#something drastic and an extreme consequence would have to happen

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

🎃 Twst Halloween PSA 🎃

*pulls up the Serious Talk Chair*

Alright, so.

In the wake of the new Halloween PV posted on the TWST JP social media accounts, there’s been an explosion of hype. However, something else you may have seen circulating is people saying, "I already knew about this weeks ago!" and/or claims of having knowledge of leaked characters and costumes. Some have even directly linked to videos or images of these leaks (including fully animated character sprites) in threads discussing the next Halloween event. I myself have been sent these videos and images multiple times, unprompted, over the last few days.

To make a long story short:

You should NOT be speaking about or sharing these leaks in a public setting.

By doing so, you are running the risk of spoiling people who may not want to know these things in advance. They never gave their consent to see that, and this consent shouldn’t be assumed. I’m extremely disappointed that my own experience has been this way. I wanted the chance to react live as the information was being released. Others may feel the same as me. Additionally, openly talking about leaks is may make things more difficult for us fans in the long run.

The only reason these leaks were let out so early is because TWST started uploading assets into the game much sooner than they would actually be implemented. This has allowed dataminers in the fandom to go in and look around to see what goodies might be in store for the future. However, if fans are going to just run around blurting out what all the secrets are, it may discourage the devs from continuing to do this in the future. It will make it that much more difficult for fans to extract high quality card images ASAP. It means assets may be kept under tighter lock and key to prevent this from happening again.

Don't believe me? Something similar happened with the Japanese TWST website. The team used to upload news about the next month's schedule early, but locked behind a random string of numbers. Fans brute-forced those numbers and always managed to find the schedule sooner than it was intended to be out. The number of posts made on the website has now dropped drastically and schedules are no longer released on there. While there's no proof that these events are related, there is a real concern among some dataminers that the very same could happen regarding in-game assets.

I realize that leaks are common nowadays, but please let us at least respect other fans' rights to experience the game in their own way while also minimizing the risk of consequences for the fandom. If you must discuss these leaks at all, do it in PRIVATE. You are allowed to be excited about what's coming, but please keep it to yourselves or to your own circles where it may be a more appropriate topic.

Do not ask or talk about the leaks in my inbox, DMs, or comments. Do not link me to or share any leaks. Wait until the information has been released on official TWST social media handles, THEN I would be more than happy to talk about the news with everyone. Those who disregard this request moving forward will have their message deleted and then be blocked.

Thank you—and with that, let’s return to our regularly scheduled show!

[avacadokin]

ok with juanaflippa fucking dying again and tilín dying i am,, less interested in qsmp, possibly by a significant amount.

i understand that the eggs were intended to be temporary but i just cant be invested anymore because i can't make myself hope for a happy ending anymore and the constant repeated tragedy is boring and unsatisfying because it replaces so many potential interesting diffrent arcs with the same oh everyone is sad now because their egg died and any hope is crushes

like the arcs dont even have to have a happy ending (tho i personally prefer them a bit) as long as they fucking exist! like slime's fucking eggxile means less cuz theres no longer the tension between will he get better and save his daughters best friend so they can be a happy family or will he keep making everything worse accidentally. because there's no happy family hope anymore so the loss of that hope doesnt hurt as much

this point is honestly mostly just a preference thing but i was so looking forward to some lighthearted (with angsty undertones) couples therapy arc with slime+mariana and a custody battle arc over tilín to contrast the heavy angst but now there's mo way in hell the therapy arc is happening (and luzu's shit trying to bring back tilín actually seems really cool so i am being a bit mean lumping them together) and it all seems to be heavy heavy sadness. variety is important!

i really want to be invested in all of this but if its not gonna be silly goofy happy and it's not going to bee satisfying what's the point?

angst is cool angst is fun! but it cant be all that, and having it all angst makes the angst less angsty

juannaflippa coming back wrong from hell and the trauma she seems to have experienced down there is never going to be explored, it's never gonna be more than an oh that sucks too footnote, cuz she just immediately fucking died

im probably overreacting to this and they don't have the luxury to plan everything out in advance perfectly cuz of the nature of the challenges and stuff and cuz rolling with and expanding on unexpected stuff is a huge part of the charm, but im just afraid things will just keep going worse and worse and there'll never be a break or fun cuz the intense angsty drama is what gets the most attention and it is their livelihoods so they do have a very strong incentive to go after it even if it (in my opinion ) reduces the overall quality of the experience

[absolutehomosexuals]

Astarion's ascension is extremely popular, despite it clearly being the designed bad ending for him.

So many fans of this version want to argue that it's a "valid" path to choose if you enjoy his character, or that it's equally good as his Spawn ending. The "it's what he wants" argument is the hegemonic justification in question.

But is wanting something better than needing another thing? Yes, he talks about ascension ever since he finds out about the ritual.

Yes, when push comes to shove he's still committed to ascend. But is this enough? Should we support his choice, even when everything but his words tell us not to? Should we trust the judgment of a deeply traumatized man about the best way for him to feel better?

This may sound harsh, but the answer is no.

Because in many circumstances, we see Astarion behaving unhealthily as a result of his trauma: he's hypersexual at the beginning of the game, using sex as a survival mechanism. He's yet to learn what his boundaries should be, what it means not to be an object, to see himself as a person that deserves respect and has so much more to offer than just his body. His trauma is still fresh. And he's so scared of losing his freedom, being trapped under slavery again.

We can't blame him being so desperate to feel safe that he will trade everything he is for it.

Because that's what the ritual means, Cazador says so himself: despite gaining the ritual's power, Astarion is still part of the bargain for said power. He still loses his soul in the process, and that is clear once we see how he acts post-ascension.

Of course, someone that is still suffering from the consequences of 200 years of abuse wouldn't care if he became less of himself, in the process of becoming untouchable ever again. Astarion's behaviour towards himself highlights that he doesn't care for the person he is because that person is, sadly, the product of those centuries of abuse.

He doesn't want to be that person anymore: even better, he doesn't want to be a person anymore: people suffer, people get taken advantage of, people are submitted by more powerful beings. He is willing to give this up not despite losing everything he is, but because of it. And that's what happens after his ascension: he retains his body, which becomes an empty shell of who he once was, with someone else inside of it to fill the void left by his soul.

This situation is a perfect, brutal metaphor of an abused person that later in life becomes the abuser himself, a thing that often happens to male victims of SA.

This is what is fundamentally wrong with Astarion's ascension: he's choosing power, his abuser's tool, over healing. Instead of learning to feel like a person again, to deal with his trauma to life after having endured it, he chooses to not feel anymore, while letting thousands of spawns (like he was) be consumed to get what he wants.

This terribly selfish act is the first instance of Astarion behaving like Cazador, considering the spawns as lesser beings, as nothing but his tools, like all vampire lords do. In this process he also sees himself, the person he gives up being, as a tool. He isn't healing. He's losing all of himself entirely.

Why would someone see this sacrifice as not only necessary to leave his trauma behind, but also preferable to healing from it?

The fan-favourite characteristic of Ascended Astarion is his behaviour towards Tav: in this version of "himself", he clearly is even more sexual than he was in his first days with the tadpole. And this expression of his sexuality is drastically different from the one we got to know prior to this point.

He is dominant, prevaricating, demanding in his avances: he enjoys being in a position of power even in his relationship.

This isn't the Astarion that slowly learns to trust his partner, to build a real loving relationship with someone who sees him as equal and truly cares for him.

Everything that he learns during his romance and his plot gets nullified by his ascension; and yet, this gets overlooked in favour of this more sexually appealing version of him. For people that claim to love his character because of his complexity, Ascended Astarion fans seem to only truly love him when he's less of himself than ever.

When all that's left of him is his body, and he behaves more like the toxic love interest from a young adult romance book, a great number of his fans get wild. Is this all that they want from him? The husk of the funny, sarcastic, dramatic and complex character, filled with this more traditionally masculine attitude, replacing what he used to be? An Astarion that never heals from his trauma, choosing to leave behind everything he was instead? Who resembles his abuser more than ever?

Do his fans who like his ascended version so much to genuinely think this is the best outcome for him, or do they just enjoy being able to project this "macho" fantasy on a physically attractive male character, that otherwise isn't anything like this prototype of man?

We can't help but think that appreciating Ascended Astarion is the same as believing in, if not loving, his hypersexual facade: it's overlooking his humanity in favour of sexualising him.

Which is the biggest disservice one could ever do to his character.

[theravenflies]

I love the Young Justice Barbara Gordon

[Plain text: I love the Young Justice Barbara Gordon.]

(Keep in mind that I am not paraplegic, just a nerd)

I was never the biggest fan of the original Killing Joke storyline (and I will fight people on this,) but I think Young Justice managed to turn it into a plot that wasn't actually bad. In fact, they did a lot of things really well.

The original storyline, The Killing Joke, gave Barbara Gordon waist-down paralysis after the Joker shot her. The problem with that is that he shot her in the stomach at an extremely close range, the muzzle of the gun literally pressed to the middle of her stomach. At that close a range, depending on the gun and bullet, he probably shattered half of her spinal cord, if not more. The thing about shatter injuries to the spinal cord is that they cause more complications in upper-body mobility than other spinal injuries. If a significant portion of her spinal cord was shattered, Barbara wouldn't be as good as she is at fighting. The damage would cause problems in the rest of her body. And then, of course, everyone is grieving for her and so sad that she'll never walk again and have to retire and I'm pretty sure Batman does something drastic? And that's... really not a plot non-disabled writers should go for.

However, in Young Justice, it's completely different. Barbara saw Cassandra Cain, who was unidentifiable but very small so obviously a young child, going after Joker with a sword, so she chose to get between the child and her target to prevent Cass from doing something that could never be taken back. She took the slash, which hit her lower back, just above her tailbone, so that it didn't go to Joker's neck. And the other characters handled it well. Nightwing was a bit panicked, of course, but that's because Barabara had a severe injury that was life-threatening. Batman, knowing that Nightwing had called for a medical evacuation and that he was handling first aid, took the sword from a terrified Cassandra ever so gently, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Cassandra was horrified, of course, but it was because she'd just hurt someone who wasn't her target severely, not because Barbara was now disabled. And then Barbara tells her that she didn't do it to save Joker, she did it to save Cass. And Cass is horrified and probably hates herself in the moment, sure, but that memory later becomes something that strengthens her. Cass gets kidnapped in that episode and remembering that during her captivity helps her. It's a memory of the woman who would later become her older sister and one of her best friends. She knows that Barbara, the woman who has done so much for her, will help her. She won't rest until Cassandra is safe, even if it means coming after her herself.

I also really like how the plot handled this. Number one, we don't know off the bat why Barb is paralyzed, it doesn't come up until it's relevant, she's just paralyzed. And when it does come up, it's not a tragedy, it's Barbara risking her life to save the soul of a child who didn't understand the moral consequences of what she was about to do. She chose to do that and she would do it again. That's a really interesting way of subverting the exhausted "disabled by an accident" trope, because yes, it was an accident on Cass's part, but Barbara knew she was probably going to get badly hurt. It's similar to a character running into a burning building to save someone else. They accept the potential consequences because they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't help. She took the risk, she knew what could happen, which is so much better than her having no choice and being shot. It's far less tired an idea and a very interesting spin that I quite like.

Going back to the injury, let's get in-depth about that. I mentioned how a shatter would impact her upper body, too. But the way she was injured in Young Justice, which was probably severing the connection between two very low vertebrae or possibly cutting a vertebra itself if Cass put enough force behind it, makes sense. It wouldn't have as much a major impact on her upper body, so it makes sense that she can throw the person who snuck up on her like it's easy. Barbara can be an excellent hand-to-hand fighter and it's not unexplainable. We don't see her exercising in her chair, likely because she has the wrong chair for both exercising and her disability (she has a hospital-type wheelchair instead of a lightweight chair, which is, I think, just poor research,) but she clearly still does because she's still extremely good.

Also, I like how there's no cure plot. The show might still be ongoing so I don't know if that'll last, but for now, she hasn't been cured and shows no desire to be. The comics would occasionally have her paralysis cured and thank the gods they didn't go with that, even with a character (we won't get into the absolute disaster of Violet Harper here) who could, in theory, heal her, and I love that. For some reason writers are afraid of keeping their disabled characters disabled, so I'm surprised and glad they didn't take the easy out.

Finally, I love that Oracle is still able to do field work with special equipment. Does she go onto the actual field herself? No, not really. But she uses small drones and other things to help out, such as the tiny drone that gave Cass a lock pick or her hacking into systems to protect her allies from security measures. Babs doesn't need to stop being a superhero because she's disabled but also doesn't suddenly use a mech or something, she just finds ways to work with her new circumstances to keep doing what she wants to do, just in a different way. She's still a massive threat to her enemies, just in a different way, utilizing talents she already had (Barbara is extremely intelligent and very creative) to continue to help people.

TL;DR, I really, really like how Young Justice handled Barbara Gordon. If we must have more characters disabled in accidents, this is a very good way to do that.

[mahi-wayy]

Fic prompt #24: Stay, Please

Dustin/Hunter/Shane

(Post: All About Beevil episode with sad boi Dustin)

prompt 24 + shane/dustin/hunter. I almost strangled someone when I watched that episode, MY BOY JUST WANTED TO HELP 😭😭 also this definitely NOT micro in any sense. | more prompts to ask from

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Dustin was a lot of things, he was the sunshine that most of the time kept the team in positive spirits, he ramblings or clumsy behavior often kept things from getting intense. His smiles and warm hugs lifted the weight of responsibilities from Shane's shoulder and allowed him to be just a boy in love, his quite whispers and loving gaze helped Hunter when guilt and pain laid heavy in crimson thunder's heart.

Dustin was also extremely sensitive to his environment, he was kind and trusting. No malice within miles of his presence, it was what got Hunter in constant fight and Shane heart palpitations whenever Dustin looked at something or someone with those big trusting brown eyes.

