#woe. mental illness be upon ye

[thewiglesswonder]

🎫 Mac!

She has trouble with language after getting hit with the Data Cylinder’s contents. Like, Vosian is a notoriously hard language to even understand, it’s mostly made up of clicks and chirps and there’s a whole element of wing placement to go with it, just exhausting all around. Starscream will mutter something under his breath in Vosian and she’ll respond to it without thinking, because her brain doesn’t care that it’s not a language she can speak, just that she understands it. It’s a very confusing time for all involved.

[toads-treasures]

WIP Wednesday that absolutely no one asked for :)

I’m just noodlin around trying to figure out my own character, you know how it is. Anyway, this is literally just a snippet of me trying to write from her POV which has been a humbling experience.

Special thanks to @galaxycunt who coined this particularly delightful swear that I will be incorporating into my head and heart and also every fic from now on until I die.

[autumnfangirler]

actually ive decided yall are getting more of them

my favourite piece of these two girlfriends ft. rough linework and deeply inaccurate height differences because i couldnt be bothered with either

[maraschinotopped]

original post

[scattered-winter]

seven sentence sunday

tagged by @moonlightbuckleys !!!! sending u ALL the kisses and hugs in the whole world MWAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is. an oc story im rotating. actually. most of u don't have context for them. but regardless <3 here <3 (also wayyyy more than 7 sentences but SHHhhshhhh)

Missy hesitates, raises a hand to stop Kit before he can leave. He pauses, turns back. Missy is fiddling with a long blonde braid, not quite meeting his eyes.

“There’s, uh. Something I’ve been working on,” she says, and then she reaches for her cluttered work desk and picks up a bracelet. It has large, round black beads, with intricate detailing carved into each one. She holds it up for him to see.

“It’s…a bracelet,” Kit deadpans, raising his eyebrows at her. He’s used to Missy tinkering with odds and ends, and even more used to her showing him her creations, but he doesn’t quite get why she’s so nervous over something so small.

Missy hesitates, rubs the back of her neck. He’s never seen her this nervous. “Look…see, the thing is…I made it for you.”

He must look confused, because she rushes to explain herself. “I’ve been studying those power suppression cuffs the humans use on us,” she says quickly. “It’s fascinating how they work, really, but I was hoping to reverse-engineer them to work for…well. What I was hoping.”

She holds up the bracelet to study it with an analytical gaze. “I…don’t know if it works. But if it does…it can neutralize your powers, Kit.”

Kit just looks at her, not quite believing what she’s saying. “You…you mean…this can…take my powers away?” It almost sounds too good to be true, but at the same time…it’s a terrifying thought.

“No, not quite,” Missy explains. “Just…turn them off for a while. You can control whenever you want them off, and disable the bracelet whenever you need to use them. But while it’s on…well, in theory, it’ll temporarily take away your powers and all the…side effects.”

Kit doesn’t know what to say. He just looks at her, mouth agape, trying to process what she’s saying. He could…he could touch her. He could hug her, like he’s always wanted to do. He ached for it always, a literal throbbing underneath his skin whenever he watched the others hug, or lean into each other, or ruffle each other’s hair. The longing for it, for physical contact, was almost more painful than anything else he’d ever experienced.

And now Missy was here, saying she could help him.

Fuck, he wanted to hug her now more than ever.

Instead, he lets out a trembling exhale and says, “Does…does it work?”

“I haven’t tested it yet,” Missy admits. “I mean…there isn’t really a safe way to do that…but. I don’t know. I just…I wanted you to know that I’m working on it. I won’t stop until I’ve figured it out, I swear.”

Gingerly, she hands him the bracelet, and Kit is careful not to let his fingers brush hers, despite the fact that he’s wearing gloves.

“I think,” he says slowly, not even daring to hope, “I can maybe figure out a way to test it. Without anyone getting hurt.”

Missy grins at him, dark skin smudged with some kind of oil from one of her gadgets. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

Kit hesitatingly smiles back and backs out of her workshop, knees wobbling. He isn’t quite sure how he makes it out into the hallway and up several flights of stairs to the very top floor, then the ladder up to the loft. To Ryker’s room.

