#wrong kind of accidental exposure therapy

[1d-trashcan]

On a scale of 1 to “I asked my mum to drive to the bins with our rubbish bc what if I get chased by a wasp walking the 50 meters to the bins and die”, how bad is your wasp phobia?

[aggressively-crying]

Probably bad transformers animated headcanons

Bumblebee listens to 100 gecs and uses TikTok. Both of which he does with his speakers turned up. In public.

Prowl has considered buying a fur suit but stops himself every time he's about to go through with it.

Optimus purposefully misuses slang and memes to watch the crew members that know what the terms mean die inside. Even pronounces them wrong for extra flavor.

Ratchet watches soap operas. It started out as simply being curious as to what trash the humans consider good stories but then he got legitimately invested.

Sometimes Bulkhead tries eating human food just because it looks really really good, but it always inevitably tastes kinda gross because he wasn't meant to process that kind of material. He wants to find a way to convert it to energon but until that day comes, he's forced to simply stare and long for it.

The repair crew has movie nights once a week with Sari, both to get a better understanding of human culture, and as an excuse to hang out. Every once in awhile they accidentally pick a movie that they don't realize Sari probably should not be watching until it's too late. They do not speak of the Friday the 13th incident. Or the time Sari picked Coraline and Optimus had to leave halfway through.

In that vein, after realizing how jumpy he was about spiders on Halloween, Optimus actually tried giving himself a degree of exposure therapy so no harmless tiny arachnids needlessly die by his axe. Now he at least TRIES to bring them outside with a cup and a piece of paper, but he's not above just asking Bulkhead to do it instead.

Ratchet has taken to finding old junker cars and trying to fix them up in his spare time. Their makeup is painfully simple compared to Cybertronian anatomy, and it's not like he has to worry about what happens if he can't fix one fast enough. He still thinks just selling spare parts on the open market is barbaric, but it's kind of therapeutic for him to just work on something like that without the stress of having someone's life or even just general well-being in his hands. He lets Bulkhead repaint them when he's finished.

Sari does NOT actually know how sex works. At least, like, not accurately. The version of it she told to Optimus was wildly off-base, but still juuuust close enough to freak him out.

Similarly, Prowl has observed nature long enough to get a sort of incomplete idea of how all that goes down, and has come to the conclusion that organics universally lay eggs.

Bumblebee plays horror games with the lights off just to prove hes not chicken, and then has horrible nightmares for a week straight. He also fully believes in every video game creepypasta/myth you tell him, and swears up and down he's seen Herobrine.

Bulkhead is terrified of mice because he doesn't understand how anything can be that teeny tiny and he heard they can chew through metal like some kind of freaky organic scraplet. He gets nightmares about Ratchet opening him up and finding a whole colony of them chewing on his wires.

Sometimes while Megatron was just a head in Sumdac's lab, he'd be bored enough watch whatever was on TV between schemes and naps. The only thing he would ever admit he liked was wrestling because he felt at least a little vindication watching the pathetic organic wretches beat the slag out of each other. That and it reminded him a bit of his gladiator days.

Shockwave is a pretentious energon tea drinker and has whatever the Cybertron equivalent of a loose leaf tea infuser is. He INSISTS it's objectively better and whatever the more normie type of energon is simply cannot compare.

Lugnut has date nights with Strika but they usually start off as sparring matches that get juuuust a little out of hand. He would not have it any other way and loves when his big scary wife throws him across the room and into a wall, then immediately rushes over to check if he still functions. It may be the concussions, but he swears she looks like a holy being towering above him from where he's slumped over on the floor.

Blitzwing is actually pretty functional from day to day. He's had his multiple faces for long enough that he knows how to cope with them and work with them. Sometimes he has poor impulse control, and sometimes he can't stop himself from feeding his anger, but overall he's actually pretty good about keeping himself in check. He just leans into the whole "crazy" schtick because he knows that's how others see him and no matter what he does, he's not gonna change their perception. It's sort of a spite thing when he annoys people with it, but it's also kind of a self deprecating cry for help that he's REALLY hoping someone will eventually pick up on.

Starscream is only a Decepticon because he wanted to pursue acting but nobody would hire a Warframe. He sought out fame and adoring fans in the gladiator arena, and he got what he was after until Megatron kicked his skid plate and Starscream was suddenly no longer the popular seeker heartthrob bad boy, but a laughing stock who fell when someone bigger and stronger clipped his wings. He originally joined Megatron with the intent to climb the ranks and snatch his following out from under him, but then the war broke out and his whole plan was thrown off track.

No Cybertronian is 100% okay with Earth vehicles looking the way they do and not being alive. It's pretty creepy seeing what they think is just some guy carrying an organic around only to remember right, yeah, the organic's controlling him like cordyceps in an ant and he was never alive to begin with.

Blurr has to intentionally talk much slower than he would at his natural speaking pace just because nobody can understand what in Primus's name he's saying.

Between him, Jazz and the Jet Twins, it's actually kind of a meme on Cybertron that the elite guard badge messes with your speech synthesizer because Sentinel is the only member that speaks even slightly normally.

Jazz once attempted to show Sentinel a nature documentary that Prowl recommended. Sentinel proceeded to purge his fuel tank about five minutes in and forbid jazz from watching that filth outside his own quarters.

Both of the jet twins play fortnite whenever they're on earth and come up with the nastiest incomprehensible insults they can to spam into the microphone because they think that's just part of the game that nobody is taking seriously rather than unbelievably toxic people having mental breakdowns at losing.

And finally,

Cybertron has its own cryptids and urban legends: a long, serpentine beast, as long as 60 Warframes that slinks through the oil of Iacon's aqueducts. A jet black cybercat with three tails that will take your spark if you look it in the optics for too long. A shuttle painted in neons, appearing at the station on its own when there is only one transformer at the station, speaking honeyed words in a voice that sounds too familiar, and promising to bring you home safe, but keeps driving and never stops until you're in stasis or offline. A spectral figure that haunts the underground tunnels that few dare traverse, keeping to the shadows and darting out of sight, but you can always hear their engine revving, and always hear their anguished wails. A frame-bare mechanical avian, practically skeletal, that circles over the sea of rust, massive in size and always waiting to swoop down on unsuspecting mechs. They are spoken of in hushed whispers, none know for certain whether they are real or simply fiction. Most think it's silly to believe in such things, but the superstitions around them persist.

[shywhumpauthor]

Hey! I need some help with my writing, and you seemed like the best place to go!

So my whumpee is being experimented on in a lab, eventually to be turned into an angel-like thing (wings and blindness).