The latest incident was a negative consequence of this, whatever happened with Marah would effect anyone but the team knew it hurt Dustin harder because while even as a ninja he was a just a boy with a good heart who genuinely trusted a woman who just used him.

The yellow ranger has withdrew from his usual behavior, going too hard or missing completely during training, barely answering his phone and morpher, save for a attack, he was constantly putting a facade and what not. In response to him the team's red shades have drastically changed their behavior too.

Hunter was snappy and defensive most of the time, even Blake wasn't sure if he could get through his brother. The crimson thunder was definetly reminded of the time he did Dustin not much better than Marah and it was making him avoid the earth ninja at most of the time, even at Kelly's too.

Shane was trying to keep it together mostly but most knew he was panicked and kicking in over drive, he had definitely increased his check ins with every member of the team, his training was harder and he was almost hovering ovet them. He has also spent a solid of two hours convincing Hunter how storming Lothor's ship was not on cards in anyway.

But what worried them was Dustin's stubborn behavior of wanting to be alone, insisting he was fine and he just needed some time.

It was after roughly, two days of the incident when Shane dragged a equally miserable Hunter to forest, he was going to fix this mess. Dustin didn't seem like it but he was very close, for the lack of better term, with the element he practised and could often be found in the nearby woods just messing around or having a few quite moments with Shane or Hunter or both, when the three went for their regular camping dates.

This time however when Shane found him it was definitely not good, the ground beneath his feet felt like it was vibrating softly, his hand went behind him lacing with Hunter's who squeezed it back as they approached the crouched figure under the biggest tree around their usual camping spot.

Shane noded at Hunter before keeping a careful hand on earth ninja's shoulder. "Dustin?" He said cautiously. The man was definitely lost in his head before he jerked, pulling head up from where it was pressed on, his pulled to his chest, knees with his arms shielding it.

His sudden action sent his power reeling and the ground shook making Shane almost slam his head in the tree if not for Hunter, the wind ranger also thinks he heard some cracking sound from where Dustin's palm made contact with the ground but he ignored it.

"You okay babe?"

The wind ranger asked crouching infront of his yellow, who averted his gaze in a poor attempt to hide his red from crying eyes. Hunter made a sound low in his throat before coming to stand on Dustin's other side, as if shielding him from harm.

For several moments there was nothing, Shane waited and waited but nothing. He sighed softly, his yellow needed more time, he reached his hand to squeeze the nape of Dustin's neck softly, something he knew would ground the yellow ranger.

"Take your time, we will leave you alone for just today okay?" He speaks softly, prushing a little of yellow's hair back from his forehead before standing up only to feel a tug on his hand.

"Don't. Stay...please"

Shane physically felt his heart breaking at the small, shaking voice, from his peripheral he could already see Hunter sitting down beside their lion and pulling the yellow wind ranger closer to himself, making his head rest on his chest and pressing a kiss to wild brown curls.

Shane smiles as he presses himself to other side, allowing his boyfriend to pull his hand and intertwin their fingers and hold it on his lap. He himself leaned forward pressing another kiss to his temple before leaning back on the tree trunk and closing his eyes.

They are going to be okay.

-------

[queen-of-writing-bad-things]

Henry Danger Reader Insert | Captain Man x Reader: SEASON 2

Episode 15: Ox Pox

There was never a dull day in the Man Cave, there was always something happening or people rushing around the place and that day was no different. It was safe to say that Schwoz had screwed up big time snd like always, his mistake was drastically affecting those around him.

"Oh God, oh God, Schwoz. One of these days, I'm actually going to put your head down the toilet and flush." (y/n) growled as she and Ray frantically ran down the sprocket corridor so they could access the supercomputer. 

They had been relaxing before Schwoz had come running to them, screaming about some dangerous cookies that he had stupidly given to Henry. 

Then, he had rambled something about certain death and that's when the couple leapt off Ray's bed (watching movies and snuggling together is definitely what friends do) and were now skidding toward the hologram caller.

"Come on, kid, pick up, pick up." Ray tapped his foot impatiently once he had selected his sidekick and the number began to dial. (y/n) was no better, she was chewing her lip and nervously twiddling her thumbs as the ominous beeping of the dialling tone lasted for what felt like a lifetime. 

Henry did pick up eventually though and his little floating body gave the couple an annoyed look as they interrupted his lethal cookie time. Some people are never grateful.

"Henry!" Ray greeted him in an exceedingly alarmed voice, but Henry hung up on them before they could say anything else. Piper had come down the stairs and he couldn't risk her seeing his out-of-this-world technology.

"Hey, where'd he go?" Ray frowned as the hologram disappeared. They had extremely important information for the boy and now he was gone. Typical.

"The little shit hung upon us." (y/n) rolled her eyes and folded her arms as she waited for Henry to reconnect. She could guess that someone walked in on the call and knew that the kid would waste no time on getting back to them. Just a couple more minutes...

"Hey." Thankfully, he came back pretty quickly and the adults wasted no time in getting straight to the point. They couldn't go slow with the introductions and crap, Henry needed to know that he and probably his family were in grave danger. Stupid Schwoz and his dodgy recipes.

"Oh, Henry, thank god I got you, now tell me, did you eat one of the cookies Schwoz made?"Ray questioned at a million miles per hour. It didn't really sound like a sentence, more like one big, long word falling out of his mouth.

"Okay, this is what you just sounded like, ahggrheeegurrattterbanatututt." Henry joked, not seeing the gravity of the situation he was in. His lightheartedness made the adults go purse-lipped in mild irritation, so Ray sighed to keep his temper under control.

"Sorry, I'll talk slower. Do you want to die?" He asked, much more slowly, focusing on enunciating each syllable clearly. He didn't have the patience to beat around the bush when lives were at stake.

"No," Henry replied. Obviously, he didn't want to die. He had so much left to live for.

"Well, did you eat one of the cookies that Schwoz made?" (y/n) butted in urgently, praying that Henry hadn't gone anywhere near the baked goods. In fact, it would be preferable for him to throw them into a volcano just so no one could eat them.

"Well, not yet, but I was about to," Henry told them, thinking about how he'd been trying to eat one damn cookie all day with his glass of milk. 

"No, don't!" Ray begged him, dreading the consequences that the cookies would bring. He couldn't bear the thought of seeing his sidekick getting sick and dying.

"Schwoz accidentally put commodium assitate in the batter! Those cookies are bad news!" (y/n) explained, leaning back into Ray's body so his body warmth would settle her nerves. He was wearing a particularly tight t-shirt that day and she loved it; it showed off those beefy arms of his and a tiny peek of his chest. It was like he was teasing her, all she wanted to do was press a kiss against that piece of skin. 

"Okay, okay, what is commodium assitate?" Henry asked. In all of his science classes, he had never heard of that chemical, but from their panicked faces, he guessed it wasn't good.

"It's a dangerous chemical that should not be put in cookie batter, so go get that damn cookie and destroy it before anyone eats it!" The young woman explained quickly. Any substance that was kept by Schwoz carried a health hazard warning, making the cookie unbelievably risky to have in a suburban house.

"Okay!" Henry complied, sensing that it probably wasn't a good idea to have left the cookie unguarded on his kitchen table. 

Closing his whiz watch and running inside, Henry freaked out when he saw Piper popping the last piece of cookie into her mouth. She licked her lips at the scrumptious taste, causing her brother to run over in terror and grab her the waist.

"Not the cookie! No, no, no, no, no, no! I gotta get it out of you!" He yelled at his sister so he started to give her the Heimlich manoeuvre, badly. Piper grunted in pain as Henry's sharp movements made her chest ache, why couldn't she just eat the cookie in peace?

"What are you doing? Ow, ow, ow!" She squealed as she was lifted and shaken around. It was useless though, Piper wasn't choking and picking her up wouldn't make her vomit, so Henry just dropped her on the floor when his arms began to feel numb and tired.

"I eat one stupid cookie and you have a waz-attack!" She screamed at her brother, feeling dizzy and lightheaded from the assault.

"I-uh-I—I..." Henry stuttered as he thought of something to say. He didn't want to tell his little sister that she'd eaten a cookie laced with a toxic chemical. She'd probably pass out or scream the house down. However, Piper didn't see his attempt to be kind and she gave him a sharp kick on the shin, causing the boy to collapse onto the kitchen island as she ran off to her room. You try to do a nice thing and it just gets thrown back in your face. 

~In the Man Cave~

Everyone was waiting for Henry's arrival in the Man Cave. Ray, Schwoz, (y/n) and Charlotte were pacing around the room anxiously, they had received news about Piper scoffing the cookie and now they were trying to be brave as they waited for her brother to come. The young woman gave her best friend a worried look as she neared him, so he intertwined their fingers and squeezed her hand to show her that he was there for her. How were they supposed to tell Henry that his little sister might die?

"How could you give Henry a cookie contaminated with commodium assitate?" Ray scowled at Schwoz. Even with his sweet girl next to him, the situation was stressing him out. And her stress added to his stress, so overall, he was on edge and it showed.

"Yeah, why did you even have it in the kitchen?" (y/n) asked, her hand leaving Ray's so she could dramatically throw her arms up in the air. She was pissed off with Schwoz and the recent few months of non-stop near-death experiences had been getting to her. Coupled with her growing frustration towards her romantic feelings for her beloved Ray, everything was mixing into one big ball of strain and worry for her.

"I'm sorry, it looks exactly like sugar and I don't know why I keep it in the kitchen...next to the sugar." Schwoz whimpered in a strained voice. For an eccentric genius, he really was stupid sometimes. His poor organisation could only lead to disaster and now everyone was knee-deep in crap because of it.

"Well, where'd you get that idea? PoorJudgement.gov?" Ray asked sarcastically. His life was never easy and when Schwoz was around it got even worse.

"Hey! Henry's on his way down." Charlotte announced as she pulled out her phone. It was time to see if they had an imminent death on their hands.

"Okay, let's not freak Henry out even more than he is. Just act normal and happy and natural, 'kay?" (y/n) smiled at her friends. She didn't want Henry coming down and seeing his friends panicking and throwing fits of hysterics, that would just make shit worse. If they kept their cool, he would suspect how worried they really were.

"Right, okay." Her friends agreed and they all turned to the elevator with bright smiles, just as Henry stepped through the door. 

"Hey, I'm here." He said breathily as he approached them. One of these days he'd be able to come into work when the fate of the world or death and disease wasn't hanging in the balance.

"Hi..." "Hey..." The four greeted him in unsure voices, sounding anything but normal, happy and natural. The only natural thing he could see was Ray standing there with his arm around (y/n), the young woman arching into his body as they stood together. Ugh, they always did the gross, touchy stiff when he was there. Henry would give up his left kidney if it meant either one of them said something about how they felt, then maybe they wouldn't prance about the place pining for each other's touch every ten seconds.

"How are ya, Hen?" Charlotte asked, feeling her stomach flutter with butterflies and her nervousness showed in her voice. 

"What goes on?" Ray added, hoping that he didn't sound nearly as worried as she did.

"How's it happening?" (y/n) smiled too and their similar questions told Henry that something was wrong. Why else would they all be stood in the same place, grinning at him like they were possessed?

"Your sister isn't going to die," Schwoz said in a morbidly cheerful voice. Well, there went their normal and tender attempts to be comforting. 

"What?" Henry gasped as he heard the news. Piper? Die? What the hell was in that cookie?!

"Schwoz!" "Schwoz!" Ray and (y/n) growled at the short man. He was so insensitive sometimes, it was like he was deliberately ignoring their instructions to be nice and just being malicious on purpose. It really rubbed (y/n) the wrong way.

"You said everything was okay!" Schwoz whined. He didn't think he spoke out of turn, he thought that Ray wanted him to be honest and open.

"Then why talk about dying?" Charlotte stressed, reading the exact question in (y/n)'s mind. Honestly, he didn't think sometimes, he just said what came to mind.

"I said she won't." He argued, thinking that the negative made everything better. But it didn't.

"Well, we don't know that, do we?!" Ray hissed back, not seeing how Henry's face fell at the news. They were supposed to be making him feel better, but now he felt wretched.

"Guys! Henry is in the room!" (y/n) whispered harshly, smacking Ray and Schwoz on the arms for being so heartless. They weren't giving Henry's feelings a second thought and it irritated her beyond belief.

"Oh my god! Is my sister gonna—" Henrys worry was cut off as his phone began to ring in his pocket and he groaned when he saw it was Jasper wanting to video chat. If this was about his stupid hide and seek game, he'd kill him.

"Where are you going?" Schwoz asked the boy as they watched him back up into the elevator.

"To the elevator, I can't let him see me in the Man Cave." He explained. Smart kid; anyone else would have answered the call and be left in shtuck when their friend freaked out at their location, but not Henry. He was always so careful and that made him the perfect sidekick.

"Schwoz, if you don't get every remotely dangerous chemical out of our kitchen, I'm going to skin you alive." (y/n) turned to the small man as they waited for Henry to finish his call. She might as well fill the time with a few threats so she could get her point across. She couldn't bake cupcakes and brownies for Ray if the entire place was chock full of poisons and radioactive goop. Of course, the goop and gunge wouldn't affect her, a rogue incident with a dodgy crème brûlée had proven that her super-healing stomach could handle any infection or poison lickety-split. Still, it made her cautious to cook in there knowing that the sugar could be commodium assitate or the milk could be hydrochloric acid.

"But I do my experiments in there!" He whined, seeing the kitchen as his second laboratory. He was always cooking up weird shit in there and he didn't want to stop. He just wanted to create and bake and form new monsters or reactions with just his mind and some simple ingredients.