He knocks softly on the trapdoor, and Ryker grunts an invitation. Kit sticks his head through the opening, and Ryker looks up from where he’s sunning himself on the floor, large wings spread wide to catch the sunlight streaming through the large skylight set into the roof.

“Hey, Kit. C’mon in.”

Kit climbs inside and carefully lowers the door closed behind him. Ryker shifts to a sitting position, black wings sweeping over the floor and coming to rest behind him.

Kit doesn’t know where to start. The bracelet is hanging from his grasp, cool and light, and Ryker is sitting in front of him in a beam of sunlight, so close but so incredibly far just like everyone else, and Kit doesn’t know how to cross the distance without hurting, without killing.

“Kit,” Ryker says, and it’s his soft voice, the one he uses when he’s trying to comfort one of the younger kids after a nightmare. “What’s going on?”

Kit swallows. He can do this. “Missy’s been working on a way to…to neutralize my powers,” he says, voice hitching involuntarily. “And the only way I can think of to test it without…without risking anyone getting hurt…”

Because Ryker is the only one who has touched him skin to skin and lived. Because his powers are unique, and his self-healing can keep up with Kit’s destruction, at least for a while.

It’s painful. Kit knows that. But it isn’t fatal, and that’s better than anything else.

He can see the moment Ryker understands why he’s come. “You need to test it on me,” he says.

Kit nods, barely able to draw in a full breath. He feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, threatening to fall, and he can’t step back onto solid ground but he’s too afraid to take the plunge.

But Ryker just stretches out a hand, palm forward, fingers splayed, and just holds it there, in the space between them. And he just waits.

Kit draws in a shaking breath, slowly slips on the bracelet. He pinches a bead between his fingers, just as Missy had instructed, and twists it three ticks to the left. The carvings in the beads light up a cool, pale blue.

Then, with trembling fingers, Kit removes his gloves, one at a time. His fingers are pale, like the rest of his body probably is. He’s fairly sure his heart has stopped beating.

“Kit,” Ryker says, and Kit realizes he’s frozen up like a deer in headlights. “It’s okay,” Ryker continues, voice gentle. “We don’t need to—”

“No,” Kit manages to gasp. “I…I need to know.” If there’s a chance, if there’s hope, if he’ll ever find release.

Kit takes in a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and reaches forward. He’s moving in slow motion, swimming through syrup, as his hand slowly moves toward Ryker’s. Ryker doesn’t move, doesn’t try to reach for him. He just waits and lets Kit come to him.

Their fingers are a breath apart now, and Kit gathers his courage. He’s ready to pull away at the slightest sign of Ryker being hurt, at the slightest spark of his power surging into Ryker’s body. He reaches forward.

And their fingers brush against each other.

Kit pulls back immediately, in shock, in surprise, because he expected Ryker to flinch back, because that’s what always, always happened.

But there had been nothing. No spark of warmth, no crackle of fire in his veins. Kit slowly, cautiously presses the tips of his fingers to Ryker’s again, gauging his reaction for any indication that he needs to stop.

The only sign he gets is a smile, spreading slow and wide across Ryker’s face.

Kit keeps reaching, keeps moving, until their palms are flat against each other. Still, no burst of power, and Ryker is still smiling at him, so widely it must be hurting his cheeks.

Slowly, Ryker tangles their fingers, and their hands slot together like puzzle pieces.

And oh. His hands are rough, callused from battle, but they’re warm. It’s like everything Ryker had imagined, and at the same time it’s so, so much more.

He lets out a small laugh that cuts off into a hitched sob. Ryker is beaming at him, gently squeezing his hand, and Kit doesn’t know if he’s laughing more or crying as he squeezes back.

“It…it works,” he gasps through tears. “I…I didn’t think…” Then he gasps, sits up straighter as he remembers something important.

“What?” Ryker is looking at him in concern, their hands still tangled together, and Kit isn’t sure he ever wants to let go. “Are you okay?”

Kit stands, pulls Ryker up with him. “I need to go hug Missy,” he says, and Ryker grins.

“Well, what are we waiting for?”

tagging !! @soleadita and @xandromedan and @dauntingday and all my other writer friends!!!! and anyone else who wants to!!!!!!!!!!!!

