselves and to be free!”

Do you ever think about their opposite character arcs in S5 — one learning mercy and trust, the other developing a rage so strong it could destroy the world?

Do you ever think that if Felix can now have this exchange with his mum, and mean it:

“They’re all monsters!”

“Not all of them.”

Then there’s nothing stopping Adrien from saying this:

“Look closer, Marinette. They’re the monsters.”

[unluckyprime]

assorted crks 💛

[mindblowingscience]

About two-thirds of children younger than 6 years old in Chicago are exposed to lead in their drinking water, according to researchers at Stanford Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The researchers developed artificial-intelligence models that made citywide estimates of the number of children under 6 living in homes with lead-contaminated drinking water. They also used simulation models to estimate the increase in the children’s blood lead levels from drinking that water. The findings were extrapolated from census data and 38,385 household lead tests collected from 2016 to 2023.

Continue Reading.

[tastecrayons]

weight of a dead world

[wanderingskychild]

God things are only going to get much worse now that the deer was captured. Hey herb gatherer, witness the consequences of your betrayal! That deer saved you twice already.

You better help me rescue them & the others or I swear I’m gonna…..!

Oh who am I kidding, I’m begging for your help.

I still can’t believe they poisoned the oasis. These are the biggest dark plants I’ve ever seen! The water has grown foul too.

Wait a minute, isn’t the water here connected to the town. There’s a tunnel at the lake’s bottom that leads directly into town. Isn’t this their water supply.

Uh Oh 😟

[whitestormsaystransrights]

Why do you have to make up for being you?

Because I always let everyone down.

[fauvester]

THE PRINCES OF THE NORTH!

i thought my little moshang kid could benefit from a baby brother

[bootdork]

Sorry but as a Christian you cannot possibly be siding with Israel. Israel is bombing the oldest churches in the world, shooting at people inside their parish, exterminating the oldest Christian community in the world, bombing congregations during mass. You cannot claim to follow Christ's teachings if you condone this immense violence.

Exodus 22:21 "Do not oppress or mistreat a foreigner."

Psalm 11:5 "God tests the righteous, but those who love violence, he detests."

Psalm 68:30 "Scatter those people who delight in war."

Matthew 5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

Habakkuk 2:9-13 "Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin! You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it. ‘Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!'"

[ultimatepinkgirl]

Comparisons

I feel like this is important bc uhhh um I wanted to make it. And also show their similarities bc I thought it was interesting!

Barbie and Miss Piggy started off quite different from what we now know, neither one pink! In 1959, Barbie debuted in a black and white swimsuit, based off of adult gag gift toys. Eventually the doll line turned from its origins and began marketing to children. The Muppets: Sex and Violence showed an unnamed pig who began appearing in more and more episodes until she became the character we know and love today. I've also seen mentions that Miss Piggy originally appeared on a talk show or ABC special as Piggy Lee, but I couldn't find anything concrete about it.

Both characters ran for president, though Barbie tried 8 times! Barbie could have defeated Clinton, Bush, and/or Obama, but Miss Piggy could have defeated Regan.

Currently there are 41 Barbie movies with a new live action starring Margot Robbie coming out this year! On the other hand, the Muppets have 13 movies (12 depending on how you count.) While I'm not sure if Miss Piggy is in 2 of them, she always takes iconic roles when she's on screen.

Each of them are black belts in karate, with their own custom karate gis. But while Barbie is usually seen working in a professional setting, Miss Piggy does not hesitate to chop one her fellow Muppets or celebrities (see Acts of Violence section in the Miss Piggy's karate chops page of the Muppets Wiki.)

What Barbie is arguable most known for (outside of her extremely long resume) is her iconic color, Barbie Pink! 2022 was named the year of the color with Valentino and a number of celebrities wearing the vibrant color. While Miss Piggy doesn't have her own color, the flower Miss Piggy Pigsqueak (Bergenia cordifolia) is named after her.