"Schwoz, do as she says," Ray warned him, raising his eyebrows at the little guy as he whinged. (y/n) smirked as she won the battle, knowing that with the boss on her side, she had a crucial advantage. Schwoz stuck his tongue out at Ray as he sulked and he made Charlotte giggle when he made kissy faces towards the young woman when she wasn't looking. The sight of Ray losing his stern demeanour was hilarious and the two knew it was all too easy to tease him about his love for her.

"Guys, come look at this," Charlotte said to them as she scrolled on the computer. Whilst they had been arguing, she had been busy looking up what was gonna happen to Piper after eating the commodium assitate. They all crowded around the computer as she let Schwoz take over, just as Henry came back into the room from his stupid call with Jasper. The boy was fourteen and he wanted to play hide and seek; he desperately needed a girlfriend.

"All right, Schwoz, what's gonna happen to my sister?" The boy asked as he briskly jogged over to the group. (y/n) bit her lip as she scanned over the information on the screen. Poor Piper, even if she was a brat sometimes, she didn't deserve this.

"This." Schwoz pointed to the monitor and a disgusting painting of an aristocratic woman came on the screen. It was clearly from a few hundred years ago, but that didn't make the sight of her pox-covered, crusty face look any better.

"I think I'm gonna puke." (y/n) grimaced as she studied the pustules in the painting. She was normally okay with gross wounds and gore, but this was pretty vile and her stomach felt a bit funny.

"Oh, whoa, whoa, what is wrong with that lady?" Henry asked Schwoz as everyone recoiled. Ray put his hands on (y/n)'s shoulders as he stood over her and she practically purred when he massaged the tension in her muscles away. His touch made her putty in his hands and the way she bit her tongue to stop herself from moaning almost drew blood.

"She has...eh." Schwoz pulled up a paragraph of information that detailed some weird, ancient disease that Piper was surely infected with.

"Ox Pox." Ray read out, still rubbing his girl's shoulders. He didn't notice the way she was smiling in bliss or how she was going weak at the knees as she melted into him.

"Okay, what is Ox Pox?" Henry asked. He'd heard of influenza, tuberculosis and loads of other illnesses, but this one was new to him.

"Ox Pow was kinda like a chickenpox or measles, only way worse and it's caused by eating commodium assitate," Schwoz explained solemnly, although the tone was lost on the young woman behind him, who was still burning up from the hot man behind her. She was certain that he would be the death of her, no one else had ever set her alight as quickly as he could.

"But I thought no one's had Ox Pox for hundreds of years." Charlotte frowned. Being the clever clogs she was, she had vaguely heard of it, but it was a disease of the past, meaning almost no one knew about it.

"Yeah, until Schwoz's diseased cookie gave it to my sister," Henry grumbled, his heart hurting at the thought of losing his sister. She was mean and annoying, but she was his baby sister and he'd be heartbroken if he lost her. Seeing how upset he was, Ray left his trembling sweet girl at the computer and strolled over to his sidekick to offer him so words of comfort.

"Hey, I'm sorry for your loss." He gave a sympathetic smile and clapped Henry on the back, but the boy just looked confused.

"What? Ray, are you okay?" (y/n) frowned, snapping out of her daze as he moved away from her. Without his warmth, the fire inside her died down and she was left with her usual low simmer that continually burned as her love for him stayed bright.

"Piper...she was a sweet little girl." Ray eulogised, trying to be tender for his sidekick.

"Okay, first, no, she wasn't." Henry corrected. Piper was horrible to everyone, well, most people. She had a few favourites.

"She had her moments." (y/n) defended the girl. She was one of those people and had bonded with Piper over popcorn, Captain Man and a good movie. After that, Piper was surprisingly nice to her.

"Can we stop talking about my sister in the past tense?!" Henry snapped, getting a little teary-eyed. It sounded like Piper had actually died and that was upsetting for him.

"What's the cure for Ox Pox?" The boy gazed intensely into Schwoz's eyes and demanded an answer. There was no alternative, he was going to save Piper and all her meanness even if it killed him. Whilst all of this had been happening, Charlotte had wandered over to the PearPad on the opposite side of the room and she'd conducted some research of her own. She liked to work at her own pace and getting answers was her thing.

"Here. It says in the 16 and 17oos, doctors used to cure Ox Pox by making a special medicine from the feathers of a bird known as "the chickowillow"." Charlotte read out, finding the same information that Schwoz was eager to impart.

"Wait. The chickowillow has been extinct for three hundred years." (y/n) said, frowning at how, for them, it would be impossible to find a specimen with the feathers they need.

"Well, we need one or else...what happens to my sister?" He asked Schwoz, but he had the feeling that it wouldn't be a peaceful passing.

"I'm sorry for your loss." Schwoz tried to be nice, for once, but his skirting around the answer enraged Henry. 

"Okay, no one else is allowed to say that again," Henry growled, making (y/n) walk over to him and gently put her hands on his upper arms.

"Hen, I promise, we'll work something out." She told him softly, rubbing his arm that eased his worry. At least someone knew how to be kind.

"Wait a second. I think I know how we can get a chickowillow." Ray suddenly said, smirking at his girl with bright eyes. She knew that look; he had a crafty and crazy plan. 

"There are no more chickowillows." Charlotte pointed out. It's not like they could fly to an exotic country and seek one out. All prospects of finding one of the birds in the current day was an impossibility. 

"Not now, but we have something right here in storage that can help us get a chickowillow from the past." Ray squealed excitedly. (y/n) gasped at his theory and pondered the idea. Could they pull it off?

"The Time Jerker's Time Machine." She breathed out, smiling as he took her hands in his and excitedly nodded. It was bold and insane, but that was Ray all over and even though the idea of going back in time scared her to death, it seemed like the only option.

"Yeah, and we could use it to go back in time to the early 1700s," Schwoz added, agreeing on the plan as Charlotte frowned sceptically.

"And get a chickowillow." Henry finished the theory and the four nodded in agreement. 

"But wait, isn't that dangerous? (y/n), I thought you'd be dead against this." Charlotte piped up. She was correct, the young woman thought it was incredibly stupid and perilous, but Piper needed saving and they were the only ones who could do it.

"Oh my god!" The men fell about in annoyance, blowing raspberries and groaning at her concern. (y/n) rolled her eyes at their petty behaviour. Safety wasn't boring and Charlotte wasn't trying to be a stick in the mud, she just wanted her friends to be safe.

"Just once, Charlotte, could you not be Debbie Downer?" Ray asked, making his best friend point at him as a warning, letting him know that she had her eye on him.

"Really?" Henry pouted. She was a good friend, but she could be so overly cautious sometimes.

"Well, I'm so sorry that it might be a little bit dangerous to send someone three hundred years back in time to get some stupid ancient bird, so we can cure your sister's Ox Pox, which was caused by this freakshow's commodium assitate cookies! Yeah, I'm the crazy one here." The teen ranted, making her friends recoil slightly at her outburst. Geez, someone got out on the wrong side of the bed that morning. They were doing this, despite the danger, because, otherwise, a little girl had no other hope.

~Half an hour later~

Well, everything was set up. The Time Jerker's Time Machine had been hauled up to the main room and was being prepped by Schwoz. (y/n) had to admit, seeing the thing in person, all ready to go, was setting but flies flying in her stomach, but she brushed them away when she remembered why they were doing this. She had trust in her friends and that's all she needed.

"Okay, I'm ready to test the Time Machine," Schwoz said, rubbing his hands together. He was fairly confident that it would blow up the entire block, but you never know. Two people would survive to tell the tale if that happened, so it wasn't all doom and gloom.

"How are we gonna test it?" Ray asked as he subtly guided (y/n) away from the sparking portal frame. Just because she couldn't be injured didn't mean his constant, protective worrying over her had ceased. He still loved to put her comfort and safety first and she never seemed to notice it.

"See, I will take this fris—" Schwoz's explanation was cut off as everyone objected to the word 'frisbee'. Lord knows why.

"...This flying disk, and I will throw it five seconds into the future." He finished, turning on the power, so a beam of energy hit the golden frame, igniting the portal to five seconds in the future. 

"Here goes." The little man said and tossed the frisbee through the swirling blue energy as his friends watched. They could only hope it worked.

"Four, three, two, one..." Right on cue, the frisbee came flying back out at a tremendous speed and unfortunately, whacked (y/n) sharply on the forehead. A shooting pain erupted in her scalp, as Ray immediately turned her to him and examined the angry cut across her face. He gulped with instinctive panic as her eyes failed to dilate upon gazing into the harsh lights above them (or rather seeing him, love makes the pupils dilate too) and he recognised that she had a concussion too.

"Ow!" She yelped, holding her hand up to her forehead as her body worked its magic and healed her wound. The concussion disappeared too and within seconds, she was back to her normal self.

"Schwoz!" Ray hissed, as he stroked her forehead to ensure the injury was completely gone. Hurting (y/n) never ended well for anyone, even if it was an unfortunate accident.

"Oopsie...but it worked!" He moved on quickly. Sure, he felt bad that the girl had gotten hurt, but the notion of the invention working was too thrilling for him to contain his smile. Ray growled in his throat and opened his mouth to say something, but a delicate finger on his lips silenced him before he could kick-off.

"Raymond, I'm okay." (y/n) whispered to him, gazing up at him through her eyelashes, which soothed his anger and replaced it with passion and lust. Why did she have to look so alluring when he was about to go to some desolate wasteland in the past? He was fighting the urge to just screw everything and take her to his room so he could show her what she did to him. How he wasn't going anywhere, how he'd never love anyone as much as he loved her and how he never wanted anyone to have her as he wanted. 

"Tell me where to send Ray," Schwoz instructed Henry, ignoring how Ray was practically devouring (y/n) with his gaze. No matter how he looked at her, (y/n) never freaking saw the longing stares. Even if he wore an "I love (y/n)" t-shirt she probably wouldn't notice. She needed to hear the words from his lips, but he was waiting for her, so they were stood still.

"Uh, in the year 1709, the largest number of chickowillows lived in a northern region of Alaska, now know as Prudhoe Bay." Charlotte read out, causing Ray to frown at the information. He was going where? (y/n) giggled at his reaction, he hated the cold and it looked like he was going to a frozen tundra.

"All right, Schwoz, send me to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 1709." The large man ignored his distaste for the location and popped a gumball. His Captain Man suit would hopefully provide enough protection for the quick trip to the past.

"Aye, aye." Schwoz punched in the coordinates as Ray blew his bubble and transformed into his alter-ego. 

"Hey, you better put on a coat. Alaska's pretty cold." Henry advised, thinking that even with his indestructibility, Ray would be miserable and vulnerable in subzero temperatures. 

"I won't need a coat. I'm just gonna pop back to the past, grab a chickowillow and Schwoz is gonna pull me right back here." He explained like it was nothing. He'd never tell them he was nervous as hell, he was a superhero and that meant he was excellent at putting on a brave face.

"And now, to Alaska! He exclaimed and ran to the portal, but he just passed straight through the unlit frame. He always got ahead of himself when he got excited.

"Think the time portal needs to be on," Henry remarked as his boss awkwardly shuffled back to his takeoff spot. Well, that was embarrassing.

"Okay, ready," Schwoz confirmed after flicking the on button. Now, the machine was on and ready for Ray's big adventure.

"Hey, come back to me safe and sound, you hear?" (y/n) told him in the bravest voice she could muster, although her clammy, wringing fingers suggested that she was bricking it. Three hundred years was a long way or time or whatever to be apart and her heart felt like the little string that connected her to Ray was being cut.

"Sweet girl, I'll always come back to you." He told her gently, making her breathe hitch at the sentiment. She felt special and she took his words to be his promise, now believing that he would do his best to come home. 

"And now, to Alaska and the year 1709!" Ray yelled dramatically, silently wishing he could kiss his girl goodbye, but resisted the temptation. If he gave in now, he'd never let go. This time when he ran, he disappeared into the portal and fell through time so he could complete his mission: Get the damn bird and get the hell out of there.

~Alaska, 1709~

Ray should've listened to Henry, Alaska was freezing. It was snowing and the wind was howling, but he was here and if he wasn't mistaken, he could see a few chickowillows right in front of him. 

"Captain Man to the Man Cave, Captain Man to the Man Cave." He said into his walkie-talkie. He had no idea how the device worked in the past, he was glad it did. Being out here with no contact could get pretty lonely.

"Ray! We hear you! Are you okay?" A sweet, feminine voice came over the radio as (y/n) happily accepted the call. He wasn't dead, that's all that mattered and now, he just needed to get a bird and then leave before she missed him for too long.

"Man, it be cold!" He whined, wrapping his arms around himself as the bitter wind stung his face and neck. It was times like this he wished he was wrapped up in bed with pyjamas and fluffy socks on, drinking hot cocoa with his favourite girl. He hated the cold.

"Well, I told you to take a coat." Henry jumped in, sounding like a mother telling off her disobedient child.

"Oooh, sorry, mom!" Ray sassed back and his heart warmed when he heard (y/n)'s giggling on the other end of the line. 

"Nah, you wish I was your mom," Henry replied, which sounded really weird.

"What does that mean?" Charlotte asked, looking up from her PearPad in confusion. She'd never heard a line like that before.

"I don't know," Henry said weakly, wishing he'd never said anything at all. However, his awkwardness turned to frustration when his phone began to ring in his pocket.

"Jasper again?" (y/n) asked, turning around to give him a sympathetic look. She couldn't understand why he wanted to play hide and seek either and it's not like Henry could leave the Man Cave at such a crucial moment, so the constant video calls were getting annoying.

"I hope he's all right." (y/n) mumbled to Charlotte as they helped Schwoz monitor the Time Machine. She believed he'd keep his promise, but she couldn't help that tugging doubt in the back of her mind that something was gonna go wrong.

"He's fine, he's indestructible," Schwoz said from their right, his words being somewhat of a comfort to the concerned woman. Henry was wrapping up his dum call with Jasper and walked out back into the Man Cave to see her worrying.