[strwbrymlkshake]

damn it's so depressing that I'd constantly be asking "do you still like me" "do you still love me" etc due to a decade of trauma and the reason he dumped me WAS because he did not love me anymore. that shit sad as hell

[kingsblaze]

Tell me a fact about our shared special interest, Charizard.

Said shared special interest perks up instantly at the topic change and does a quick waddle to sit on the conversation. Her son joins her excitedly. Firecracker, the little Charmander, sits on her leg.

Leon couldn't help but smile at the audience before he looked to Lee.

"Charizards are great! Capable of thriving in many hot locations, they're often accepted in nearly any Region with the proper documentation."

"Known to mostly be fighting Pokemon, they take great care and pride in their battles. Win or lose, as long as it was a battle where they gave their all, they only get more powerful. Their flames get larger and there's even an account of the flame being so large that it was bigger than the documented Charizard's body."

"A lot of its warrior like attitude comes from its time as a Charmeleon who is known to be extremely brutal in their fights. Now as a Charizard, despite their pride of being 'Top Dog', they never pick a fight with a Pokemon or opponent weaker than itself. That's one of the reasons why any direct attacks from these pokemon are ever rarely documented if only because they will refuse to fight."

Cherry seems to preen at this, feeling an expert example of what a great Charizard should be like. Firecracker looks on with nearly sparkling eyes at his mom. Leon could only chuckle, his smile never living his face.

"On that note, when they are furious it's incredibly easy to tell despite their already ferocious deposition. It's actually a good thing to note for people not used to handling them. The color of the fire on their tail becomes a bright blue color when they're angry. The heat they produce becomes unbearable to withstand. Charizards are capable of melting boulders which, btw, is more than enough to melt ash!"

He gestures with his hand, mainly for the charmander watching, "Charizards are incredible fliers, even able to handle being nearly 5,000ft in the air. It's even used by Alola for transportation. Just one of many other reasons why I really wanna go-"

He clears his throat briefly, "Anyway, there are other forms that we both know of, but I'll cover them anyway. Gigantamax Charizard is an incredible foe, both today and back when Dynamax Pokemon ran rampant. The air around them seem to boil while they were able to release castle wall melting attacks. Truly what people would picture of a fire breathing dragon."

His smiling face than dampens momentarily, a huff- no a pout fighting on his face.

"Which brings me to one of the last points about Charizards. Despite their shape and likeness that's used today in Hammerlocke for a generic dragon form, it's still not considered a dragon. Which is even more of insulting when we look to Charizard X. The form that changes out it's flying typing to dragon. And yet- AND YET IT'S STILL NOT CONSIDERED IN IT'S OWN RITE A DRAGON!!! I just think it's wrong to use it's likeness while also denying it it's justice."

Cherry in turns blows out white smoke in agree with a nod of her head. Leon sighs running his fingers through his hair.

"That being said Charizard X is jet black because it's fire runs so hot that it burns its scales and any other flames it has turn bright blue constantly. It's power and heat has a hard time stabilizing safely at those degrees. Charizard Y suffers from a far more internal change though nevertheless, still impactful. It's body morphs, growing more skeletal support and to become far more aerodynamic. It's speed becomes insane, only fighter jets can keep up with it."

He pauses... and then looked back to Lee.

"I'm sorry, what was the question?"

[feardrummed]

@bravevolunteer: "Did you smash the mirror in the bathroom?"

lisa frankenstein starters / accepting

Honestly, she doesn't really know why she did it. She couldn't recall any specific thing setting her off to doing that. Just that she'd been angry and overwhelmed, emotions boiling over into rash actions. She's broken things before in a few similar cases, but all of those had been written off as accidents. There wasn't really any understandable way to explain what happened this time.

Still, she tries to play it off when answering her brother's question, lifting her arm to show the bandages scattered along. "Nope, doesn't sound like me at all." It doesn't sound like something any rational or stable person would do, but she hasn't felt particularly rational or stable in a long time. Still, despite her jokes, she doesn't actually look at him. "But, if you had any rules you wanted to break, Dad's probably too pissed already to notice something else."

[ohwormwood]

i've lost my goddamn mind: rambling on parallels in isat and frankenstein

i need to write this down so i can try and defend my ass because it sounds crazy until you read the goddamn book and suddenly IT ALL MAKES FUCKING SENSE.