I would love to build on the whump scenarios that happen in the lab, and maybe after she escapes with the inhuman caretaker?

Lemme know! Thank you so so much, I love your posts! 💞

Aw anon of course, I’ll help as much as I can! I’m a bit confused with your wording—but I believe you’re asking for ideas for the experiments and the aftermath with the caretaker? Correct me if I’m wrong though! Also I wasn’t entirely sure what you meant by inhuman caretaker, so I kept that aspect kind of vague. Same kind of thing with the “blindness”, I tried to do a bit of research on angels for this but it led me in a hundred different directions sooo I tried?

For experiments, the big thing I can think of is surgeries. A long series of painful, complicated procedures, each one designed to target a small part of the transition. Altering Whumpee’s anatomy of their spine/shoulder blades to first create space for the wings, one to connect the beginning muscles to those they already have, careful attachments of the ligaments, extending the nerves through the new appendages. Have fun with the technicalities here, add in as many little details as you wish.

For other aspects of the (assuming) human to angel, drugs. String a bunch of random letters together, boom. All sorts of drugs, to promote fast healing, less recovery time needed between operations, to prevent illness associated with infections they might contract with the prolonged open exposure of the wounds. Give them something that will lessen the chances of their body rejecting the new additions, that will be fun.

Then once the wings are attached, lots of tests. Stimulation, reaction time, having to physically teach them how to control the new body parts. If they have feathers, that will be a whole new nightmare, having to grow them, grooming, the technicalities behind how they will be produced, on and on.

Physical therapy of course, do I really need to extend on this?

Other possibilities for what happens in the lab, for sensation testing, stick a bunch of little tiny needle sensors into the wings, use those to track their ability to connect the sensory to their mind, see if they can pinpoint where the needles are without seeing them put in. Run little shocks through the metal, test how much the current translates from the appendage to their pain receptors. See how they deal with hot, cold, pluck out the feathers one by one to expose the sensitive, raw “flesh” below and then cut that up for the same reasons above.

Keep them in a cage when they’re not in “use”, a tiny one which they could barely fit in, forcing them to cram their wings uncomfortably

I’m not entirely sure how the blindness would come along, but you could either have the Whumpers inflict it intentionally, or it could be an accidental side effect of one of the drugs, a minor setback

Whenever Whumpee isn’t actively being tested on, bind their wings. Tight burlap pulled across the feathers, bound flush against their back with straps of leather to keep them out of the way. It’s uncomfortable and painful, will leave them stiff and sore for days after they’re released from the bonds 

After the escape, they’ll obviously be traumatized. They could have developed anxious habits in the lab such as tugging out their own feathers, or hiding their wings against them because they were so adverse to having them touched and used to otherwise having them bound

They won’t be able to stand anyone touching their wings. Instant meltdown, panic attack, screaming and begging and crying much to Caretaker’s horror and confusion

Because they won’t let caretaker help care for their wings, and they don’t know/are unable to do so on their own, they become a rather sore sight, ingrown feathers, molting is a nightmare, pains and aches, stiffness and reluctance to move

They hate confined spaces, but extending their wings feels unnatural

Maybe there’s a refeeding syndrome thing where because they were so used to whatever crap they were fed in the lab, some sort of mush composed of only the bare nutrients they needed to survive and thrive during the trials that they cannot adjust to actual food

Alright I’m tired writing this and I can’t think of anything else right now, I hope this helps! If you need more, by all means send another ask I’ll be happy to help more!

[rejaytionships]

Bug, Ghost and Dragon for who’s on your mind RIGHT NOW…. :3

- @sheepie-self-ships

(i'm circling a few rn but i'll answer for father rn! he's my little guy. ty for the ask :D)

(arnie, my s/i, uses any pronouns with she/her primary)

---

[Bug]: How do you comfort one another when you get scared? Is there any teasing involved?

On the rare chance Father ends up genuinely scared, all he really needs to go back to normal is for Arnie to give him some soft pats on the back and some reassuring words that he's going to be alright, nothing's going to hurt him.

Unless it's, like, something Arnie is also scared of, in which case they're both entirely out of there. Yabba dabba doo!

Conversely, Arnie is kind of a 'fraidy-cat, and initially Father would totally tease her about this. He didn't really understand why she was so jumpy about the simplest of things. After Arnie explained it to him (and kind of chewed him out about it), he's mellowed out and is more reassuring that there's no reason for her to be afraid so long as he's there.

Very, very rarely, Arnie now sometimes jokingly teases Father back on the small chance that he gets scared by something she also just got scared by.

[Ghost]: Has your f/o ever helped you get over a fear? Have they ever pushed you out of your comfort zone?

Pushed Arnie out of her comfort zone? Sure! It helps to get out there!

Actually cured a fear? Ehhh... different story.

Father knows Arnie gets a little weird about heights sometimes, and thought it'd be cute to take her to do some bungee jumping. Great way to safely get over that fear of falling, right?

Wrong. Arnie refused to be off the ground for the next week. There was a lot of apologizing on Father's end because he genuinely didn't think it would go over that poorly. He really did think this was the best way to fix the fear.

Father has tried to think of less intense ways to commit exposure therapy because of this accidental complete flop, but it's still a work in progress.

[Dragon]: Does your f/o have a kryptonite? Does your s/i know about it? What about vice versa?

Father cannot stand cold temperatures (unless he's eating something cold like ice cream; his discomfort is more with being physically surrounded by cold), and has been defeated using this weakness in the past.

Arnie eventually learned about this when Father accidentally spilled ice cream on himself and had a nasty reaction to it. It made sense to her in hindsight that the fire powers guy would be stopped by freezing cold temperatures, but in the moment it freaked her out pretty bad.

Now she makes sure that Father is never in a position where he would spill anything chilly directly onto himself. Father assures it's not that big of a deal for her to worry about, but that initial incident miiight have freaked her out a little because she straight up thought he was going to mayhaps die on the spot.

Arnie doesn't have a kryptonite to Father's level, but she does immediately disarm over arachnids. Spiders horrify her, and she's had missions where she's fumbled because there just so happened to be a spider present at the worst moment.

Because of it affecting her work, Father is very aware; it does also affect her willingness to dust certain parts of the house, so Father ended up spending a comical amount of time on automatic bug hunters just so that he didn't have to constantly follow Arnie around every time she had to clean a creepy corner or crevice.