"Look, I'll show you he's okay. How's it going, Ray? Did you get a chickowillow?" Charlotte asked over the radio, just to prove that he hadn't frozen to death yet and everything was going smoothly.

"Almost. In the sack, that's a good bird. There you go. Got him! Now, bring me back to the present!" Ray told them cheerfully, making everyone clap and jump in excitement as (y/n) breathed a sigh of relief. He was eager to get to her and into some warmer clothes, so he also sounded pretty spiked. 

"Standby by," Schwoz told everyone as he flicked the buttons on the machine. More energy fired at the portal and (y/n) grinned at the prospect of being reunited with her hero. He'd gone to the ends of the Earth to save a little girl and that made her swoon. The bright light from the portal shone strongly and to her disappointment, it wasn't Ray who came back through, it was an elderly gentleman. What?

"I'm o...kay!" The man groaned as he took a deep breath between falling over and getting up. He took quite a tumble for a man of his age and it was a wonder that he hadn't broken his brittle bones. Henry and Charlotte stepped over to help the senior citizen up because y'know, they were nice to old people and the guy took a confused look around the Man Cave.

"Where am I?" He asked, his wrinkled hands shaking as (y/n) and Charlotte looked at their resident genius with horrified expressions.

"Schwoz!" The teen girl hissed, believing they had brought back the wrong person. He was so old, he must have been at least eighty.

"That's not Ray!" (y/n) told him bitterly, whilst Henry chucked away the toilet roll that the man had brought with him. She was disappointed to not have her best friend back and now, they had to contend with some pensioner.

"Excuse me, young lady, I am too!" The man said in his old, rough voice, his surprisingly lively eyes fixated on her back. He'd get the shock of his life when she turned around.

"I think that's Ray, but from the future," Schwoz said in a worried voice, knowing he'd screwed up badly. Old Ray stared at Henry's youthful face and gasped when he recognised him.

"Henry! You're a boy again!" He laughed and felt his unblemished cheek, marvelling at how the kid was still...a kid. (y/n) was terrified to see him, if he really was from the future, would he want to see her? What if she had been left behind long ago? 

"And President Charlotte! You look just like you used to!" He laughed in delight at the girl, who blanched when he called her the President. To be fair, if anyone could lead the country, it was Charlotte.

"And Schwoz! You're a man again!" He recalled when he saw his old handyman and his heart melted when he heard an oh so familiar laugh from the girl who had yet to turn around. He knew that laugh.

"(y/n)...sweet girl." He said softly, his eyes widening as the girl spun around at the mention of her nickname. He remembered? Of course he did, how could he forget the girl who became his wife, the girl who gave him children and grandchildren, his soulmate? He shuffled over and gave her a tight embrace, overwhelmed at seeing her so young again. She had always been beautiful, but to see her like this, like from when he used to be so stupid, so blind to her love for him, made him tear up.

"Uh, hi, Ray." (y/n) awkwardly returned the hug, not wanting to upset her elderly best friend by refusing to touch him. It felt odd like she was hugging a stranger, who, at the same time, felt like someone who knew her better than anyone. He was softer, squishier, with less muscle than what he carried in his thirties and the clothes he was wearing were typical grandpa slacks, socks, slippers and a warm jacket. But underneath all that, she could faintly smell the same cologne he always used and she still felt small against him, even though he'd shrunk slightly with age. Yeah, this was her Ray, she knew it.

"Guys? Guys? I'm ready to come home! Uh, it's really cold in Alaska and I don't have a coat!" (y/n) frantically broke away when everyone heard Young Ray shouting over the radio. Poor guy, he was expecting to be sucked back to his girl and his family any minute now, but Schwoz, the bonehead, had screwed it all up.

"What kind of an idiot goes to Alaska without a coat?" Old Ray laughed to Henry, not realising that it was him. He was the idiot. 

"Uh, you," Henry replied slowly, feeling a bit weirded out at seeing his boss so elderly and fragile.

"OH MY GOD!" He suddenly shouted, making all of his, old, young, whatever friends jump in fright.

"What's wrong?" They all asked, thinking he was about to go into shock from realising he was in his past, but his concern was much more...daft than that.

"Where'd my toilet paper go?" He asked, scouring the floor for it. Man, elderly people have some strange priorities. Schwoz, Henry, (y/n) and Charlotte couldn't help but look at him in amazement as he weakly stood there, his knobbly knees struggling to keep him upright.

"Why you guys staring at me? Am I drooling?" He asked and whipped out a handkerchief from his sleeve to dab at his mouth. Old people things, they were lovely.

"No, you're fine." (y/n) smiled at him kindly, giving him a small pat on the arm to reassure him. She decided that she'd just play it cool until he could go home and she could have her Ray back.

"Uh guys, it's like nine degrees below zero here in Alaska so bring me back." They all heard Ray's chattering teeth come from the speaker as he shivered in the extreme cold. Even with his indestructibility, this was torture and he really fancied going home now.

"Hang on, Ray," Henry called back, which really confused Old Ray. This was too much for his old ears and old mind to process, leaving him stood there in bafflement.

"Hold onto what?" He asked his former sidekick, who saw that he'd had to take it slow since they were now in the presence of a senior citizen. 

"Not you...Ray, hold on." Henry walked over to the control and turned off the radio transmission so there'd be no more confusion. One thing at a time, send Old Ray back and then bring Young Ray home so (y/n) didn't hyperventilate.

"Dah, he put me on hold!" The youthful man groaned as he rubbed his arms. A coat was sounding pretty nice right now.

"Ray, are you really Ray Manchester?" Henry asked as he turned away from the Time Machine. He couldn't believe that this was his boss, the formidable Captain Man, he looked so delicate.

"Of course I am, Henry. What's the matter with you, huh? Why's everything around here look like it did fifty years ago?" The aged man asked as he wobbled around, his words making everyone catch their breath. He was from when?

"Wait, how old are you?" Charlotte asked as she poked (y/n) to bring her back from her state of shock. Fifty years in the future freaked her out, but at least she had the knowledge that Ray never forgot her, even if they ever parted ways at some point.

"I'm 85 and I still look great—oh!" Ray tried to look cool, but his rapid arm movement didn't agree with his old pelvis and everyone cringed as they heard it crack and crunch. 

"Wait, so in your time, I'm 78, that's cool!" (y/n) giggled with the kids, not seeing how Old Ray was looking at her with so much fondness. Huh, no wedding ring, this must have been before they got together. Despite the cobwebs on his brain, Ray's mind was still pretty sharp and he made a mental note to keep the future secret. It was up to his younger self to have the balls to tell her he loved her and he'd see that she loved him too, eventually.

"Wait, I think I know what went wrong!" Schwoz suddenly exclaimed as he checked the data from his devices. 

"What?" Charlotte asked, hoping it was something easily fixed.

"The Time Machine brought the right Ray, but instead of bringing him back from the year 1709, it brought him back from fifty years in the future!" He explained stressfully, turning round to gesture at the pensioner, who was now pressing random buttons on the supercomputer. He seemed so fascinated by the buttons and hopefully, he wouldn't break it.

"Ohhh, a blaster!" He grinned as he picked up one of the emergency weapons hidden around the Man Cave. Oh god, with those shaking fingers, letting him have a weapon was not a good idea.

"Raymond, put that down!" (y/n) scolded him, stepping in front of the kids so her body would get hit by a stray laser and not them. Her tone was so familiar to Ray, she still used his full name when he was in trouble, especially when he and the grandkids got up to mischief. Yeah, he was the fun grandpa and she was the grandma who baked cookies and muffins every day in that little house they'd bought in the country.

"I haven't seen one of these in a long time—" Predictably, Ray's fingers had lost their old strength and they accidentally pulled the trigger on the blaster, firing a rogue shot at the ceiling. Thank God, he hadn't pointed it at them.

"Oh, I forgot you have to put the setting on the—" And again. Henry and (y/n) were inching towards him slowly, the boy using her as a human meat-shield to save himself from dying, not that she minded. To her, it was better to take a blast to the face than see her favourite teen boy get shot.

"I don't know what to do—" Ray chuckled as he had a "blast" with the gun. He hadn't been near the superhero life in years and this was like a tour around his past. He loved it.

"Why don't I just take that from you and keep it safe?" She smiled at him, but fiercely yanked the weapon from his fingertips, passing it to Henry so he could deal with it.

"Awww, yes, dear." He groaned and pouted at the loss of his new toy. (y/n)'s heart fluttered at the new name. It might have just been an old person thing, calling a young woman "dear", but coming from him it sounded so cute, so marital, so right.

"You guys, bring me back!" Her inner fluttering died when she heard the groaning of her best friend on the line again. He must've been freezing, possibly to death, and that kicked her nervous personality into overdrive. She didn't want him to turn in a "Raysicle", she needed him home so they could watch a new, crappy rom-com tonight. 

"Schwoz, you gotta bring Ray back before he freezes and (y/n) loses it without him." Charlotte hissed into the genius' ear, making the young woman pout. She was that bad, was she? She was worried, but she wasn't losing it, she was just petrified that he'd never come home and then she'd lose the only guy for her and she'd spend the rest of her life as a crazy cat lady. Okay, maybe she was losing it a bit.

"And we need that stupid bird's feathers to cure my sister!" Henry added, also sounding very panicky now. Looks like he was losing it too.

"Will you both relax? I'm sure your sister is doing fine and you won't be a lonely cat lady for the rest of your life." Schwoz said to both of them, causing (y/n) to huff as he guessed what she was thinking. She needed to talk to the person who always knew how to calm her down.

"Ray, are you there?" She asked as she pressed the button for the microphone. 'Please, pick up, please don't be frozen.' She chanted in her mind as Ray took a few seconds to move his frozen hand up to his mouth.

"Yeah, sweet girl, I'm here." He whimpered into his walkie-talkie, as his teeth chattered. He was glad that if he was going to die, her voice would be the last one he'd hear. He only hoped that she found a nice guy who could take care of her properly and give her the life she deserved.

"Listen to me, I know you're freezing, but don't worry, okay sweetheart? We're gonna try and bring you back right now." She told him in the sweetest, most pleasant voice she could muster. Sweetheart...Ray could listen to her call him that all day and his delirious mind made it seem like her words were warming him up.

"Hurry, sweet girl." He slurred, reigning in his desire to spill everything to her, every secret and feeling he had ever kept from her. Even if he died never knowing if she would give him a chance to be hers, he didn't mind. He'd rather die than let her carry that burden for the rest of her life. A man who loved her more than anything, but was too scared to say something, who'd want that?

"Ahhhhh!" Henry groaned as he got another call from Jasper. He didn't care about the stupid hide and seek, he wasn't a child anymore.

"Did you forget about your hide and seek buddy?" Charlotte smirked at him, finding it funny how annoyed he was because of Jasper's eccentricity. 

"Yes." He rolled his eyes at her amusement as he looked at Jasper's face on his screen. Did he really have to answer it?

"Hurry up, we don't have time to piss about and play hide and seek." (y/n) told him in an unusually stern voice for her. Henry could tell that Ray's near-death situation was getting to her and he knew he had to be quick with this.

"Be out in a minute." The boy promised her and dashed to the elevator again for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

"Schwoz, get that thing ready to bring him back." The young woman told Schwoz and they all waited around as he prepared the machine. Old Ray took a seat on the couch whilst they waited since his old knees needed a rest. Another old person thing.

"Okay, I've reset the machine, now let's bring Captain Man home!" Schwoz said dramatically as Henry ran back from the elevator. Whatever he said to Jasper must've been quick.

"Do it!" The boy replied, putting his hand on (y/n)'s shoulder as she clasped her hands together in silent prayer. Please, don't let him be dead. The machine beamed the energy into the portal and everyone shielded their eyes at the sheer brightness it exuded.

"Ah, with the lights!" Old Ray groaned and everyone gasped as two, weird time travellers jumped out of the portal.

"Great Scott!" "Where are we?" "I don't know!" The old man and boy gasped as they looked around the room. They looked familiar...

"You're Marty McFly!" (y/n) gasped as she recognised the kid. How were they here? Time machines are weird.

"Let's get out of here!" The old man told his young friend, who enthusiastically nodded and jumped back through the machine, disappearing to wherever they had come from.

"Let me try that again." Schwoz smiled nervously as his friends frowned at him. He needed to get his act together when it came to this time-travel lark, otherwise, Ray would never get home and (y/n) would murder him.

As the genius worked on his calculations, Henry and (y/n) decided to keep Ray awake by shouting at him through the walkie-talkie, but they got no answer.

"Ray?" Henry asked into the microphone and (y/n)'s breathing turned ragged when they heard no response.

"Ray Manchester, pick up the damn walkie-talkie. Can you hear us?" She cried, not knowing that her love had succumbed to the pull of a hyperthermia-induced sleep and was laid out in the snow, unconscious. She let out a small whimper as she turned into Henry's shoulder and leaned her head against her friend's shoulder. Henry didn't know what to do, (y/n) was always the one to comfort him, not the other way around. With her losing hope, sniffing and crying, the boy was starting to freak out.

"Come on, man, answer me! Ray!" He yelled, spooking the Old Ray on the couch. It was never a good idea to frighten an old guy out of his nap. Back in Alaska, Ray thought he was dreaming when he heard the voice of an angel calling his name and he picked up the walkie-talkie with the last of his strength.

"Henry...forget about me, just make sure you take care of (y/n)." He mumbled, trying to keep the image of her smiling in his mind as he thought about the end. He never thought this would be his way of going; he wasn't married or even close to getting the girl he wanted, he'd barely done anything.

"No, we're gonna save you, man." Henry smiled at the sound of his voice and (y/n) nearly keeled over when she found out he was still alive. She panted as she wiped her cheeks and the two friends put their arms around each other's shoulders as they breathed out a sigh of relief.