[inamindfarfaraway]

How much do you think the Signal’s debut shook the supervillains, and indeed all criminals, of Gotham? He destroyed their longstanding definition of a Gotham vigilante. All the rules went out the window. From now on, apparently anything goes.

[Early morning in a plain, modest safehouse. Jonathon Crane cracks his eyes open, yawns, slowly gets up and groggily shuffles to the kitchen/dining area, where he takes out a cup and prepares to use the coffee machine. Behind him his scientific equipment and notes are arranged neatly on the counter. A relaxed Duke is taking photos of them.]

Duke: (jovially) Good morning.

Jon: Good morning.

Jon:

Jon: Who the hell are you?!

Duke: I’m the Signal! (pats symbol proudly) The newest hero in town.

Jon: (blinks, still half-asleep) Like… the Bat-Signal?

Duke: Yeah, I’ve got this whole light theme going on.

Jon: But - it - it’s 6:30 AM.

Duke: Yep. Turns out crime doesn’t just vanish when the sun comes up, so I patrol in the daylight hours. The night shift has seven people; the day shift should have at least one, right?

Jon: But you’re a Bat! Bats don’t do that!

Duke: Actually, some species of bat, like fruit bats, are diurnal. I got precedent.

Jon, on the verge of a breakdown: Okay, okay, look. I have lost a great deal of sleep lately evading capture by the frankly ridiculous number of vigilantes active at night. You’re a teenager, a student with a very strenuous job. Surely you understand what sleep deprivation feels like.

Duke: I do.

Jon: Just please, please let me have my coffee.

[A weighted pause. Duke narrows his eyes, then softens.]

Duke: You get one cup.

Jon: Thank you.

[He makes his cup of coffee and lovingly inhales the smell. Just as he’s about to drink it, Duke bats it out of his hand like a cat. It smashes on the floor.]

Jon: YOU -

[Duke quickly cuffs him.]

Duke: Stop! Making! Trauma: The Inhalant! That’s all you have to do, man!

***

[Duke is fighting Poison Ivy in her greenhouse of killer plants.]

Duke, popping out the blades in his escrima sticks: Your vines are no match for my bat-chet blades!

Ivy: Great, another one who puns.

[She sends a new wave of vines, but he gracefully slices and weaves through them. Too gracefully. His reflexes are faster than even Batman’s. Curious as scientists are wont to be, she halts her attack, and then suddenly, silently strikes with a vine straight at the back of his head. He cannot possibly sense it coming. He ducks.]

Ivy: Wait… oh God, you can’t predict movements before they happen with crazy extreme ninja training like Black Bat, can you? I’m not fighting another Bat like that. No way.

Duke: Oh, no, no, no, don’t worry. I’m not nearly as well-trained as Black Bat. I just have superpowers.

Ivy: You what?

Duke: I’m a metahuman. I’ve got superpowers.

Ivy: But you’re a Bat! Bats don’t do that!

Duke: I get that a lot.

Ivy: Well, what superpowers?

Duke: I’m not telling you all about my powers - I’m literally fighting you - but basically I can process light differently. Part of that is seeing where it’s been, the past, and where it will be, the future. I call it ghost vision.

Ivy: How far into the past and future? Hours? Months? Years? Can you see before your birth or after your death? Can you predict other people’s deaths? Watch the rise and fall of civilizations?

Duke, whose ghost vision currently goes under a minute both ways: That’s for me to know and you to… (stares into the middle distance) I believe, never find out.

Ivy: (raises hands) I’ll go to Arkham.

***

[Duke kicks open the door to Edward Nygma's hideout.]

Duke: Give it up, Riddler, I've got a... whoa.