[fantomcomics]

What's Out This Week? 8/16

too hot to write witty sentence

The Approach TP - Jeremy Haun, Jason A. Hurley & Jesus Hervas

When airport employees Mac and Abigail find themselves snowed in after a blizzard, they witness a terrible plane crash-one that's been missing for 27 years! But it's not the sky that deserves dread, but what lies beyond it.

Mac, Abi, and the remaining airport crew feel helpless to stop the rampage of a supernatural predatory stowaway. But with the blizzard continuing to rage and the creature nesting in the airport, how will the stranded people survive?

Billie Blaster & The Robot Army From Outer Space HC - Laini Taylor & Jim Di Bartolo

Don't you hate it when your archenemy launches your latest invention into space, accidentally creating a robot army that falls into the clutches of an evil alien emperor? Well, that's how Billie Blaster's day is going! The genius child of two famous scientists, Billie is an inventor extraordinaire and the star of the annual science fair, much to the disgust of her nemesis, Tiny Hector Glum. But now their rivalry has gone too far, and the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance. Can Billie prevent an intergalactic war that's kind of totally her fault? With her pet goat, Lucy, a giant robot head, and a toilet weasel from a distant planet, she might just stand a chance. Join them on their perilous adventure, in a spaceship without a bathroom.

Blessed Curse SC - Mario Cesar

Ever since he was a boy growing up in Brazil, all Acacio wanted was to please his parents: get good grades in school, meet a nice girl, stop being so... gay. Mário César's multi-award-winning graphic novel explores the horrific application of Conversion Therapy and what it's like to grow up gay in Brazil. This is not an easy read. But to prevent Conversion Therapy from continuing to be applied, it's a necessary one.

Born Sexy Tomorrow GN Vol 1 - VVBG

Join Blaze Galaxy and J-450n as they pew-pew their way through the galaxy, dancing in cantinas, warring with stars, battling galacticas, and fleeing from Blaze's crippling emotional problems at the speed of light. Blaze Galaxy, a reckless renegade spaceman rogue, lives by his own rules. Fighting, feasting, fostering human-alien relationships from planet to planet, he fears nothing... except commitment. His current mission: to save the human race from certain extinction (again). Just another Wednesday, really. Until he accidentally awakens J-450n, an (adorable) assassin cyborg created by a race of perverted aliens, whose prime objective is to eliminate human life. Only J-450n's been programmed to imprint upon the first living being that he sees...

Buzzing GN - Samuel Sattin & Rye Hickman

Isaac Itkin can't get away from his thoughts. As a lonely twelve-year-old kid with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), everything from studying to looking in the mirror becomes a battle between him and a swarm of unhelpful thoughts. The strict therapy his mother insists on doesn't seem to be working, but when a group of friends invites him to join their after-school role-playing game, the thoughts feel a little less loud, and the world feels a little brighter. But Isaac's therapist says that exposure to games can have negative effects on kids with OCD, and when his grades slip, his helicopter mother won't let him play anymore. Now Isaac needs to find a way to prove to himself, to his mother, and to the world that the way to quiet the noise in his head may have been inside him all along.

Chilling Adventures Presents: Strang Science One-Shot - Magdalene Visaggio & Butch K. Mapa

Danni Malloy is Jinx Holliday's best friend, and where one goes, the other is sure to follow... even if that means through hell and back and forth through the depths of space and time. When Danni receives a mysterious message from former friend Dilton Doiley, Danni is horrified to learn that he's built a time machine and it's gone terribly wrong-and now the three of them have been transported to warped version of Riverdale, where nothing seems quite right. It's up to Danni to set things right and bring them back to the present day, and the hometown they know and love... and she might have to explain a thing or two to Jinx about what's going on, too! Strange Science explores Danni's personal history, time travel, and the importance of being to be true to yourself and what matters most to you.

Disney Villains: Hades #1 - Elliott Kalan, Alessandro Ranaldi & Karen Darboe

FROM THE CLASSIC DISNEY FILM HERCULES - THE LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD FINALLY TAKES CENTER STAGE!

Hades - the lord of darkness! The most deceitful and scheming of the Greek gods!

The one god not invited to the weekly brunch at Mount Olympus!

Obviously, a slight like this calls for the total destruction of the gods of Olympus. To make that happen, the hot-tempered ruler of the underworld needs to acquire the magical Golden Fleece of Colchis. Unfortunately, the Fleece is guarded by a sleepless dragon and soldiers made out of teeth, so Hades assembles a ragtag group of morally questionable adventurers to help him steal the Fleece before some dude named Jason and his Argonaut bros swoop in and ruin his perfectly logical plan.

Dwellings #1 (of 3) - Jay Stephens

SHOCK! TERROR! FUN! SATURDAY MORNING MEETS THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT IN AN ALL-NEW, BI-MONTHLY LIMITED SERIES PRESENTED IN PRESTIGE FORMAT, 72-PAGE CHAPTERS WITH TWO COMPLETE TALES IN EACH ISSUE!

Welcome to Elwich - an oasis of American perfection, where the schools overflow with cheery-eyed children, lovingly adorned homes line the historic boulevards ... and only the crows can see the deep, festering rot that lurks beneath the pristine surface. Murder. Demonology. Possession. Obsession. Elwich has them all on offer-and behind every DWELLING awaits a horrifying new story to be told!

Dying Light GN - Fred Van Lente & Adam Markiewicz

With a lengthy original graphic novel tale serving as a prequel to Dying Light 2 and bonus behind the scenes content from the smash hit video game, Dying Light: Night Generation is an essential companion for fans of the franchise.

Set right before the start of the new game, and 15 years following the events of Dying Light, the story stars orphans Daud and Aisha. They were just children when the Harran Virus outbreak struck the world, and have known nothing other than the plague for their entire lives. Evacuated and found by Berg, they were trained to become Night Runners, to work together and steal for him as his influence grows among the Survivors. Reaching young adulthood, Daud and Aisha are finally sick of living under his thumb, hatching plans to run away together. When the secrets are discovered, Berg sells off Aisha to a rival. Forcing Daud on a harrowing journey to rescue his love, through the deadly Volatiles and utilizing the game's signature parkour.

Eiji and Shiro: From Zeroes to Heroes GN Vol 1 - Kaya Azuma

A collection of fantasy and supernatural shorts with a heavy comedic tone from one of the Boys Love world's most infamous comedic writers. Mobuyama "Eiji" A-Ji and Mobuyama "Shiro" C-ro have lived their entire lives as nothing more than "extras" to other people's stories. It can't end like this, right? There must be a way out! Both sharing a common goal will try anything that allows them to change their destiny. Anything.