"It's too late for me, kid. Just, remember how handsome I was." He gulped and a smile twitched onto his face when he heard the faint giggle of (y/n) laughing at his ego. That's what he wanted to hear, one last time, one last joke. He'd felt her kiss once and he supposed that it was enough to let him die peacefully, knowing she befitted the name he had given her. His sweet girl.

"Look, it's nine degrees below zero in Alaska in 1709. Ray can't last ten more minutes out there. His body temperature is getting too low," (y/n) whimpered as a monitor reading out Ray's vital signs began to beep. His core temperature was getting dangerously low and she felt her stomach drop and her heart turn to water.

"What are we gonna do?" She wailed, rubbing her eyes to try and stem the flow of tears. It felt like her entire world was collapsing around her as the thought of losing him made her hyperventilate. No Ray equalled no (y/n), they couldn't go on without each other.

"I don't know." Schwoz panicked as he wracked his brain for an idea. Old Ray shuffled over to his old, young, whatever friends when he heard his soon-to-be wife sniff and cry. He had never liked that sound, especially when he was the one causing it.

"Wait, Schwoz can't make the machine bring Ray back here, right?" Charlotte butted in as she thought about the situation. 

"Right." Henry agreed as he tried to keep (y/n) calm, but Schwoz was starting to get antsy too.

"Yeah, sure. I built everything in the whole Man Cave, but let's all of us on the one thing I can't do!" He snapped, throwing his hands up in the air as he returned (y/n)'s murderous glare.

"Listen to Charlotte, short stack." She growled, wanting to hear something useful, not useless and petty complaints. Schwoz frowned at the listen, but sulked silently rather than causing an argument. 

"What if we opened the time portal to Prudhoe Bay in 1709 and one of us reaches in, grabs Ray and just yanks him back through?" She said, making Henry and (y/n)'s eyes light up. It sounded plausible, but they needed the expertise of Schwoz.

"Would it work?" The teen boy asked him, praying that it would.

"Maybe, if Ray is close enough for someone to reach him. But, it's dangerous, we need someone capable of withstanding the pressure and force of the portal." Schwoz said, weighing up the pros and cons in his mind. Reaching across time would tear someone apart if they tried it.

"Hey! I need to pee. I'll be back in an hour." Old Ray announced, not caring that everyone else didn't want to know about his bodily functions. God knows why peeing took him an hour, but no one fancied finding out why

"Why is it dangerous?" Charlotte asked as he staggered off to the bathroom. Hopefully, he remembered where it was.

"Because whoever goes through the portal must keep one part of their body on this side of the machine at all times," Schwoz said, frowning as he thought about the complex physics and math.

"Why? What happens if they go all the way through?" Henry questioned, getting the sense that it wasn't good.

"The portal will close and they will end up stuck in Alaska with Ray." He answered, not wanting another person stranded three hundred years in the past.

"In 1709." Charlotte nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation.

"We might not be able to bring them back, ever." Schwoz looked down at his shoes sadly and that's when (y/n) made her choice.

"Well then, I should be the one to do this." She told her friends in a firm voice, and they nodded in understanding.

"Duh." "You think I'd try it?" Schwoz and Charlotte asked rhetorically, both of them not wanting to be heroes. Their squishy, vulnerable bodies would snap like twigs if they went through.

"Why? I could try it too." Henry protested, not wanting to see the young woman hurt. If Ray came back, he'd hit the roof if he saw her injured because she'd been put in harm's way.

"I can do it. My body can withstand the strain, and if I get horrifically torn apart, I'll just heal up." (y/n) said in a determined voice. It would probably hurt and her superpower would be tested to its limits, but if it meant she'd save Ray, she'd do it. 

"But—" Henry tried to argue, but she held a hand up and gave him a stern look.

"Look, kid. I'm the one who loves him, even if the idiot never sees it. And if someone's gonna be stuck with him in a frozen wasteland for the rest of eternity, it might as well be me. I'm the only one who could cope with his whining." She laughed at the end and Henry could see that she was too stubborn to dissuade. 

"He might love you one day," Charlotte told her, trying to be subtle as Schwoz tapped in the correct coordinates. If these were her last words to her, she wanted them to make her feel better. She actually wanted to tell her that Ray would pay one million dollars if it meant she fell in love with him. 

"Let's just get this over with." She ignored the comment. She didn't want to get her hopes up, after eight years with him, she'd learnt not to get excited about the touches or kisses on the cheek that he often gave her. It just brought too much pain to think she was special in that way.

"Ready, (y/n)?" Schwoz asked the young woman as she shrugged on her jacket. By all accounts, Alaska was a bit nippy and she'd take any protection she could. She gulped at the daunting trip she was about to take, but found her courage and nodded strongly.

"As I'll ever be." She replied, giving Henry one last smile as she prepared to jump.

"On, two...one....two!" The beam ignited the portal again and she leaned through the swirling mist. Her skin felt like it was being pulled in all directions, but she shook off the pain and peered through the blizzard as her torso arrived in 1709. Her stomach was rapidly being shredded and sewn back together and she knew she had to grab her not-boyfriend quickly.

"Ray! Sweetheart, it's me!" She shouted above the howling wind as she saw him shivering on the ground. No doubt the frozen earth was sapping the warmth from his body and he was babbling hysterically.

"Are you an angel?" He murmured, seeing nothing but a beautiful face surrounded by light. This was a dream, she wasn't here, she was safe and warm back home, just like he wanted her to be.

"Ray, please, give me your hand! Come on! Come on!" She begged him and his frost-covered glove reached out to take the angel's hand. He was certain she was here to take him away from this mortal plain and he smiled dreamily.

"Now the other one, come on!" She instructed him once she had one hand tightly in his grasp. Her skin was prickling at the bitter air and when combined with the strain her tummy was under, it made her feel like death.

"You're so beautiful..." He slurred, weakly offering her his other hand, meaning she had to really stretch to reach it. Her leaning meant that Henry, Charlotte and Schwoz had to grab onto her ankle that was sticking out of their side of the portal. They couldn't let go, otherwise, she'd be lost too.

"Guys, pull me back, I've got him!" She screamed at them, her voice warbling as it passed through time. She held onto Ray as tightly as she could and ignored the nonsense falling from his lips about how she'd been sent down from heaven or how she was the most gorgeous girl he'd ever seen. 'It's the hypothermia talking, nothing else, he's just cold.' She hissed to herself as she felt her desire and love for him spiking. She could listen to him talking like that all day.

"I'm so in love you, angel." He giggled drunkenly, not realising that even though it was the best thing he could've said to her, (y/n) hated that he was saying it. Anyone would be able to see that his mind was gone and she didn't know that rather than lying, he was just losing control of the things he'd been wanting to say for years.

"Oh, shut up, Ray. What's taking fucking long?" She screamed at her friends as the man she was trying to save tortured her. God, she wanted to say it back, but now wasn't the time. One half of her was being torn to pieces and the other was freezing to death.

With one final tug, her body was pulled back through the portal along with Ray and they landed in a pile on the Man Cave floor. Schwoz killed the power to the time machine as the young woman groaned at the healing process and Ray shivered violently on the floor.

"Ray..." (y/n) crawled over to him and caught his trembling hand in hers as she tried to snuggle up to him so he could use her body warmth. She didn't care if she got cold, she just wanted to help him.

"Okay, you guys warm Ray up and I'm gonna start taking the feathers off this bird so Schwoz can make the medicine for my sister," Henry told them. Honestly, (y/n) had forgotten all about the chickowillow because she was just glad her perfect guy was back home safe. Charlotte rushed over to her boss with a thick blanket and draped it over his body as his blue lips wobbled. 

"Sweet g-girl..." He mumbled. His mind was hazy and he wasn't sure if he'd said something stupid or not. He felt the cold seep everywhere and it made her tiny body against his feel boiling hot, which didn't help his fuzzy thinking. Henry lifted the chickowillow from the sack and it flapped and squawked in panic.

"Wait. You're not gonna hurt the bird, are you?" Charlotte asked as she left Schwoz to keep Ray warm. Well, keep him warm as (y/n) snuggled into him. She wasn't sure if she wanted to watch them, it was all too lovey-dovey for her.

"Uh, no. No," Henry reassured her and dashed off through the secret door with a blaster behind his back. He felt bad, but Piper was on death's door and he couldn't risk her dying. The bird had to go.

"So c-cold..." Ray's teeth chattered as his arms slowly came around (y/n) so he could hold her to his chest like his own personal heater. She was getting pretty cold herself, but she said nothing, just pulled the blanket tight around them.

"You need to get in bed." She told him as she nuzzled her nose under his jaw. Her breath warmed the skin there and the resulting clarity it brought made his heart sing.

"O-okay here." He replied breathlessly, feigning that the cold was still mostly affecting him, not the way she was laid with him.

"The floor will make you cold." She giggled, flicking off a few pieces of ice that had stuck to his costume. He needed to put some warm clothes on too, the melting ice would only make him colder. That, and it was starting to seep into her jeans.

"Did I say anything w-weird when I was about to die? I don't r-remember." His mind had gathered enough for him to string together a longer sentence as he worried about the ten minutes when his mind ran away from him. God, he hoped he hadn't't said anything that would ruin his friendship with her. 

"No, nothing at all." She reassured him, although she was recalling the way he called her gorgeous, an angel and how he told her he loved her. It wasn't real, just a mindless rambling from a man one step away from death. Shit, that stung her heart.

"Good. Thank you for saving me, sweet girl." He told her, unaware of how tears were stinging in her eyes. Her heart hurt even more as he pressed a kiss into her hair and she had to swallow the lump in her throat. 

"Don't mention it." She replied, knowing that with or without thanks, she would do it all over again if it meant he'd be safe. Sure, he broke her heart like four times a day, but she still couldn't go on without him. They laid together on the floor for a while, just talking about everything and nothing, enjoying each other's company as Schwoz rolled his eyes at them. 

He'd been waiting eight years for them to get together, he'd seen them go from coworkers to friends to being madly in love, and even though Ray fell first, they were now on the same level and desperate to be open with each other. That time was close at hand, but it would take something drastic to force Ray or (y/n)'s hand into showing the truth.

And don't worry, Schwoz's medicine worked a treat, Piper was just fine.

[chronicbeans]

The Heilwald Loophole Dr. Randolph Headcanons:

Yippee!!! I love this game!

TW: Chronic/Terminal Illness, Thanatophobia (fear of death/dying), Arguments/Fighting, Body Horror/Hospital Horror, Surgery

•Dr. Randolph is generally a very smart man, but when it comes to medicine, he's not that great at it. Like, he knows how to provide treatment (surgery, medication, First Aid, etc), but not when it is needed. He'll look at someone with signs and symptoms of a simple cold, then say that they need like... lung surgery or something. He also just really likes to perform surgery, for some reason.

•He can speak fluent English, but for the life of him, he can't read or write it. I mainly got this idea from the "Benefits of the surgical removal of the lecur" paper (I think it is meant to be in English, due to there being moments when the player mentions that something is in German, like the maintenance sign). I am pretty sure he was trying to write "liver", since he is the guy that wants to remove livers. He can read his own "English" (read: gibberish), but no one else can. So, he'll give a whole speech in English, reading from a paper that he wrote, and none would be the wiser to how bad his writing is. He gets away with reading professional research papers in English by trucking someone else into reading it aloud for him. No one really knows that he can't actually read or write in English, since he is pretty good at hiding it.

•He is "tired" a lot of the time, to the point of extreme fatigue. He knows that his tiredness is actually fatigue, and not simply being tired, but doesn't want to admit it. This fatigue adds onto his temper, making him quick to snap at staff when he doesn't need to keep up appearances or is not in front of patients. This all culminated in an argument with Nurse Astrid that grew physical, which Dr. Hauser witnessed, over the paper she was writing about Dr. Randolph's work. This event is what caused Dr. Hauser to grow scared of Dr. Randolph, as well as causing Astrid to grow quiet and a "shell of her former self" according to her coworkers.

•Dr. Randolph's speech at the beginning of the game, where he mentions wanting to provide a better, or at least different option than death to the patients of the Heilwald Klinikum, is actually more about himself than the patients. The reason why he wants to remove your liver is because he, himself, is suffering from chronic liver failure. He was determined to work at the hospital, having heard that it was one of the best in Germany and, supposedly, had the capacity to work miracles due to the forest around it having special properties. He wanted to avoid his seemingly inevitable death from his disease, due to his severe Thanatophobia. In his opinion, there is no fate worse than death. His wish was fulfilled, since after a while, everyone became incapable of dying in the Heilwald Klinikum. They also couldn't leave. And... some of the staff started to change... but his wish to never die was fulfilled.

•On the idea of him stealing your liver... when he steals it, he does so with the intention to transplant it into himself. While he won't ever die from his condition, he still suffers from the symptoms of liver failure. So, he will gladly take yours and put it into himself. The newly transplanted livers always begin to fail soon after, but it does provide some relief for a little while. You also seem to just show up like nothing happened, anyway, so you aren't harmed by it, in his opinion.

•The physical changes to the staff are, depending on the staff member, representative of their state of mind. An example would be Nurse Astrid, who, after the incident with Dr. Randolph, became closed off. So, when she started changing, she basically grew an iron lung around herself to protect herself from harm, but she is still in pain. Other staff members that simply changed as a consequence of being in the hospital have less drastic changes, such as Nurse Sabine. Dr. Randolph's changes at the end of the game are a representation of all of his locked up anger at everything. His condition, how everything regarding his wishes turned out, and just everything. There is no specific thing or person he is angry at, so he just became a mangled mess of a... Whatever he became at that point...

[guardmagicskull]

Woah boy Anon you have no idea what you've just done

Basically the first change is that Zeus is actually a good caring God who wants to protect and help people, and that ended up having consequences for pretty much all other characters.