[He trails off as he takes the space in. There are papers - plans, to-do lists, riddles, ciphers, trap and gadget blueprints, maps and more - everywhere, in stacks, folders and scattered loose across every surface. A bin in the corner is overflowing with crumpled pages. Intricate model traps line a shelf, one fallen on the floor. One wall bears a large corkboard with green and purple strings connecting annotated pictures of the Batfamily, including a screenshot of Oracle's digital logo. Edward himself has not reacted whatsoever to Duke's entrance. He's hunched over at his desk, typing away at an expensive computer setup. On one side of him sit many energy drinks, on the other is a massive pile of empty cans. All this detail requires Duke's night vision to see, because the lights are off and the curtains are closed, the only light the computer's cold glow.]

Edward: (only briefly looking up to give him a haughty stare) Yes, yes, the Signal, I've heard. Rest assured, it will be my utmost pleasure to obliterate you in a battle of wits. I just need to finish a couple of things.

Duke: When was the last time you slept?

Edward: (slightly hysterical chuckle) Please. I have transcended my mortal weaknesses thanks to intense focus, indomitable drive and the miracle of stimulants, much as I presume you Bats do. You're in no position to lecture me on getting enough sleep. I mean, you're late, so you're clearly not on top of things.

Duke: What?

Edward: You're meant to be a daytime hero. It's a little late for that, isn't it?

Duke: (concerned) It's 8:00 AM.

[Edward blinks and looks at the clock on his screen. He frowns. He stands up, strides over to the window and opens the curtains, flinching at the bright morning light. Duke notices that he has deep bags under his eyes and looks even more tired than Jon did, but his movements are as energetic as ever. He stretches and winces from back ache.]

Edward: Ah. So it is. ...What day is it?

Duke: (more concerned) Monday?

Edward: Monday?!

Duke: Okay, you've clearly been in the zone for a while. And I know being autistic can make it hard to recognize and interpret your body's messages. When was the last time you ate?

Edward: None of your business. I'm perfect condition.

[He picks up another can. Duke punctures it with a batarang. Edward scoffs and throws it down in indignation.]

Duke: I don't think you should have any more of those. (scans the rooms with X-ray vision) Oh my God, there's no food in here. Did you forget to buy it? Listen, if you come quietly, I'll get you a full breakfast on the way to Arkham.

[Edward is distracted, rummaging through his rooms in search of food.]

Edward: Of course I have food, Duke. It's right... it's somewhere around... (finds the fallen model) oh, I was looking for this!

Duke: No, with my powers I - you know my identity?

Edward: (still distracted, talking increasingly fast) What, like it's hard? I know everyone's except Oracle and the Red Hood. If Jason had survived, he'd be a perfect fit, but he's dead. Now, true, Stephanie is still alive when I distinctly remember visiting her grave, but those are completely different situations. There was a motive to fake her death, to escape the criminal overlords she'd angered with that gang war; I cannot find any such benefit from Jason's faked death and relocation. Stephanie was gone for, like, a year. Jason has yet to return after most of a decade. Even -

Duke: You visited Steph's grave?

Edward: She was a brilliant adversary, I had to pay my respects. Anyway, even if Jason's death was somehow inexplicably faked, he wouldn't have chosen to live only as the Red Hood. Especially who the Red Hood was at first. That would mean sacrificing his close familial relationships and becoming his beloved father and brother's enemy. And why would he ever be a crime lord? It's a radical betrayal of all his values, and based on his backstory, he should resent organized crime. And Batman would never fight his own child. None of it makes any sense! But I can't figure out what else could work. Is he really just a random person the Bats took in in adulthood? So that's been weighing on me. And also -

[He trips over a folder and, weak and lightheaded, crashes to the floor. He's so exhausted that merely lying on a flat surface has him sleeping soundly in an instant, resting his head on a stack of paper. Duke stares at him incredulously.]

Duke: I'm buying you breakfast.

[romaencepardner]

Cincinnati mention at the top of the first ep babbbyyyy!!! Let's gooooo!!!! Skyline Chili in Elmville when??

I think Kristen would enjoy our fast food spaghetti with chili :) and cheese coneys :)

[corgoship]

every time someone on youtube or reddit says they hated jesse solely because he "became a rat" i grow another head that spews fire and venom