The First Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes: A Study In Scarlet HC - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Vincent Mallie

London, 1878. Poor Dr Watson returns from India completely penniless and on the verge of despair when he meets Sherlock Holmes, a whimsical guy who also happens to be looking for a roommate. The pair move into 221 Baker Street when one of Scotland Yard's top sleuths enlists the talented Detective Holmes to help solve a dark murder case. Together, Watson and Holmes will lead the investigation and cement a partnership that will last for years to come.

Flung Out Of Space: Inspired By The Indecent Adventures Of Patricia Highsmith GN - Grace Ellis, Hannah Templer, & Joan Schenkar

Flung Out of Space is both a love letter to the essential lesbian novel, The Price of Salt, and an examination of its notorious author, Patricia Highsmith. Veteran comics creators Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer have teamed up to tell this story through Highsmith's eyes, reimagining the events that inspired her to write the story that would become a foundational piece of queer literature. Flung Out of Space opens with Pat begrudgingly writing low-brow comics. A drinker, a smoker, and a hater of life, Pat knows she can do better. Her brain churns with images of the great novel she could and should be writing - what will eventually be Strangers on a Train.

The Girl Who Became A Fish GN - Osamu Dazai & Nekosuke

Another spectacular collaboration from the Maiden's Bookshelf series, this dark and intense fable by the great giant of postward literature is brought to vivid life by contemporary master Nekosuke. Suwa, a charcoal burner's daughter, lives together with her father in a small village at a foot of a mountain so remote it doesn't even appear on maps. Slowly she comes to realize the dark futility of her life, leading to a strange and elliptical transformation... Dazai depicts the adolescent awakening to death and the desire to escape through this quiet and ominous tale.

Heart Gear GN Vol 1 - Tsuyoshi Takak

After Roue accidentally activates Chrome without a base program, what's essentially his soul, she and Uncle Zett invite him into their makeshift family and encourage him to choose his own purpose. But when an insane machine attacks their home, will Chrome survive, much less find his purpose?

Land Of The Living Gods TP - Isaac Mogajane & Santtos

It is said that when the world dies, the spirits of the first people will return to witness the last days of humanity. Well, the spirits have arrived, and the end is here. But not everyone has given up hope.

Naledi, a teenage girl living in the deserted city once called Johannesburg, has always believed that there is a land hidden away in time where the gods still live. And where there are gods, there are miracles. Perhaps even miracles that are big enough to save our dying planet. And so, after a lifetime of isolation, Naledi will head out into the unknown with little to hold onto but her faith - and her magical pet plant, Buyo.

Pen & Ink: The Many Deaths Of Laila Starr #1 - V. Ram & Filipe Andrade

BOOM! Studios is proud to present the next installment of PEN & INK: a deluxe art-focused format featuring stunning black and white interior artwork with artist commentary.

Experience the first issue of the Eisner, Harvey, and Ringo Award-nominated The Many Deaths of Laila Starr in a whole new light, with exclusive notes and annotations from artist Filipe Andrade.

Rakuda Laughs GN - Katsuya Terada

New father and troubled yakuza Rakuda gets a call from his colleagues tasking him to dispose of a random body. The job is fishy, but when you are a gangster sometimes you have to just do what you're told. But in this case, who gave him the job is the problem. A young hustler named Amazaki has tasked him to take care of a corpse without any info on who the body is and how to get rid of it. Turns out the body belongs to their gang lord... Now the gang and the cops are after Rakuda. And with danger around every corner, there are now very few moments for jokes in Rakuda's world.

Rare Flavors: Tasting Ashcan #1 - V. Ram & Filipe Andrade

The Eisner, Harvey, and Ringo Award-nominated team of Ram V and Filipe Andrade make their celebrated return, and you can get a first taste in this exclusive ashcan edition!

Tantalize your senses with this amuse bouche introducing this creative duo's next masterpiece marrying the supernatural, Indian cuisine, and the cutthroat world of chef-driven celebrity in what will be the most talked about new comic of 2023!

This ashcan will be strictly limited to its first printing, never to be printed again!

Red Zone TP - Cullen Bunn, Mike Deodato & Lee Loughridge

Called in by the U.S. government for a secret international mission to Russia, unassuming American professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU Randall Crane finds his history in the Soviet Union begin to thaw and reveal itself. When the team of commandos sent to protect him end up dead, Randall finds himself forced to fight his way out of the former U.S.S.R. using skills he thought he'd left dead and buried in the cold, hard streets of the Mother Russia a lifetime ago.

The Sea In You GN - Jessi Sheron

A whimsical dark fantasy retelling of "The Little Mermaid," The Sea In You upends everything you thought you knew about magical creatures of the deep, on a whirlwind journey to a whole new world you've only dreamed of before! 15-year-old Corinth was just trying to clean up the beach; she never expected to meet a mermaid, let alone be nearly drowned by one. It was the start of a very strange friendship! After Skylla, the deadly fanged mermaid, mysteriously lets Corinth live, they grow closer through a cautious exchange of stories, gifts, jokes, and sign language. Mermaids, it turns out, eat people, but however terrifying Skylla may look, she's a little younger, a little smaller, and perhaps a little too soft for all that. Bewitched by Corinth and their growing bond, she learns about all the best things in life on land: books, burgers, donuts, and this strange chattering human sound called laughter. But a storm is brewing-both at sea and in Corinth's increasingly dangerous relationship with her obsessively jealous boyfriend-and a magical bargain may be the only thing that can save her, at a tremendous cost.

Sparks & The Fallen Star GN - Lyndon White

The stars are going out. Night never ends and while others only wonder, Sparks, the bravest little robot, sets out to discover the reason why. Enjoy this beautiful tale about friendship and overcoming adversity.

Specs TP - David M. Booher & Chris Shehan

Small town. Ohio, 1986. All Kenny and Ted want is to not feel like outcasts. What happens when a pair of X-ray glasses mysteriously appear? The magic specs open a world of possibilities for these misfit teens through the granting of literal wishes! Things start out innocent, but when they wish that their bully would disappear, things take a cursed turn, with far darker consequences than they thought possible...

Tabegirl: Art Of Jun SC - JUN

Powerfully cute! Jun's TabeGirls are the embodiment of what makes Japanese character designs so beloved, as they capture young ladies at their purest... while chowing down on scrumptious eats! Collecting nearly one-hundred full-color portraits from Jun's growing collection of web-illustrations, comics and promotional art, fans of the artist will have plenty tasty images to sink their teeth into.