Zeus takes the form of a teacher at Harvey's University after he's had his accident, getting him the support he needs and harshly punishing those who bully him. Harvey with his help doesn't become bitter and vengeful, instead insisting that he's going to prove everyone wrong by doing good for the world through science and robotics.

Zeus turns into first mate onboard an honest merchant ship and convinces the captain to let Crawfish (who's just a kid at the time) becomes a junior officer. He very quickly proves his skill with ships, rises through the ranks, and eventually when the old captain retires Crawfish is given command of the ship instead. When his home port begins to struggle financially, he uses the ship to bring them supplies

Zeus makes himself curator of an art museum, and makes sure to catch Widow on her very first heist. Instead of turning her in, he encourages her to keep improving her art instead of stealing it from others, and also suggests that if she's good enough to sneak past all that security she could have a future as a crimefighter. She takes him up on it, and with his guidance becomes a secret agent using her public persona as a famous artist as cover.

But Mordred is the one things change the most drastically for.

Mordred's childhood going by King Arthur myths was really not good: His father is King Arthur (making Mordred kind of a prince actually!), and there's a prophecy that Mordred will grow up to overthrow him and destroy the kingdom. Arthur wants to stop that from happening but doesn't know which child is Mordred, only that he'll be born on May 1. So he finds all children born on that day and sends them out onto the sea to drown, where Mordred is the only survivor.

In my normal idea of the world, I'd imagine this is when he washes up on the shores of Astroknights where he later finds out the truth and tries to become king as it's "his right".

In the Hero AU Zeus instead decides to intervene because this whole situation is messed up. He takes baby Mordred to Astroknights himself and gives him to the King and Queen. They're horrified that another king would do something like that to his own child, and adopt Mordred as their own. He grows up as a prince, and becomes a brave and honourable knight.

He sees Elyana as his little sister and they're very close. But as they grow up, people start to pay less and less attention to Elyana in favour of Mordred since he's the oldest child and the one who will become ruler. He also begins to spend less and less time with her as he's busy learning how to be king. She's alone and upset, feeling like everyone has abandoned her.

She begins to resent Mordred for having "abandoned her just like everyone else", and angry that he "stole the throne" from her. Eventually after they get into a huge fight she escapes into space.

Everyone assumes Elyana died in space, and Mordred is absolutely heartbroken feeling like all of it is his fault. The cult pops up believing she actually survived, and Mordred joins them because he's desperate to find Elyana and being her back home safely. Instead when he manages to contact her she attacks the kingdom and takes him away because "if you're gone I can be queen".

The player rescues Mordred, and Astroknights mostly plays out the same. Except despite everything he still cares for her, and when the portal is about to close leaving her stranded in space he tries to turn back for her at the last second.

He has an arm and half his face in the portal when it closes on him. He turns himself into a cyborg to survive.

Following all of that, he doesn't want anything more to do with the kingdom. He's extremely upset and just wants to run away from all of it. He gets into a tiny boat and lets it carry him off into the sea not even knowing if he'll survive or not. He drifts close enough to the "modern islands" to be rescued.

Black widow is an agent, so she becomes involved in figuring out what the heck happened to this medieval robot man they found adrift at sea.

Harvey is one of the best scientists, so she gets him involved too because he's pretty much the only one who can figure out how to repair Mordred's robotics while he's in the hospital.

Crawfish had a similar situation to Mordred of sailing too far from home and being picked up by modern people, so he gets called in because he's pretty much the only one who can fully empathise with being lost in this strange new world.

Mordred's bad situation brings the four of them together, and they decide to stick together as heroes defending Poptropica.

[beecreeper]

Well I gotta do some asks for my favorite color! For the Baldur's Gate crew

🌻

🍯

🐝

🌞

🍋

✨

Damn this took me literally all day to write wtf

✨ and 🍯 answered here. The rest under the cut!

🌻 (sunflower) - What’s something your character has grown out of? Did it happen gradually or was it a drastic change? What caused this shift?

Briar -- Attempting to care about people/form relationships. She *did* try to, especially when she was in her druid circle. But it never really worked. There always felt like there was something separating her from other people. She burned that bridge all at once when she murdered her circle and embraced Bhaal.

Ferox -- Honestly used to be a more chaotic when he was a kid with his goblin family. Was more enthusiastic about pulling the kind of goblin shenanigans with his siblings that you can imagine goblin kids get up to. But at he got old, his urge started to manifest more strongly, raising the stakes and consequences. It gets a lot less fun to play "let's see who can hit each other with a stick the hardest" when you black out and accidentally beat one of them to a pulp, you know? He also started to feel worse about how goblin society worked in general and how violent it all was. By the time he reached like 15 or 16 he was in full brooding "I don't want to be like this anymore..." mode.

Molli -- Molli hasn't grown out of SHIT. She got captured in her early twenties and is free for the first time in like seven or eight years. In many ways she behaves like a college student moving out of their parents house for the first time. She's also always been the kind of person who enjoyed childish things well into her adulthood. And honestly! Good for her! Be a immature and silly forever Molli you fucking deserve it.

🐝 (bumblebee) - What are some reasons someone would dislike or not get along with your oc? Are these negative traits something your oc is aware of?

Briar -- stinky, evil, a complete crazy bitch. She is aware but doesn't care. If you don't like her that's a you problem.

Ferox -- too stoic and in his own head, stewing in his guilt too much, kinda a stick in the mud. These aren't the parts of himself that he feels bad about though he's mostly dwelling on, you know, the uncontrollable bloodlust.

Molli -- annoying, naive, weak, incompetent, worried about everything including all these negative qualities and like a bunch more she made up

☀️ (sun) - What’s your character like at their best?

Briar -- well.... I mean from *her* perspective her best was her peak cult days. Fully confident, powerful, no worries about anything, doing anything she wants, on her way to ruling the world and having a great fucking time with it. But I don't know of there's a version of her that any sane person would call "good". Like. Her "best" ending is secluding herself in the woods and only killing people if they accidentally find into her rather than her actively seeking them out.

Ferox -- At his best he's hard working and dedicated and extremely competent at what he does. Helpful and feeling good about himself for doing something positive. Secure in himself and *not* considering himself an uncomfortable irredeemable monster (he'll get there eventually)

Molli -- Cheerful ray of sunshine type shit, playing her concertina for people, wanting to experience new things and not worrying about whether she's good enough.

🍋 (lemon) - What’s something your character never got over, if anything? Why did it affect them so much and is there any chance of them ever healing from it?

Briar -- Depends on how you define "got over". If you asked Briar, she would say that nothing from her past affects her at all and she never thinks about it ever. But like. Obviously it affects her. Her foster parents were super creeped out by her and totally emotionally distant and the only kinda friend she had she drowned on impulse. Really set a precedent that she cannot and will not be able to connect to people and it informs a LOT of her behavior.

On a related note she never got over realizing she DOES care for Gortash but she only had like a week at most to deal with that before her brain was scrambled lol. Problem solved!

Ferox -- MYRALA MYRALA MYRALA It manages to even haunt him post-tadpole because the oathbreaker knight is still at camping reminding him that he did SOMETHING to break his oath but won't tell him what and he reasonably assumes it has something to do with that urge for slaughter he feels in his blood. Honestly I think the only reason he's gonna be able to heal at all is because he can't remember it specifically anymore. But it still hurts and he's got all the *other* Bhaalspawn baggage to work through as well.

Molli -- I mean. Being a slave to a guy who would beat her for fun. And her good and bad endings are differentiated by how well she deals with it. On one hand, she falls into a fawn response codependent pattern and locks herself into more abuse. On the other hand, she finds joy in freedom and strength in her friends and herself. And also kills her old abuser that probably helps.

[gynandromorph]

Hi more Jessie questions,

Thanks a lot for the 'powers are what you can write' post, that's let me wrap my head around the power a lot more. It's not so much about something being impossible to do, it's about it being impossible to write. That being said, Jessie can create life or at least a feasible simulacrum of life. What happens if Jessie goes 'this is a 100% identical copy of me who would think and act the same way I would in any given situation'? Is there an upper limit to that? Because it's easy to write 'And then the 8000 or 9000 Jessies rolled up into a ball and went to fuck your mother' but since this is a comic, authorship has both a written and visual component. I think even the best artists have a balking limit of how many figures they want to draw interacting in space together (I am not an artist, so if I am wrong please say). Alternatively, would Jessie even allow a copy of herself time to know it is alive (cus I can tell you if I could make a copy of myself with no consequences I'd kill it just for kicks)?

And,

This is less a Jessie question and more a question about the Ants, that being how does the Ant cult work? The Ants have a connection to God that is closer than any religion in history ever did. Do they take advantage of this? Like do the Ants go directly to God to ask about problems, or is that seen as rude? Do the Ants take personal moral stances on what Jessie does, or do they assume that what Jessie does is good? One of the main reasons that I started worshipping the Gods is because they are capricious petty assholes who care more about saving face than doing the right thing. That humanness spoke to me. Would people in-universe worship Jessie for her extremely flawed use of the power of divinity? Would this worship be separate from the Ant cult, or would the Ant cult accept others as part of its fold?

And,

I'm sorry if these asks are too long, but your work seriously gets into a craw of my brain that nothing has ever crawed into before. I read through all of Fresh Meat in a depressive haze the other night and loved it. My mind's response to self-harm thoughts is now Lupe's speech about how cutting is addictive. I'm reading through Dropout right now and fucking loving it. I know Catharsis isn't done yet but I want to say what's out right now has really helped me. The way you write the interaction between Felix's mind and meatspace has made me realize enough about my mind that I'm trying to get in contact with a Nuropysch to get some testing done. It helped me realize that talking in your head with the people there is dissociating, and that's what I've been doing for a lot of my life. I hope Catharsis will be completed, but even if it isn't, I want you to know that I'm very grateful for the stuff you've put out there so far. All the stuff you make is fucking great. Straight up. Jessie is the vector for the craw as well, and the Jessie questions are so long cus I have a lot of thoughts in my head about her and your work and everything! Please keep creating. You create fantastic art.

Yes, the story explores imagination and its limits. We often think of our imaginations as unlimited, but that is an illusion produced by our own ignorance. A lot to unpack here.

Jessie can easily create copies of herself. They would come more intuitively than writing other characters, if they were pure replications of herself, because they require no extra thought. She would never make a copy of herself without drastic contingencies to make it subservient to her and prevent the copy from being able to overpower her or override the restrictions placed upon her powers — essentially, this would be a different character who looks like her more than a clone, at that point.

The thing about art is that it does not need to be literally true — only believable. No need to draw 9,000 Jessies, as 1,000 would likely not even fit onto one page. The illusion of 9,000 Jessies is all that is necessary.

A fun little fact is that Jessie doesn't know that is in a comic; she just doesn't think much of it. For all she knows, the visuals around her are imaginings in the head of someone reading a written book, or even in her own head. She only thinks of herself as in a written novel, even though she is open to the idea that the story is part of a larger medium, such as a movie or comic

For the cult: only the leader is an ant; the cult itself is an open religion and mixed-species. I'm thinking of calling them the Original Character Society or the Book Club at the moment... Something alluding to the fictional story element.

That said, no one would bring their personal problems directly to Jessie unless they had something even worse than a death wish. Jessie is a patently unhinged God, and, despite the cult's best effort to understand her and make their exchanges with her predictable, clearly unable to be predicted.

Unlike an invisible, unreactive God, Jessie is conscious, and can change her actions based on observation and prediction, like any person. She can intuit how she is expected to react and actively choose a different behavior intentionally — and she often does.

She has given them kid gloves to be handled with through Twiddler's reappropriation, and to encroach on her personal time and space on one's own terms instead, likely in the hopes of getting better results, is a cascade of transgressions begging for judgment.

The cult does interact with her directly, but largely first when it is small, and looking for her permission to exist, in a time when she is feeling strain on her relationships; or when she personally decides to engage with them. Its primary function as it grows larger is grooming members who want things from her to interact in successful ways by studying her behavior, keeping track of her moods, documenting which prayers she answers, forming scripts (later congealed into liturgy) to indirectly pray to her, and nurturing a positive image of her.

Due to the cult's primary function being successfully obtaining benefits from Jessie, liking her as a god is not necessary. I think there are many selfish members who think the world would be better off without her, but want things, and will gladly grovel for them if it's likely to work. Like any religion, there are a variety of opinions about Jessie, with some being positive, apathetic, horny, sycophantic, hateful, etc. The official position of the sect itself is not necessarily that everything Jessie does or says is good, but it is always true — this is specifically said as what she does is always "right." It's assumed by default what she does is good, but Jessie herself can say things she's done are bad, and that would be TRUE, canonically. I personally imagine that most opinions of her are not positive in the cult — either neutral or negative.

There are very likely some odd worshipers outside of the cult, but I would consider them casual worshipers, mostly invoking Jessie as a symbol or idol more than as an actual god who can respond to them.

Glad my work could help. Keep in mind that all people can have dialogues in their head — it's why "parts work" and inner family systems therapy works for people with or without dissociative parts. Like most mental illnesses, DID and other major dissociative disorders are simply normal brain functions which have veered to some extreme that has become dysfunctional or detrimental. I do hope that your testing is elucidating, but doctors in such a field are extremely prone to error, so don't give up on your gut instincts if they persist.

[self-loving-vampire]

You're my favorite preservationist blog, so once again I wanted to hear your take on this:

I may not fully understand the situation here, so take this with a grain of salt,

but wasn't it a risky move for the Internet Archive to allow 'unlimited concurrent lending' indefinitely?

Yes, the pandemic still exists; yes it would be better if greedy publishing houses couldn't threaten the existence of petabytes of preserved data over the equivalent of a few bucks,

but as one of the last bastions against the relentless onslaught of IP law, in some cases literally the only thing preventing content from falling into lost media territory,

shouldn't they have stayed a little more within the rules on this, rather than risking legal exposure they can't afford?