[woe, spoilers be upon ye! for both isat and frankenstein of course]

for context: i am a gender studies minor. i write on queer theory for funsies. and sometimes i like to let my hyperfixations melt together like cheese. this is the result.

Siffrin and victor. it's the fucking rampant mental illness for me. i cannot stress how many times i stopped mid-chapter and went "theyre the same fucking picture". it's fucking uncanny at times. The absolute extent of their self loathing is so in tandem that it's kind of scary. Both of them, despite not being directly involved, hold the weight of the deaths of their loved ones upon themselves (even if in Siffrin's case it was temporary, the point still stands). They both love their families so dearly???? like, to the point of self destruction and death. The absolute terror of losing your family to a force you cannot control, created by your own hand???

"I often suffered my mule to lag behind, and indulged in the misery of reflection. At other times I spurred on the animal before my companions, that I might forget them, the world, and, more of all, myself." (Shelley 67) Hello???? Siffrin???? is that you

So, as you probably guessed.... Loop is the creature in this case. The foil. The reflection. the absolute anguish of being denied humanity and comfort and love but having the capacity and inclination to love a family you cannot obtain. The simultaneous scorn yet codependence upon the other half they didn't get to choose, a need for revenge but also a profound and all-consuming self-hatred and remorse??? the self-denial of love???

"my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks turned towards me with affection" (Shelley 96) Head in fucking hands. loop watching the party. ough.

"if i cannot inspire love, i will cause fear" (Shelley 107) LIKE. MOTHERFUCKER. OUGHHH.

the fact that victor cannot fucking die for the vast majority of the story, spurned on by revenge and grief and self-loathing.... yeah act 5 siffrin...

I see this as like. the ISAT bad ending. Two Hats if loop had a lil chat with the king and went off the deep end. Or just loop, if they had no concept of their former self. if siffrin was a true frankenstein in that situation, i think that loop would definitely end up as a true version of the creature.

both siffrin and victor feeling undeserving of their family's love because of their actions

Oh here's the one that will send ppl over the edge: "or longed, with a devouring maladie du pays..." (Shelley 139) When i tell you I fucking almost yelled in the middle of work. I had to take a fucking pause. because the topic of homesickness and love for one's culture comes up a LOT in both of these. even if siffrin doesn't remember it.

Sidenote: i will forever and always hold in my heart that victor is ace. i am literally writing a fucking theoretical essay on this. I cannot explain here how much i have picked apart every allusion to this over the course of the text. it's genuinely a problem.

"You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself." (Shelley 170) i. i cannot say anything else about this but. Loop. yeah.

something something, fallen angel motifs in both the creature and loop

the creature's overseeing of the family in the cottage makes me think a lot about how loop would have seen their family interacting with who they could have been/used to be every fucking loop. but being unable to do anything about it. and then when they DO meet them. they do not recognize them and see them as inhuman. i simply fucking cry.

Anyways to end on a lighthearted note: isa is my walton. hopelessly gay. devoted to a fucking fault. secretly holds the braincells. the most loving man on gods green earth. Sympathizer 1000. Yeah.

did i need to do this? no. does it make any logical sense? absolutely fucking not. but am i going to be thinking about this for the next 3 weeks? yes. yes i am. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[johannestevans]

Woe, Boypussy Be Upon Ye: Transing Characters in Fanfic & Fanart

What’s the deal with envisioning your blorbos as transgender?

Originally published in Prism & Pen. Also on my Patreon.

It’s a meme, I made it. Here it is.

It’s been unbelievably positive for me as a trans dude, the change in approach to trans characters in fandom and subsequently in media in general, and I just wanted to write a bit about my experiences with the cultural shift and how positive it’s been for me personally.

What’s weird about people in fandom confidently, nay casually, writing characters as transgender and just having them be a regular dude with a pussy or a regular girl with a dick is that like… I remember when it wasn’t a thing.

Back in 2009, for example, which was a big time for fandom — Superwholock was running rampant, Star Trek (2009) had just gotten a new generation of fans into Trek — or even in 2012, when Les Misérables (2012) had dropped and gotten new people into Les Mis, or when the Hobbit had revamped a lot of interest in Tolkien’s books and the original Lord of the Rings films, not to mention The Hobbit itself, none of this even getting into the Marvel movies, like…

It just. It wasn’t a thing.