The Cull #1 (of 5) - Kelly Thompson& Mattia De Iulis

Something is Killing the Children horror vibes mix with The Goonies-style adventure as five friends set off to shoot a short film on a forbidden rock near their home the summer before they all go their separate ways. But that's not really why they're there. One of them has lied. And that lie will change their lives forever.

Those Who Helped Us GN - Ken Mochizuki & Kiku Hughes

Basketball-loving Sumiko Tanaka, then 11, narrates this graphic novel about the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Through her eyes, we watch as her family is forced from their home and subjected to indiscriminate racism as they are shipped off to the concentration camp called Minidoka in Idaho. But Sumiko and her 17-year-old sister Yuri also see acts of charity and solidarity from their non-Japanese neighbors and friends in the Seattle area that make them hopeful for the future. As the young girls struggle with the horrors of being imprisoned in the dusty desert, they also find solace in the fact that some people chose to help.

Ultralazer TP - Pauline Giraud, Maxence Henry & Yvan Duque

The people of the planet Topoy live in peace, surrounded by lush nature and magical, infinite resources. But the King of Beasts, who maintains balance on this world, is in danger. His protectors, Horb and Booko, will need to set off on a long journey if they want to save their planet...

On planet Topoy, everything has been peaceful for a long long time. People and magical creatures have been living in peace for generations. But danger came from space! The buzzards attacked and changed Topoy forever. Do they want the planet's natural resources? Yes. But they also want the King of Beasts, the supreme being that ties everything on this world.

Enter Horb and Booko, two protectors and servants of the King. They can't let their planet plundered! Their only hope? An ancient legend: the Ultralazer! Forgotten by many, this power could unleash the power they need to save the planet.

Washington's Gay General: The Legends & Loves Of Baron Von Steuben HC - Josh Trujillo & Levi Hastings

This graphic novel biography tells the true story of one of the most important, but largely forgotten, military leaders of the American Revolution, Baron Wilhelm Von Steuben, who brought much-needed knowledge to the inexperienced and ill-prepared Continental Army. As its first Inspector General, Von Steuben created an organizational framework for the US military, which included writing the Blue Book guide that became the standard for training American soldiers for more than a century. Beginning with Von Steuben's career in the Prussian Army, Trujillo explores his recruitment by Benjamin Franklin, his work alongside General George Washington at the Battle of Valley Forge, and his eventual decline into obscurity. In Washington's Gay General, Trujillo and Hastings impart both the intricacies of queer history and the importance of telling stories that highlight queer experiences.

Whatcha scooping up this week, Fantom Fam?

[arodrwho]

also here are my caduceus opinions:

he partially misinterpreted the situation - was looking at the rooms an expression primarily of caleb’s grief + associated guilt

when in actuality they were primarily an expression of his trauma + associated guilt

which is an entirely different beast

he also (understandably! as i also thought this until the most recent talks episode) thought caleb was making the rooms on purpose - rather than the rooms just kind of... happening without an actual conscious decision on caleb’s part

so in his mind, caleb was intentionally constructing Grief Rooms to stand and feel guilty and nostalgic and sad in

he assumed caleb had made them to sort of...wallow

because tal’s said before that he thinks caleb is kind of...up himself, with his own problems? like, consumed by them, thinking his pain is the biggest thing in the world - is the kind of vibe it seems like caduceus has gotten from caleb

and that + these rooms = caduceus thinks caleb is torturing himself with guilt and clinging to the past unnecessarily

he thinks caleb should just kind of... decide to let go, and grow comfortable in the knowledge that the memories [and presumably the people within them] will still exist somewhere

which - yeesh, cad, that’s got very strong religious vibes

caleb doesn’t believe the way you do

that isn’t going to appeal to him - you have to realize that, yeah?

and if you just mean in his heart or mind or whatever -

well yeah, that’s already the point? they’re. already there. which is why they’ve been recreated in this tower

consciously getting rid of the subconsciously-manifested rooms in the tower won’t stop the memories from being just as clear inside caleb’s head - so it won’t... do much?

caduceus seems to think getting rid of them would allow caleb to begin moving on from his grief and guilt in a healthier way -

but all that would happen is caleb wouldn’t have a way to interact with the memories in a tangible way anymore - which in some instances might be a good thing (as when he sought comfort in an old, painful memory after the dinner - which was a maladaptive coping skill), but in others might not (processing wrt astrid & eadwulf’s potential untrustworthiness + caleb’s hopes for overthrowing the assembly - which was the opposite of maladaptive imo)

anyway

this is to say -

because caduceus has misunderstood the crux of the matter, he’s given entirely the wrong advice for the situation

however -

that said.

it absolutely makes sense for him to have done so, because that attitude, that sort of “well, you should just decide to start healing and then do it, and you should do that by putting the bad things aside and moving forward in a Specific Direction and choosing to be outwardly positive” -

that’s literally the exact attitude he has towards his own traumas

like, all of them.

left alone for five years in a cursed forest that was encroaching on his home and feeling horribly guilty for not having left sooner?

he kept busy as much as he could, left as soon as an opportunity arose, and immediately threw himself into helping the people around him - making himself useful - rather than taking the time to actually process the traumatic situation he’s just left

worrying about his family & thinking they might be dead?

well he’s already on the journey to save their home, he has a Direction, so it’s fine! no need to talk about them or message them or answer any questions directly about them. nope. the direction is found and the things he says are positive and obviously that’s all he needs

nearly drowned several times?

well it’s time to conquer that fear before it gets out of hand. let’s diy exposure therapy on the open ocean!!

--motherfucker has NO right to come after caleb for his vaguely-exposure-therapy-adjacent memory rooms - he did the same fucking thing far more directly in the middle of the ocean. like fuck off dude.

got accidentally killed by a friend?

tell her it’s fine and keep a positive attitude about it! then, after your blase response leads to her taking it so un-seriously that she accidentally blows you up again - wait a few hours and then make a passive-aggressive haggling joke about not being mad over it so long as she doesn’t steal from these strangers

this is definitely how you appropriately handle those feelings, definitely, for sure caduceus. totally.

etc. etc. etc.

anyway all of this to say, like.

this method kind of works for caduceus up to a point?

it kept him moving through the ongoing trauma wrt his family - for years and years alone, and then months with the nein

and it did actually help him a lot with his budding drowning phobia!