Isn't it their duty as an archive to play it safe and act within the law so a loss like this doesn't mean everyone loses access to everything?

Is it worth fighting a costly legal battle to maintain a more ideal state of open access if it very well could mean the end of all they've worked for and media preservation as we know it?

All the commentary I've seen so far has been rightfully angry at the publishers for pursuing this, but if the IA goes down because they fought for the right to help the most people possible and lost, the resulting harm will be irreparable, and from an archivist's perspective that seems woefully irresponsible on their part.

I think their objective should be to preserve as much content and maintain as much access as possible, yes, but this feels like an all-or-nothing gambit that could have been avoided by just going back to how they operated pre-pandemic.

I'm afraid of what will happen if fighting the good fight means dying for the cause. Some loss of access, even if it's a change as drastic as going from unlimited to limited, doesn't seem like the hill to die on if it means total loss of access.

Please correct me if my understanding of the situation is factually inaccurate, but this is the conclusion I've come to given the information I currently have.

(Also thanks for hearing me out on this. It really means a lot that I have someone I can express my thoughts to, on this and in general.)

I am honored that you see this as a preservationist blog! While I think media preservation is an extremely important thing I saw myself as just a normal person with opinions and some resources to share rather than any kind of expert or activist.

As a result, my understanding of the laws and consequences involved is probably not more advanced than yours. In the best case scenario the archive survives and only the book lending service suffers, but even that seems like a catastrophic loss. In the worst case scenario, the lawsuit could cost them so much that it could impact other parts of the site. This ruling is definitely bad either way.

That's also saying nothing of the effect this could have on other digital libraries, which could begin to limit their own services to avoid similar lawsuits.

Due to that lack of understanding of the nuances of the law, I don't know how strong their legal case was and therefore can't really comment on whether providing this particular service was unusually reckless.

However, on a moral level I am proud to have financially supported them even if just in the small ways available to a random person on the internet, and will continue to stand by them throughout the appeal process.

One thing about preservation that is always worth keeping in mind is that it's not about just keeping the texts or putting them in some restricted archive or a museum. Ideally, I want as many people as possible to be able to acquire whatever information they wish with ease and become vessels for sharing it themselves.

That not only keeps the information more "alive" by letting people actually interact with it but also makes it more resilient. If the only copies of a work are kept in a museum then said work can easily be lost if something happens to said museum. However, if the work is downloaded and shared by thousands of people around the world then it becomes much more likely to endure.

Most of all I just wish for the end of copyright law and the very concept of intellectual property...

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

I never talk about Commander Pirkko so y’know what. I think I’ll talk about Pirkko for once. She needs it she deserves it.

While the Commander has always been known for her bravery on the battlefield, only those that have fought alongside her know just how intense that loyalty gets. She never gives up, never backs down, never leaves a soldier behind-- no matter how impossible the odds. She’ll charge into an army of Risen all on her own if she has to, slicing through the horrors with a brutal ferocity that even gives her own comrades chills. Every time they see it, they thank whatever forces of nature they believe in that this monster is on their side.

But, while that recklessness usually has few consequences due to an unusually rapid healing rate and high tolerance for toxic substances, she certainly isn’t immortal. It doesn’t always end quite as well as she intends.

The result is that despite her drastically increased healing speed... Pirkko has sustained a fair number of injuries over the years, some more obvious than others. The most visible is the loss of one eye; Pact veterans still tell tales of the encounter, in which she still insisted on fighting on even after sustaining the wound. Pirkko refused to retreat until she was certain all of her remaining soldiers had made it back safely, no matter the cost to herself.

Her lost eye was replaced with an experimental mechanical implant, but it does mean she has significantly reduced peripheral vision on her left side and has to perform regular maintenance on the hardware to keep it in working order. She also keeps in contact with a medical engineer from the Pact, who helps with any adjustments she can’t do on her own. Occasionally she experiences phantom pains from it as well, particularly when there are environmental pressure fluctuations. Most aren’t really aware of that, though; she doesn’t talk about it, and they don’t ask.

EMPs and ley energy tend to interfere with it too, resulting in a wide array of malfunctions. In more extreme circumstances it may cease operations entirely.

Not everything about it is awful though; there are some unique features to the device, including enhanced focusing abilities, night vision, and an optional UI that displays useful information such as temperature and energy readings, status checks for her equipment, and remote interfacing technology. Some of it was the handiwork of her asura friend, and some of it was her own idea.

Pirkko’s other equipment has a particular source as well; her main armor was actually fashioned from repurposed Molten Alliance machinery mixed with her own personal tweaks, and includes their signature fire magic channeled through custom conduits to fuel her holosmith weapons. It’s a volatile mix, but extremely potent in a pinch-- and with her careful calibrations, it’s kept fairly under control. So long as she doesn’t let the holoforge overheat, that is...

Likewise, her rifle is exactly what it looks like, too. She took Scarlet’s Kiss from the Breachmaker after defeating its owner, but not for the reasons one would expect. Pirkko was all too aware of what was happening to her ex-nemesis, and took her weapon to finish what Scarlet had started. Maybe the crazed sylvari wouldn’t live to see her draconic tormentor fall with her own two eyes, but Pirkko would make sure her weapon helped bring it to an end. That goal, at least, was something the two engineers had in common.

Eventually a certain rather unexpected reunion would result in Scarlet learning what had become of her beloved boomstick, but by then... Circumstances between them were just a little bit different. And, in the end, she’d agree that it suited the Commander well.

... But that’s a story for another day.

[procalpal]

1 September 2024 | Sunday

Start: 8:30AM

Breakfast (10:30AM)

A bowl of chia (15g) and lite soy milk (45g) with some water to help the chias soften. For sweetness, some honey (5g)

A cup of instant coffee, but iced.

Cal: 175 | Protein: 4.03g

Thoughts: I feel extreme guilt for the purge that occurred the night before. But it's a new month, a new season and today will be the start. Start now, before it's too late. The exhaustion that is inevitable is a factor I strive to avoid during this change. I understand that low calorie diets are harmful and working full time will affect me drastically. I am prepared. I understand the consequences but I won't skip out on meals during the week. I will eat moderately and control any sugar cravings. Weekends I will allow a sugar treat, as I usually do. Today is my cafe day, I will read Emma (Jane Austen) at my favourite cafe, go thrifting for some office attire and return home to continue my house cleaning.

Lunch (2:00PM)

Protein banana pancakes. Consisting of a banana (120g), an egg, vanilla protein powder (15g), cinnamon (2g).

A cup of tea with honey (5g) and lite soy milk (20ml)

Cal: 306 | Protein: 20.9

Thoughts: Due to the fact that it’s now Father’s Day, I figured that it would be too busy to walk around the city. I have stayed home and attempted to busying myself watching Gilmore Girls, organising my week and washing my clothes. I foresee a quieter weekend next week and shall complete my needs to get matcha a different day. The pancakes may not look appetising but I swear by this recipe. It’s sweet, full of protein and an amazing alternative to normal pancakes. I have eaten this almost every day.

Snack (3:08PM)

Rice cakes (2 slices), cottage cheese (30g) and cucumber (28g)

Cal: 77 | Protein: 5.4g

Dinner (6:33PM)

Salad consisting of cucumber (67g), mushrooms (34g), tomato (68g) lemon juice (7ml), tuna in springwater (38g).

On the side, I had some strawberries (57g) and light greek yoghurt (42g).

Cal: 129 | Protein: 14g

Thoughts: Dinner was light, and having the snack in between assisted in reducing the hunger I felt after lunch. With 512 calories still available, I'm not sure what else I really feel inclined to eat. A good sign in retrospect, but I also would prefer to have some more food to eat in order to avoid bingeing tomorrow. I don't feel hungry and the documentation of the foods that I consume assist in the restriction of eating unwanted processed foods. Such that a public account holds me accountable for my actions. Tomorrow I will weigh myself. But I have not thought about whether this should be a daily occurrence or weekly, or even every few days. I have completed my weekly grocery shopping, and am looking forwards to seeing where this new medium will take me.

Snack (7:30PM)

A bowl of kimchi (75g) and two slices of rice cakes.

A cup of black tea, with lite soy milk (20ml) and some honey to sweeten it up (5g)

Cal: 57 | Protein: 2g

Total calories: 754 (Goal 1200)

Total protein: 47g

Thoughts: there's a lot that pass through my brain throughout the day. On my darker days, numbers are forever floating around. But today, I was okay. Maybe because my binge yesterday had something to do with it. I don't know. But I do feel a slight change in attitude, that I don't want to do this extremely unhealthily. The weight change is still a goal, but I want it to happen gradually. For those around me to not have to worry or think that I'm mentally ill. Towards the end of today, until now as I am writing this, a sudden darkness did pass over, a feeling of loneliness. Maybe I made the wrong decision of packing my bags, and moving to a new city. Everyone that I know 8 and a half hours away from me (driving). I do have friends here, but things are not the same. Facetimes, calls, letters, social media, all of those supposedly helpful creations for long distance is just not cutting it out for me anymore. Maybe because it's my sister's birthday as well as Father's Day, I miss them most. I long to be in a loud home again, filled with laughter, memories and warmth. Yet, I am here. Alone. Cold and with no memories of the happy days lingering. But alas, this is my choice. I need to make friends, and not shut them out.

Sleep: 9:00PM

[astarab1aze]

12 for vita

sin: wrath questions

Do they have any sort of visceral reaction to violence?

no, i don't think so. or rather, it's more contextual. is the violence being enacted upon someone close to her? then yes. ohhhh yes. i see her as being very calm, cool, and able to keep her head where it pertains to violence in general - she laments those who suffer and does her best to help them, but it's...a reality of life. basically, she's entirely desensitized to it until and unless it effects, say, asuka or geralt for example. she Does Not vibe and she *will* do something about it, and since she's, in her main verse, a sorcier (glorified magic cop, with some...extra responsibilities), she gets a badge. instead beating the shit out of a beligerant dick, she gets to arrest them. in more dire circumstances, she still does her best to incapacitate versus outright kill - she doesn't like violence. she wants a peaceful, better world for asuka to live in, for anyone she loves to live in (she's indifferent about tethis though, rightfully sksk), so she tends toward less drastic measures. i mean it took her 15 years to drum up the mental and emotional fortitude to kill malik in sunjatta verse, knowing how far-reaching the consequences of that would be, so even when the violence could be argued as necessary on her part, she actively thinks about her actions before she takes them.

the reaction itself is deep upset and immediate assumed guilt, that it is only happening due to her incompetence (ironic, for someone confident in her skills). it's an automatic failure on her part, in her mind, when people she's close to, or really anyone, is harmed on her watch. it doesn't have to actually be her fault, it really doesn't matter. she should've known, been paying more attention, acted faster, done more, the list goes on. Internalized Law Enforcement Review. she's not going to go bananas, but she's not gonna not react right away either. ahhhh, it's really hard to say what exactly she would do, but i know that asuka's death would quite literally break her heart and kill her, which is an extreme reaction to more permanent circumstances but a reaction nonetheless.

[portraitperpetuity]

Gerlach and Dirk for the Dark OC asks!!

4: What appears in your OC's darkest nightmares?

+ one other that you really want to answer

OH HELL YEAH it’s question time! Tysm for sending them in!!

I know that u probs meant one other for the questions, but I’ll also interpret it to mean one other for the characters too, since some of these questions are absolutely perfect for Johannes.

I’ll go with the first question you send, then move on to the 2nd.

What appears in your OC’s darkest nightmares?

Gerlach’s most unpleasant and least welcome dreams are often heavily focused on his childhood. His estranged mother, his father’s slow death, and the absolute pain and uncertainty of war and famine are all things that torment him in his dreamscape, often in frustratingly nonlinear and nonsensical ways. Additionally, Otto coming to harm is smth that features in his nightmares.

Though he is often very able to remember his dreams, Dirk can’t really remember what happens in his worst nightmares other than that he may have seen something he shouldn’t have seen or did something he shouldn’t have done.

Like Gerlach, Johannes’ worst nightmares often echo his childhood, usually centering his abusive father. Unlike Gerlach, they also almost always involve Johannes going on the offensive, snapping and succumbing to extreme violence as a result of his father’s torment, only for him to face the consequences of his actions being stripped of their context. In the waking world, he also struggles with violent intrusive thoughts when triggered, but he has thankfully begun to accept them for what they are—unwanted, uncontrollable, and not indicative of his character.

Has your OC killed a friend/family member/loved one?

Gerlach has not, but he was very nearly killed by one: his mother. In the midst of the famine, in the immediate aftermath of his father’s death, his mother impulsively decided that he would be more welcome as a meal than as her child and attacked him. This, oddly, is how he met Otto, who saved him from her onslaught and nursed him back to health. Gerlach’s mother is remorseful for what she did, but still refuses to accept how guilty she feels and badly she hurt him, and insists that he should be able to understand her perspective now that he is older and more capable of nuanced thought. Gerlach, however, will have none of it, and intends on remaining completely out of contact with her for as long as he can possibly help it. He has struggled with rage and the desire to harm his mother on the multiple occasions that she has broken restraining orders levied against her by him, but hasn’t acted on it.

Dirk has not, and thankfully doesn’t have loaded history with this question.

Johannes almost did—several times. On a few occasions, he came very close to poisoning his father, but never followed through because he was absolutely terrified of both what would happen if he was found out or if his father survived. Eventually, he managed to flee the household and thankfully was never put in a situation where he had to consider such drastic measures after that.

It’s interesting answering these questions for them, especially for Johannes and Gerlach, because it really shows how small they have been made to feel at times and how, in turn, their resulting fear manifested. Sharing Johannes’ story feels surprisingly raw too bc a lot of his reactions mirror my own, but I think that’s exactly why I should share it—ppl like me who have ‘scary’ thoughts in reaction to trauma r still ppl deserving of compassion :) 

Tysm again!