Sure, there were transgender characters around, characters that people wrote as trans, but I remember it so strongly as being very niche. It was deep, emotional work where people had to work to “justify” the emotional work they were doing, and even then, they couldn’t just say a character was trans and be chill about it. In order to justify a character being transgender, one had to put in mountains of evidence, or admit the trans perspective was a genderbend of sorts.

For me, I’m pretty sure the moment when things started to change was when I was reading and writing a lot of Loki-centred fanfiction, roundabout 2014–2017 — and the more permissive culture was very much borne of Loki being seen as an exception.

Loki, of the Marvel film and comics, is an alien secretly kidnapped and adopted into the Odinson family, and is known to change his body and appearance frequently, including changing his apparent gender or expression.

He was, in the comic canon (not to mention the original Norse mythologies) quite genderfluid, after all, so even if you didn’t refer to him as explicitly transgender, you could explore him as being some variety of genderfluid, nonbinary, or intersex — as an alien, as a Jötnar as opposed to being AEsir like Thor or Odin, as a god.

But then things changed a bit more.

Welcome to Night Vale, a weird narrative horror podcast, started in 2012, and one thing you could rely on from a lot of fanfics is that people might have weird or alien or otherwise not-not cisgender but not entirely cisgender genitals either. The Magnus Archives, also a narrative horror podcast, started in 2016, and when I got into the fandom in roundabout 2019, which is also when the new Good Omens TV show was due to release and there was a resurgence of interest in the book as well, I remember experiencing a sort of newfound thing where like…

I’d had a mental block around writing many trans characters, before — I could create my own characters who were trans, but a big part of me still felt like I wasn’t allowed to just make a canon character trans if they’d never been mentioned as being trans before or made explicitly trans.

What was it that stopped me?

My own dysphoria? Perhaps a little. Maybe some lacking self-confidence.

Most of all, it just felt as though I couldn’t justify it. I couldn’t justify seeing a cis man written by cis people in a cis show and saying, “Hey, no, he’s like me, actually” — even though I could easily do it about the same character being gay or Jewish or even chronically ill or disabled.

It was like there was a mental block inside me I just couldn’t get past.

I still had a lot of the old online cultural expectations stamped onto me, I think, even being an out trans man who knew many many other trans and intersex and nonbinary people of every gender imaginable in fandom.

I think for Welcome to Night Vale and then especially for The Magnus Archives, part of what made it so easy for people to write and envisage different characters as trans, the fact that there was such limited physical description of characters, the fact that you were attached to them by their voices alone, allowed people to envisage them in whatever way they liked.

In The Magnus Archives, most of the main characters are envisaged as trans in one way or another — Daisy Tonner particularly is explored with all flavours of butch dykey complexity, trans in whichever ways or directions are juiciest and most interesting. But for so many of the characters — from Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood to Sasha James and Tim Stoker to Elias Bouchard to Peter Lukas to any of the other Entities — there is no end to the characters people will explore or envisage as trans or nonbinary or just straight-up outside of gender or gender-weird.

No one has to justify a period character being trans with no problems. Loads of people write Izzy Hands or Stede Bonnet or Edward Teach, as being trans in Our Flag Means Death alongside the canonic nonbinary character Jim Jimenez. Any and all characters, trans or otherwise, are invited to participate in ye olde top surgery performed by Roach, the ship’s surgeon, or somehow get hold of ye olde hormones in whatever handwavy way necessary, and it’s cool and fine.

And what’s wonderful for me is the way I see the current approach to trans characters gleefully and delightedly applied to fandoms that are years if not decades old.

I see people write House MD fanfic now where they just go, right from the beginning, yeah this or that character is trans, and they’ve always been trans, and it’s chill. What if James Wilson was trans? It’d rock, that’s what. What if Greg House was trans? Yeah, he’d probably do his own T-shots under the table.

People write Spock as trans now, or guys from M*A*S*H, or Jean Valjean.

What if in the X-Files Dana Scully and Fox Mulder were T4T? Makes complete sense, and also, the idea fucks absolutely. They’re already so lesbian vibes for each other, it fits perfectly.