but he still clearly is affected by the years alone and the guilt of not having done anything for so long - and he’s clearly holding a little bit of a grudge (or he was, at least) for the whole manslaughter thing

so it doesn’t work perfectly

but it does work up to a point, for caduceus

so like. of course he thinks it’s going to work for caleb also

of course he thinks it’s good advice

but just bc something (partially) works for him as an individual doesn’t mean it’s going to work for someone else -

and especially not for caleb, who needs to remember his past and all the bad that came with it, because that’s how he motivates himself to do better in the future

caduceus thinks he’s looking at [among other things] an expression of useless guilt - the kind that consumes us and drags us down and serves no purpose other than making us hate ourselves and stagnate in our own perceived imperfections & immorality

but for caleb the memory rooms are very much [among other things] an expression of useful guilt - the kind that motivates us to do better! to grow and change and be better than we were, better than the places we came from

you know?

and caduceus doesn’t see that, so what does he say?

he says - you’re doing it wrong. this isn’t how you handle guilt, this isn’t helping you. these are beautiful rooms, beautiful memories, but i hope one day you understand you don’t need them here in front of you

because he thinks caleb’s not making progress

and caleb, who in fact is using these rooms to process his guilt in a relatively healthy way - and who would see these memories in his head all the time anyway regardless of whether the rooms were there - and who cannot turn off his trauma on a dime -

and who is both allowing himself to remember the gentler/happier memories AND using the more negative ones to alternately self-soothe and self-motivate -

well of course he hears “the way you are coping is wrong, and unhealthy, and you should just decide to move on and then do it, because obviously it’s that easy! just be more positive uwu”

which is like... half? of what caduceus means?

i don’t think cad thinks it’s actually smth one can do on a dime but i do think he thinks it’s... a bit easier than it would be for caleb

bc for him of course it’s a conscious choice he makes, of course it takes some effort - but it isn’t impossible for him, so obviously it shouldn’t be for caleb either!

but the thing is

for caduceus it’s like - he’s got new ptsd vibes all over him

and caleb has c-ptsd

and while there’s obviously overlap there’s also so much difference - especially in their specific traumatic experiences - that it’s just

absurd to assume they’ll both find the same things useful in terms of coping

but cad of course doesn’t know that

bc for all he’s gone and appointed himself group therapist - and yes, he has actually done that - what the fuck else do you call viewing your traveling companions as “projects” my good dude

anyway.

for all he’s gone and appointed himself group therapist - he really really really is not a therapist

he can handle short-term grief counseling, and that’s it

he’s not trained to do trauma therapy

or any other kind of therapy

and if fucking shows

tl;dr

as my good friend ro illumimorow put it: @ caduceus please stop trying to therapist YOU are need a therapist

[destroyyourbinder]

the day i was a man

In the summer of 2019, I decided to fully shave my head into a buzzcut, something I had never done before. I had a lot of feelings emerge and re-emerge at the time. While I was still visibly female in my day to day life- something that felt uniquely frightening given the utter dykeyness of my haircut- I accidentally discovered one day in August that my haircut could allow me to pass as male. While I had deliberately tried to “pass” in an earlier life, at the height of experiencing gender dysphoria, I was never taken to be a man except by chance (such as from behind or from afar). So potentially being able to pass as male was a new and disorienting experience, one I felt compelled to explore out of multiply perverse kinds of curiosity. As a context note: I mention my partner frequently in this piece, who has detransitioned from her transition from female to male, but chooses to handle her situation through continuing to pass as male at work and in public. Her experiences unavoidably framed my experience trying to pass for a day, and this experiment changed permanently how I see both her passing persona and the public presentation of female transgender people. If you can pull it off, and perhaps even if you can’t (a different, but also nervewracking experience), I recommend women try this at least once, especially if you claim to understand the experiences of transgender female people. It is a female experience to which there are truly few comparisons, and to which even the majority of living gender non-conforming lesbians cannot relate. Having largely recovered from gender dysphoria, I cannot imagine having to permanently live my life this way nor finding it affirming to do so, and I am disturbed that this experience was one I once aspired to and envied. However, I am glad I had it, and I plan to try again sometime in this upcoming summer when I can cut my hair without freezing. My partner now knows I did this, and I am especially curious what it might be like being seen together.

I wrote this the day I chose to do this experiment. My goal was to take public transportation to a shopping center so I could check out some shoes I was considering buying. The first part (in present tense) I wrote before leaving the house and while dressed in preparation, the second part (in past tense) was written after I returned, using my memories of the experience. It has been mildly edited for readability and to include a few details and pieces of context.

----

I am scared of what happens not if I pass but if I don’t pass. In trying to become a man I have become a woman I am afraid of and afraid for. It’s often the same thing when you are a woman watching women. I am having trouble breathing under three sports bras when I usually wear none. My chest is flat unless I actually stand up straight and proud. I have to be ashamed to become a man, although they say men are confident and becoming one will make you so. I debate whether or not to put some kind of fake dick in my pants, although I doubt that will do anything, and I shudder to think what will happen if I do and it doesn’t work. Being a woman with a dick stuffed in your pants: at best I’m pathetic, at worst I am a monster.

I don’t know how to explain this to my girlfriend. I don’t know how to explain that I had to do this, at least once. I don’t know how to explain to her something she already knows.

I wonder if I’ve been watching too many music videos. I wonder if this is about sex. I don’t know how I can wash our dishes while being a man, but I decide I should try before I try something bold like letting people look at me.