[lepartidelamort]

A Total Reevaluation of the 2024 Election

Due to extreme changes in the global and domestic situations, my views on the upcoming 2024 election have changed drastically in the last several months, it’s appropriate I give a basic outline of what my positions were and what they are now.

Infamously, I had said since 2024 that there is zero chance Donald Trump can win the 2024 election. The argument was that it simply does not make sense that the Democrats stole the 2020 election (something which I assert is incontrovertible fact), face zero consequences, and then not continue to steal elections. I also pointed out that the amount of fraud in the 2022 election was probably even worse than two years earlier.

In order for there to be a fair election, I assert, the US would have to be under some form of martial law. Currently, there is no other mechanism to prevent massive fraud. Without going into too many details about the fraud, which I’ve covered extensively elsewhere, it is a very simple process which simply involves controlling the vote count in a handful of blue cities in otherwise red states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia).

The only way to prevent this fraud would be to send in the military to monitor these sites, as well as sites in other potential swing states. Obviously, that is not going to happen. Nothing is going to happen, other than exactly what happened in 2020 and 2022. The plan is to run the election the exact same way. Congress has taken zero action against the mail-in voting and ballot harvesting system. (This is the mechanism through which the election was stolen; it was not rigged machines, which was a red herring pushed by Sydney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, both bad actors who crippled Trump’s ability to create a cohesive response to the fraud in 2020). Further, Democrats have made it even easier for non-citizens to vote (which is a lesser factor in the fraud than the mail-in ballots, but still a relevant factor).

The arguments from people who agree that 2020 was a massive fraud and who also argue Trump can win in 2024 are not coherent. If I were to do my best to steelman their argument: they claim that Biden is so unpopular that the voter fraud will be overwhelmed by so many votes for Trump. If Trump were to get 70% of the votes in these swing states, surely that would be too much for the fraudsters to handle, they argue. However, this goes against what we all witnessed in 2020, which was that they shut down the counting centers, and brought in new ballots. The entire media said this was normal. That included Fox News. There were no riots, there were no mobs with torches and pitchforks showing up at the counting centers. Some Trump supporters in their cuck-muzzles showed up to complain, and in Detroit, they literally locked the doors and covered the windows with cardboard.

When people reacted to these shocking images, the shameless lugenpresse then published headlines like this:

The response from the Trump base was January 6, which was a total setup by the feds to create an atrocity narrative around the election, and an excuse to effectively outlaw any further discussion of the matter. This all worked. Trump agreed to leave the White House, Joe Biden was inaugurated. The January 6 protesters were subjected to Bolshevik type political imprisonment, torture, and show trials. And that was that.

Trump could win 100% of the vote in swing states, and it wouldn’t matter. There is no one to stop the fraud, and there is no one to investigate it. The 2024 election cannot be legitimate. It is impossible.

However, what we must realize is that the only thing that the fraud actually proves is that US elections are not decided by vote count. Although this does prove that Trump cannot win, it does not prove that Trump cannot “win,” i.e., be selected and appointed president through the fraudulent electoral system.

Before the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, and the ensuing Israeli response, there was no reason to believe the people with the power to rig elections would want Trump back in office. Now, there is a big reason to believe that: Trump is a diehard Israel supporter. Although he had said little about the ongoing situation in Gaza (presumably because it is so unpopular, even with Republicans), on Tuesday he told Fox News Israel should “finish the job,” suggesting full support for everything the IDF is doing in Gaza.

What is the job that needs finished, Donald? Killing the rest of the kids in Gaza? Invading Southern Lebanon, ostensibly to “create a buffer” against Hezbollah rockets that are hitting Northern Israel? Wiping out the Houthis? Invasions of Iraq and Syria? An invasion of Iran?

Whatever it is, it’s a big job. And it is certainly not an “America First” job. Virtually no one in America wants a region-wide war in the Middle East, and the people who do want it are too stupid to understand the implications.

Israel has an incredible sway over America’s foreign and domestic policy, through all sorts of mechanisms. The biggest mechanism is obviously just money; the Jewish lobby just pays politicians. But we should also consider that the presumed Mossad agent Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual blackmail ring was almost certainly just one of many Israeli intelligence operations designed to control powerful people in the US. There are many reasons to believe that the Israelis and their American supporters would be able to engineer a Trump election victory in 2024 if they believed it benefited them. I think at this point, given the problems that Biden is facing, and this signaling from Trump, it is very easy to assume that the entire Israeli government wants Trump 2024.

Donald Trump is not stupid. He understands everything stated above about the nature of the election fraud system. What he is doing is appealing to the Jews to allow him to become president again in exchange for full support of their agenda in the region. What that support would entail is not calculable. The overwhelming majority – probably more than 95% – of white males who would be useful to the US military (young, intelligent, fit, competent, brave) are devoted Trump-supporters, and if he called on them to fight a war with Iran, there would be lines out of the military recruitment centers stretching around the block. Trump has a special leadership quality that masculine men a magnetically drawn to, and this gives him the ability to command his young millions to fight a war. This is primal, an atavistic element of male psychology. Very few of these young men will consider the implications.

Although I try to avoid getting too conspiratorial in my analyses, I certainly would not be surprised if there was a 911 type attack on America, and Iran was blamed for it, providing a casus belli that goes beyond “we have to protect Israel.”

Trump Isn’t Actually a Threat to Anything Jews Care About

Aside from the Israelis and the hardline Israel supporters, you will probably see a lightening of the rhetoric about Trump from American Jews, if it is fully established that he is the Israeli candidate.

The assumption that Trump would never be allowed back into office was based on the amount of vitriol aimed at Trump by the Jewish establishment, white women, immigrants, and various other goons of the American Empire. However, the emotionally unhinged reactions to Trump did not ever line-up with reality. Trump did not do any of the things his enemies claimed he would do.

He didn’t build a wall or do mass deportations of immigrants.

He didn’t end the conflict with Russia, and in fact sent weapons to the Ukraine after Obama had refused.

He didn’t dissolve NATO.

He didn’t stop the Black Lives Matter riots, he didn’t stop the coronavirus lunacy, he actually supported the mass vaccination campaign.

He did not “drain the swamp,” and in fact appointed only the worst swamp creatures to offices of relevance.

Although he didn’t start any new wars, which was maybe impressive, he failed to end any conflict excluding in Syria (where the Russians probably deserve a lot more credit than him), and continued many neocon policies, including escalations against Iran. He also supported the Saudi war against the Houthis.

He did more for Israel than he did for America, giving them sovereignty over the Golan Heights, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem (a symbolic gesture saying that there will never be a two-state solution), and organized the Abraham Accords, which denied the existence of Palestine, gave Islamic states ridiculous incentives (bribes, really) to normalize relations with Israel, and were arguably a precursor to the current situation in Palestine.

I want to note that I still have fond feelings towards Trump, and believe he wanted to do good things for the country. I don’t think he was “in on it,” I think he was just not capable of really doing anything, and ended up choosing the path of least resistance. I also fully understand why so many people want him back in office. Obviously, regardless of the list of problems above, the country was much better when he was president.

The American Jewish hysteria surrounding Trump was not rational. It was purely based on fear of a masculine, white, aggressive leader. It was not based on an objective analysis of what he was capable of doing, or how anything he did would harm the Jews. I am reminded of Jewish “comedian” Sarah Silverman’s bit where she says that her (white, non-Jewish) boyfriend raising an American flag reminded her of Hitler and the Holocaust.

During a 2017 episode of the ironically titled “I Love You, America,” Silverman said:

I had a boyfriend many years ago, he was my first boyfriend who had his own house, and one day I went outside to see what he was doing, and he was hoisting an American flag up the flagpole in his front yard. And I instantly felt very weird. It didn’t make sense, but I felt this feeling of like, um, I felt scared – yeah, I felt scared. So I was like, ‘Uh, what are you doing?’ and he said, ‘Raising the flag,’ and I was like, ‘Why?’ and he’s like, ‘Um, because I love America?’ and I was like, ‘Right, right, of course.’ But inside I was shaken. And then I calmly walked to my car and I got inside and I called my sister Susie to tell her what happened. Now, maybe you’re thinking, ‘What do you mean what happened? Nothing happened, your boyfriend put an American flag up at his own house.’ No, you’re totally right, I had no idea why I was freaking out. I just – I had this very visceral reaction and my sister, who knows shit because she’s a rabbi in Israel, explained to me, she was like, ‘Dude, nationalism is innately terrifying for Jews. Think about it: flags, marching, blind allegiance? These things tend to ring a bell for us.’ Right. Of course. Duh. It made sense.

This more or less totally explains the screeching we saw from the Jews about Donald Trump. This inexplicable neurosis would of course be overpowered, in the case of many Jews, by the perceived need to protect Israel. Jews tacitly supporting Donald Trump for the sake of protecting Israel could be compared to a starving man engaging in cannibalism.

You could, and probably will, see the media falling back in their attacks on Trump. They will still attack him, but they will tone it down. In particular, they will start admitting he is likely to win, and publishing polls showing that. And then, on election night, they may well behave very differently than they did in 2020, calling states early for Trump.

The majority of the remainder of the “resistance” to Trump came from women and millennials (as well as some other emotionally volatile people like Keith Olbermann) related to the idea that Trump reminded them of their hated fathers. These people are irrelevant. They don’t control the media.

The Potential to Replace Biden Still Exists

It was conceivable that Nikki Haley would play some significant role in this election cycle, potentially running as a third party candidate. However, after she dropped out this week, and given the way she dropped out, that no longer seems very likely. There is still a chance Biden could be replaced by the Democrat Party with someone who would be considered viable by enough of the power brokers to be installed in November.

Biden certainly appears to be completely burned. The way his administration has managed the Ukraine and Israel situations, along with the man’s cartoonish senility, means that reelecting him would create much more instability in the US.

In theory, his administration supports Israel just as much as Donald Trump. The problem is, none of his voters do, and they are protesting against him. If Trump was president, he could do what he couldn’t manage to do with BLM, and shut down the Palestine protests.

In a modern liberal democracy, you don’t need public support for any policy. A democracy government is always just a puppet of private interest groups, and the population has no ability to influence state decisions. The only threat is domestic upheaval, which is generally extremely unlikely in a democracy, given that people will usually simply say “well, I’ll vote for the other guy next time” instead of going into the streets and creating chaos. However, if Biden is reinstalled as president in November, and the wars continue, the economy turns down, the crime and immigrant situation keeps getting more extreme, you could end up in a situation where no matter how hard the media lies, his real level of support is below 15%. At that point, you are moving into a very precarious situation, where you could start seeing real political violence that threatens the country’s basic stability. There is a switch that can be flipped in the collective psyche of a human population where they, almost simultaneously, become violently enraged, and start acting on that. Right now, Biden’s Israel policy and his immigration invasion both threaten to trigger this collective psychological mechanism.

There is still a chance that Biden is switched out for some other Democrat candidate, which would most likely be Gavin Newsom (although others have claimed Michelle Obama is the more likely option). If this happens, then there is a possibility or probability that the Democrats will continue in power. However, if this doesn’t happen, I’m going to go on a crypto betting website and put a lot of money on Donald Trump winning the 2024 election.

A Personal Note

I hate saying all of this. As the longtime readership is aware, I endorsed Donald Trump in 2015 immediately after his declaration. No matter what happens, the night of the 2016 election will always be one of the greatest nights of my life.

I understand fully that the idea of Donald Trump becoming the bad guy, of starting a major war and sending our boys to go die for Israel in some massive region-wide Middle East mega-war, is extremely painful to even consider.

But I have to tell the truth, and we all have to live in reality if we want to be real human beings loyal to God, to each other, and to ourselves. Not recognizing what is going on here, or denying it, cannot have any good outcomes.

Although I’ve been mentioning that Trump could be the Israel candidate for a while now, it was after his “finish the job” statements Tuesday, where in so many word he explicitly endorsed the entire Israel war agenda, it became necessary to give a full outline of what I think is going on, which is what I’ve done here.

I also have to note that this whole thing is such an unbelievable mess, with so much chaos in the government and seemingly no one really in charge, that it is impossible to make any prediction with any degree of certainty. Predictions about politics are primarily based on game theory, analysis of the motives of rational actors, and from what we’ve seen, no one is really acting rationally (with the exception of Trump, who is acting rationally by appealing directly to Jews and offering unlimited support for their war effort in exchange for an election victory).

No one in the Biden Administration is capable of acting rationally. They continue to back themselves into corners. This Ukraine situation has always been lunacy. Or, at least it was lunacy after the sanctions didn’t collapse the Putin government. The original plan for the war was really about the Russian economy: they believed that they could crush the ruble, which would cause a color revolution ending in Putin being replaced with Alexi Navalny. When that didn’t happen, the only rational move would be to agree to give Putin the Donbass then claim victory because “Putin was stopped from moving further.” Instead, they’ve continued to do things that make zero sense, from really any angle.

Maybe more importantly going forward, the Bibi Netanyahu government, which I’ve asserted would be in charge of a potential Trump administration, is not acting rationally. The assumption that no Arab state is capable of mobilizing against them, along with the assumption that the Sunni-Shia split is something permanent and that some form of alliance between Turkey and Iran is always impossible, are not rational assumptions. These are very dangerous gambles, which could, and honestly, probably will, result in the destruction of the Zionist entity.

I don’t claim to have insider information, and I am not a wizard, so the only ability I have is to analyze the data we do have, and do my best to make sense of it. The correct analysis, in the end, has to be: anything could happen. Biden could die before the election, Trump could be elected and then die, there is probably some nonzero chance Nikki Haley becomes president somehow, there could be a major terrorist attack or a very serious war could break out before the election and those scenarios could mean who even knows what.

Here’s the only thing I know for certain: there’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.