I wrote a silly little Tumblr post a few weeks ago envisioning Morticia and Gomez Addams as T4T, and it blew up immediately — I think about how if I’d made that most a decade ago it would have been met with crickets, if not a bit of scorn, and not just from transphobes, but just people who like me at that time hadn’t been able to relax and have fun with it.

That’s the real crux of the matter, the impact a lot of fandom has made on me and the way that trans characterisation is approached, the hunger I have for trans characterisation now — it’s the idea of being trans as joyful and delightful, as inherently fun and sexy, but also just as being something every day and normal. A detail you can include as casually in your interpretation of a canon character as any other headcanon.

There’s a beautiful freedom in it, and I’m so grateful to have been able to learn from and grow because of other trans people paving the way with their confident headcanons and delving into trans ideas in their fic.

It’s done wonders for me everywhere — not just in my fanfic, but most of all in the original works I pen now, each one of them featuring trans character after trans character.

[themostsanebug]

woe. more steven be upon ye. i drew this at dinner like. last week??? i think??? maybe a few weeks ago???? point is this is a wee bit older but still!!!!! steven!!!!! also. yes those are will wood lyrics im NOT sane okay???

@ask-steven-stevenson

my dad who is mentally ill and hates admitting it<3 /silly

[peculiar-shardscape]

Don’t know if anyone here remembers our AO character but uh woe, self projected mental illness be upon ye

The seahorse image if it’s hard to see in the drawing btw

[squeakadeeks]

WOE, MORE GUYS BE UPON YE

for yet another OCverse, this one is called Fiasco and its a groundhog's day/multiverse looping narrative kind of thing. these three are named Atlas, Adalchi and Io. The story is heavily based on modest mouse's discography so as you can imagine the three of them Aint Having A Normal One.

the general premise/setting is these three are universe hopping from place to place trying to find a stable home.

In every world they enter, there is some canned storyline where they have to trigger certain scenes in order to progress and ‘save the world’. To reach the happy outcome of saving the world, there are a series of win and lose conditions, if they do any of the lose conditions, the universe will implode and they have to start all over in the next one, if they reach all of the win conditions, then the universe will become stable and saved, and they can settle down and stop hopping. An example of a win condition might be "save the president's son from the bad guys!" and a lose condition might be "failed to stop the androids from destroying the factory!"

The specific story they have to play out and the state of the universe they tunnel into is based on their mental state. If they feel low, they will be stuck in a grim, bleak, terrible cycle, so they try to perform this insane uncanny upbeat manic persona to make the storylines they live through easier. Atlas and Io do this well. Adalchi does not. There's all kinds of different worlds they go to but theyre all modern cities. They might look like futuristic rome, a bight, active and colorful solarpunk city, or a grim far late stage capitalism dystopia, etc.

They actually started the game with a different Adalchi who was arguably the best adjusted out of any of them, but after that Adalchi dies, they go back and basically abduct another version of him. But the backup Adalchi is much less adjusted (if nothing else because he was just dragged into this fresh cycle when Atlas and Io have been doing it for some 200-odd iterations.) Adalchi does not learn that they had an earlier version of him for awhile.

the game started when they were employees at a seemingly mundane office park. The original three of them discovered a portal in a supply closet and went through, which triggered the repeating multiverse game. If they die, they reappear in the nexus/office park (thats where they found the backup adalchi), but they will not remember their situation or history, resetting their struggle and potentially bringing the game to the nexus too (risking blowing up the ‘load bearing post’ for all the worlds).

the plot is mostly about poking holes in the concept of the win/lose conditions and trying to figure out whats going on with the office park/nexus and how to either win or get out of the game.

the cheesey metaphorical deeper meaning is that series of looping stories in different settings where you still have to play out certain roles is meant to be a reflection of cycles of mental illness and bad behavior. like doing all the "win conditions" (self care, professional help, etc) but still feeling stuck in a tragic repeating loop over and over again.

[mariana-oconnor]

The Sussex Vampire pt 2

It took me five times to write the title correctly, so this is clearly going to go brilliantly.