The danger of not passing is violence. The danger internally is that it would be deserved. I realize there’s no real way to justify wanting to do this, nonetheless actually doing it. I think wanting to transition is sublimated fear. I wonder if this will help me with my social anxiety, because this fucking sucks. This is not the exposure therapy the doctor ordered. It feels familiar to be ashamed of myself and hold my body this way, like an old chair molding around my butt, like stepping into old shoes. Dykes go to the outdoor store but do bulldykes go there? I realize I don’t know anything about bulldykes. I understand why so many trans people are so preoccupied with being fake vs. real, false vs. genuine. There is something intrinsically very fake about passing. You are faking the other sex. Of course you feel fake. It is a pretense. It feels very odd to pretend so seriously, so people pretend that they are not pretending after all. I am fixated on the small things all over again. I find myself wondering when I tie my girlfriend’s boots to my feet whether or not men have ankles like mine. My laces are too wide at the bottom, too small at the top. I worry that this will lead me to be discovered or worse, mocked. I know this is absurd but in this state I don’t feel like I can take any chances, like I would even know what chances to take. When I went to get the bus I thought I saw my coworker. It ended up not being her, but I crossed the street and circled back because I didn’t want her to see me so strange, doing something so weird and incomprehensible. I understand now why people change towns, friends, abandon their family. This is difficult to explain, even if you say you are “trans”. It doesn’t make sense, fundamentally, to anyone with a grounding in their body. The bus driver was a big black woman, serious face, tattoos. I think she was a dyke. I got the sense she was looking at me out of the side of her eye when I got on the bus, but that might be paranoia. I didn’t know because I didn’t want to look her in the face too hard. I get why my girlfriend’s so avoidant in public. You don’t want people to know what you’re doing, you don’t want people to see your face. It’s real hard to know what emotion to put on there when you’re a dude. It’s real scary to not have the barrier of a woman’s smile or laugh anymore. It almost feels nice to not have to do it, but how do you handle anything? I’m the type of woman who’s been able to get away with this gender weirdo shit throughout my life because I gave an oh-shucks smile at the end of it, that little woman’s laugh that means I’m not a threat, not serious, not anything at all. When you’re “a man” you can’t do that anymore. You’re naked under six layers of clothes. When you can’t do that anymore you’ve got nothing except sheer bravado and nothing to back it up. What if it doesn’t work, what if you suddenly become the type of girl who doesn’t smile? I get why my girlfriend doesn’t look anybody in the face, even though she looks real fucking shifty sometimes. You can’t look a man in the face and not be able to back it up. Men are like reactive dogs. They’ll get fucked up if you look them in the eye. On the bus I realized all of the sudden even though I’ve read a billion passing guides, and I’ve stared down dudes real jealous my whole life I do not know how a man sits. I had fixated so much on the legs and where they go that I didn’t know what they did with hands, elbows; how do you look out the window if you’re a guy? What do you look at? I snatched glances at the dude up front, an ambiguously brown teen who could probably pass as white in the right places but not the wrong ones, a dude with a big mop of floppy curly dark hair and what looked like a serious case of apathy. He was scrolling on his phone, and I could see the divots of acne scars forming on the side of his face. Guy didn’t look like he could grow a lot of facial hair but probably made up for it with encyclopedic knowledge of Fortnite or some shit. I knew he had a life, but he seemed like most men, kind of constitutionally dull. He wasn’t looking at anything, really, I guess only kids and women really look at stuff. Which made it hard to do the whole clandestine observation thing, I decided, a guy who looks at stuff is not really a dude. I tried to look kinda dumb and wasn’t sure where my jaw should go. The girlfriend does this thing sometimes with her mouth that makes me cringe when she does it at home. Sometimes she phases in and out of her passing persona if she’s talking about work or feeling threatened for whatever reason, if she’s in a different place and time than the place and time where she’s home and a wife and all that. She does a little underbite, doing that thing that internet FTMs do in the pictures they take; I figured she learned to do it like a little bird puffs itself up, it makes her little head look bigger and squarer. I tried to do it when out and about; my teeth don’t fit together that way. I’m sure I looked like a moron. But men do dumb shit all the time.

I transferred to the train, and when I got off at the station I ended up walking kinda the wrong way for a while. I imagined all the people in the cars staring at me. I hate walking on the sidewalks along highways and strip malls. I dunno if they look, and if they do, what they see. I was real nervous but I figured I didn’t know any of them anyway and made it into the shopping center where the store was. It occurred to me that if this was an adventure it was quite a stupid one, but it was an adventure nonetheless, complete with the actual lack of excitement and the actual presence of fear. I had never been in this particular store before and everything was displayed so tastefully. I was dismayed to notice the presence of a million salespeople, and realized I didn’t fucking know which gender of shoe I even wanted to try to look at because I didn’t know how I was coming across. I was not going to be a dude who asks for women’s shoes, a.k.a. a woman who’s obviously doing something real weird asking for women’s shoes nonetheless. And at this store you gotta ask for the shoes, and I didn’t want to use my voice because I’m pretty sure I’m obviously female by voice. So I just stared awkwardly at the shoes, mostly, I checked the prices and the clearance racks, and they were too expensive anyway. At one point I realized I was looking at the women’s shoes (which seemed like a huge fucking big deal) and I went to cross over to the men’s shoes, there was a group of bros standing in front of the men’s shoe wall and they parted like the red sea when I went over. I think this was passing because frankly I’ve never had men ever get out of my fucking way. I ended up circling around the store and leaving because no way was I going to afford any of the shit in there, and they didn’t even have very many shoes of the kind I was looking for. I went into the chain pet store next door and wandered around in there. There was a young person working the register who was a young lesbian or a trans kid or something. Every time I saw a woman I felt guilty, it was real weird to be separated so much from women. I had thoughts of jumping out, you know, and saying “boo”, following a woman a bit too close to see what would happen, even though I knew that would be real fucking mean. But it would be the test. See how women react to you: are you still a woman yet? What happens when you’re not a women to women anymore? It seems real fucking lonely. I was already lonely, and it had been maybe three hours. Men are real rude to other men. Some old white sales guy was like,“excuse me”, real curt and direct in a way I’d never got before, not gentle but not with the contempt-force they use towards a fucked up woman. It was empty of all the shit I’d learned to expect. How men deal with the emptiness I don’t know. They must fill it with all sorts of nonsense just to pass the time, just for kicks, is that why they want to hit each other and fuck things? There was a little girl with her family outside the stores, she had a floppy autistic hand and was wearing cargo shorts, I wished her luck inside my head but couldn’t smile at her and my heart broke.

I walked around and tried to find the other location of a store I used to work at. I knew it was around there somewhere but couldn’t find where the building was. My stomach was grumbling and it occurred to me that if I needed to use a bathroom I’d be screwed. Even if I was still plausibly visibly female I was female in the way that’d get me bathroom trouble, and I wasn’t quite dudely enough to stride into the men’s. The store I used to work at had gender neutral bathrooms, and I realized a hell of a lot of trans people must be in a huge pickle all the time. I understand the bathroom resentment even if trans people project their validation shit onto it. It’s easier to believe you’re being invalidated than that you’re scared because you’re doing something real weird and you’re in hiding all the time. I don’t know how people live like this full time. There’s got to be a lot of grief, nihilism, resignation when you finally make it so you can’t go back. The tension’s unbearable: I imagine a lot of trans people think that the tension will be resolved if they make themselves undiscoverable, if they just push themselves more towards perceptibly male.