Back to the vampires

Now, my working theory is that the son is secretly trying to off his new half-sibling and frame his stepmother. Mainly I think this because Peru, because British authors in the first part of the twentieth century loved a good untraceable tropical poison from South America.

“She verra ill,” cried the girl, looking with indignant eyes at her master. “She no ask for food. She verra ill. She need doctor. I frightened stay alone with her without doctor.”

First... wow. That's some terrible accent work there. Yikes. Second, is she ill because she's been sucking poison out of her baby's neck?

“Would your mistress see Dr. Watson?” “I take him. I no ask leave. She needs doctor.”

First, all he's going to do is prescribe brandy. And second, it's lucky he's actually a medical doctor (Although I'm not convinced he's ever done much medicine. He wasn't at his practice much before he abandoned it to live with Holmes again.) You can't just go assuming that everyone called doctor such and such knows medicine. I have many friends and relatives who are doctors and literally 1 of them is a medical doctor.

Both were high, and yet my impression was that the condition was rather that of mental and nervous excitement than of any actual seizure.

Or... an untraceable tropical poison...

“A fiend! A fiend! Oh, what shall I do with this devil?”

A fiend? A devil? Or perhaps...

(No, she's referring to the son. Definitely because who else could it be. Way too obviously directed at her husband here for it to actually be him.)

So far no brandy though. Watson must have lost all his medical knowledge since he left his practice. Woe.

“He loves me. Yes. But do I not love him? Do I not love him even to sacrifice myself rather than break his dear heart? That is how I love him. And yet he could think of me—he could speak of me so.”

Lady, I get it, I get it. You don't want to tell him his son is a murderer. But given the evidence you've left the poor man with, what do you expect. You think he'll just be like 'well, she beat my son and she keeps chowing down on our baby's neck, but I trust that she knows what she's doing?'

...a youth entered the room. He was a remarkable lad, pale-faced and fair-haired, with excitable light blue eyes which blazed into a sudden flame of emotion and joy as they rested upon his father. He rushed forward and threw his arms round his neck with the abandon of a loving girl.

The child is evil.

Although I kind of dislike how they're using his 'excess' of emotional response to show this, especially with the comparison to a woman. There's a distinct undercurrent in this description that sparks of him 'showing too much emotion for a boy' and therefore being othered.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into things in order to support my own hypothesis. Am I altering data to suit my story? Am I the misogynistic one reading too much into this.

Although it literally says in the text that his father 'gently disengaged himself from the embrace with some little show of embarrassment.'

Like, tell me that isn't outright supporting my reading.

Presently he returned, and behind him came a tall, gaunt woman bearing in her arms a very beautiful child, dark-eyed, golden-haired, a wonderful mixture of the Saxon and the Latin. Ferguson was evidently devoted to it, for he took it into his arms and fondled it most tenderly.

Watson out there refusing to apply gendered pronouns. How very modern of him. Lol.

It is a bit weird to see a baby referred to as 'it' so consistently, though. Not even 'them'. Reminds me of the baby object in the Sims.

Then he smiled, and his eyes came back to the baby. On its chubby neck there was this small puckered mark. Without speaking, Holmes examined it with care. Finally he shook one of the dimpled fists which waved in front of him. “Good-bye, little man. You have made a strange start in life."

Holmes being very nice to a baby. Actually interacting with... it? when he really doesn't need to. Not like the baby knows what he's saying. Just taking the time to be nice to a baby. Super heartless and lacking in empathy, that man.

“Do you like her, Jack?” Holmes turned suddenly upon the boy. His expressive mobile face shadowed over, and he shook his head. “Jacky has very strong likes and dislikes,” said Ferguson, putting his arm round the boy. “Luckily I am one of his likes.”

On the one hand, perfectly reasonable to dislike the woman who beat you. On the other hand, maybe the father knows his son is capable of terrible things.

The boy cooed and nestled his head upon his father's breast. Ferguson gently disengaged him.

Oh my god, he's a kid. Let the boy have a hug. Even if he is a monster-child, this is probably why. Though I have a sneaking suspicion the story is going to try to tell me it's the exact opposite.

"Now, Mr. Ferguson, I am a busy man with many calls, and my methods have to be short and direct. The swiftest surgery is the least painful. Let me first say what will ease your mind. Your wife is a very good, a very loving, and a very ill-used woman.”

And your son is a murderer.

“I will do so, but in doing so I must wound you deeply in another direction.” “I care nothing so long as you clear my wife. Everything on earth is insignificant compared to that.”

People really need to think before they make statements like this. I understand that he is unlikely to consider that his son is trying to murder his other child in a fit of outraged jealousy over having to share his beloved father, but still... famous last words.

"The idea of a vampire was to me absurd. Such things do not happen in criminal practice in England."

The specficity of this is very bizarre. Do they happen in other kinds of practices in England?

"Was there not a queen in English history who sucked such a wound to draw poison from it?”

Was there?

OK, apparently this refers to Queen Eleanor, who sucked the poison from Edward I's poisoned knife wound in 1272. A story that has, sadly, fallen out of vogue in the English educational system. Probably because we don't really like to discuss the crusades except in a very general, distant sense. Or... y'know... any of the other times we invaded people. There are a lot of gaps in English history lessons.

“A South American household. My instinct felt the presence of those weapons upon the wall before my eyes ever saw them. It might have been other poison, but that was what occurred to me. When I saw that little empty quiver beside the small bird-bow, it was just what I expected to see. If the child were pricked with one of those arrows dipped in curare or some other devilish drug, it would mean death if the venom were not sucked out."

Curare, that was the name I've been trying to think of. Very popular for a while in literature.

“I watched him as you fondled the child just now. His face was clearly reflected in the glass of the window where the shutter formed a background. I saw such jealousy, such cruel hatred, as I have seldom seen in a human face.”

Sometimes it does suck to be right.

Suck... heh. Pun wasn't intended, but I'll take it.

“I think a year at sea would be my prescription for Master Jacky,” said Holmes.

Like... they're making him work on a ship? I know therapy isn't really anything at this point in time. But would-be murderer child gets sent to sea?

I doubt he'll be killed in a mysterious shipwreck off page, like so many others have been, but really... how is sending him to sea going to help literally anyone? Surely it'll just make him angrier and more resentful.

Victorian parenting was super weird.

Is this to 'make him a man', because we've seen him being compared to a woman? Is this some sort of misguided restoration of the gender binary to save him?

"There, now,” he added as he closed the door behind him, “I think we may leave them to settle the rest among themselves.”

Also Holmes reading the room well enough to know husband and wife need some alone time?

(One last vampire gif there that I don't know if anyone but me will even recognise. Josef, you almost made me understand the vampire thing...)

[shrikebrother]

woe . mentally ill teenage furries be upon ye .

[mapsofnonexistentplaces]

WOE, MORE OLZHAS QUESTIONS BE UPON YE: ✨🍕🥊

OLZHAAAAAAS I GET TO TALK ABOUT MY FAVORITE GUY 🫡

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

was looking for an excuse to use qazaq names for an oc for ages because i think theyre extremely pretty sounding and i finally got the chance to with em, olzhas was a name i landed on very quickly because the zh digraph caught my eye.... other contenders for eir name early on were karim and kamshat the former of which i incorporated into eir last name anyway!

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

this is genuinely the most important trivia about em i think it puts everything about em into perspective. eir favorite dish is just like. a mid as fuck plate of cooked polenta. e is a simple italian man who can cook all kinds of wonderful things but The Slop is eir uncontested favorite food in the entire world

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

UGH what does this guy NOT love to do e's literally obsessed with accruing as many hobbies as e possibly can. i think the most effective way i can answer this is just like. what are the FUNNIEST things e likes/dislikes doing.

to that i say: e's the type of guy who gets all excited and relaxed whenever e cleans. like it helps em unwind very easily without fail, if e's ever insanely antsy and nothing else is working out e will just grab a broom and spend the next 3 hours with it in hand and e WILL have a great time

conversely e notably detests doing any kind of drawing or artistic work in general because whenever e approaches a hobby e's most typically going into it with the mentality of like. ok yeah i can become really good at this if i just follow these steps and the pathway to art improvement is just too asinine and improvisational for eir usual "ill just brute force attempts until i do it Right" methods for other things. like e just gets very quickly discouraged and impatient with it all... at least e has the bass to play whenever e's feeling inspired hah