The sports bras were hurting me. It was hard to walk so much in this get up. I found I was breathing with my mouth open a lot to get enough air, and the word “mouthbreather” kept occurring to me. I realized the shit that I had to knock out of me as an autistic woman was double-edged as someone trying to pass. A lot of it actually helped, a healthy and hamhanded disrespect/disregard for etiquette is very male, but I realized I was still real weird with weird motivations and weird in ways that would make me stick out even as a dude. I understood why the girlfriend has a persona-- she says he’s some nobody, a stoner dude, a guy who doesn’t have all that much to say and of course it’s kinda stupid if he did-- to cover the incongruities. Before I got back on the train there was this young black woman with a swagger, wearing what looked like men’s pants, wandering around the platform. I figured the universe was fucking testing me today because she might be gay too. She was talking on her phone in a video chat, getting way too close to the edge. She wobbled over the edge a couple times, then decided to sit on the fucking platform with her legs out over the tracks . Some shady white guy wearing gloves was doing some weird shit with the ticket machines, a lot of coins were coming out and he was rustling around. I figured he had some kinda scheme and decided to leave him very alone because I didn’t know how the fuck I was supposed to react as a fellow guy if he wanted something from me. The woman didn’t look up when the train coming the opposite way signaled, and I got scared I was gonna have to drag her off the tracks, like maybe she wasn’t doing good and she was gonna try something. I realized I didn’t want to die as a man, didn’t want that woman to be saved by me as a man, what if they called up my girlfriend and said I was some dude, what if she found me in three sports bras and three shirts in the hospital, what would everyone think. Swagger gal jumped the hell out of her skin and scooted away when our train was coming, so I didn’t have to worry about it. When I got on some family plopped down in front of me, and I felt that grief again. If I was a man I couldn’t look at kids with the same gentleness, there was no solidarity with the mom and her weariness, I couldn’t take the load on my hips alongside her. I didn’t want to do this any more. I had planned to catch the bus on my way back but the bus wasn’t going to come for a while. I decided to walk from my home train station and see if I could catch my girlfriend at work but realized I didn’t want her to see me like this. I didn’t know who I was, walking through the dark back into the neighborhood. I peeked into a dark bar with sports on the televisions, a lot of normal heterosexuals doing their thing. But back on the main drag it was trendier heterosexuals everywhere. I stopped beside a dark park to take off two of the bras and tucked them in my pockets. I had no idea what the fuck I looked like when I was walking somewhere more familiar, didn’t know where to put my chin, didn’t know whether I was incongruent, incomprehensible, or I was just myself. My clothes were all mine except the beanie and the boots. It was nothing crazy but I felt crazy, I felt split in two, schizophrenic in the old-school definition way. If my coworkers saw me they’d know me, but maybe I wouldn’t know me in return. When I got to my girlfriend’s workplace I realized she wasn’t in the building; she had stepped across the street to take a break and get some air. I don’t think she recognized me coming across the street. I felt all fucked up for a long hot second until she broke into a smile. I couldn’t tell if she was astonished I was out and about in the area at that hour or that that body was me. I wandered on home, got an Arizona iced tea, went up to the corner pharmacy all weird in the head and high on drag to get some mascara to see if I could make me a beard someday. The people at the pharmacy usually know me, and I didn’t want to be some weirdo who was trying to be a guy in front of them. The guy who I think’s a manager was around, then a barely-outta-adolescence woman with a bob of orange hair and strange makeup and a big old nose ring. These days they make eyebrow mascara, in each brand there were a million different kinds. Who knew, and who knew it cost 12 bucks for a little tube. I went around the corner feeling lucky: there was some in the clearance section. Why someone like me’d buy mascara for your eyebrows, who knows. I was titillated by the tiny brushes. The young woman at the counter wanted to talk to me about my nose ring, hers was only a tad bigger, and she told me she must’ve hit a nerve when she stretched. Her piercings were nice, I was happy to have a conversation with a woman as a woman of some sort even though she was a different kind of woman all in all. When the wall comes down it’s terrible. I can’t imagine that wall all the time and what that must do to women behind it.

[callsignbaphomet]

14, 15, 17, 25, 32, 36, and 46! Caveat is 25 has to be answered by at least the big three, J, A, and L! Otherwise go w/whoever uwu

Lol so you know what? Let's just triple it up for all Qs because why not.

14. Do they look up to anyone?

Loke: His mom. She's always been there for as far back as he can remember. She taught him a lot of what she knew about healing, her fighting style which when mixed in with his dad's made him a threat. She also managed to teach him an arcane attack her tribe uses which was a huge deal since regular berserkers can't use magic. He always hung around her and kind of hero worshipped her as one of the most wisest women and fiercest warriors. He learned everything she taught him and he even became the field medic because of her.

He always thought of her as a mother even before Sanaa and Ingvarr married and she was okay with it so when they DID marry he was ecstatic.

Jelani: His mom and grandpa Haakon. His mom taught him everything she taught Loke. Everyone was sure he was an arcane berserker just like her so she taught him magic as well but like Loke it never really stuck. The bit he learned he did on his own and it wasn't anything he'd been taught but he modified it to mimic his mom's lessons as best he could. She naturally taught him of her people and culture and he was always stunned at her accomplishments and was a positive influence in his life. Unbeknownst to him his parents but especially his mother helped in making him more "human" if that makes especially during his teens when his previous self was kinda threatening to emerge.

His grandpa was a huge influence on him and emotional support. Thing is Haakon always had a suspicion that he was something entirely else but Jela did as well difference is that Jela felt really alienated because of it and was often afraid of that but Haakon always made sure to make him feel better about his differences and would often sooth his feelings of alienation. He was also an extremely accepting and open minded person and he learned a lot of compassion from him.

Angelus: Ever since he was in his grandpa's custody he was surrounded by people who influenced him and shaped him into the man he currently is. So he has a lot of people he looks up to. Trevor introduced him to a woman he looked up to (so much so that he took her surname). Ravencroft was a werewolf and the first exposure Angelus had to the arcane. Because of her he became intrested in magic and decided to learn it. She showed him all that was possible within the arcane and pointed him in the right direction to get started and ever since then he's continued.

Between Jelani, Loke and Trevor he learned to write, read and speak (as in forming coherent sentences) and he learned confidence from them.

Aleksey taught him everything from his family history, got him the help he needed and taught him all there is to know about werewolves and what it meant to be one. He also taught him to read, write and speak Sumerian and Russian.

15. Who is their best friend?

Loke: Okay, so like, Jelani is his best friend. Those two are like THE definition of unconditional love.

However, Abigail is also his best friend. They really got to know each other when she was his spotter for a wet works and from then on it's like thick as thieves. They've even been mistaken for a couple but it's because of how they talk to each other and behave with each other. Abby has no closely related living relatives so on her wedding he walked her down the aisle.

Really close to a best friend is Trevor. First person he ran up to when he found out he was gonna be a dad was Lo. I've never mentioned them being best friends because they've never given it much thought. When they first met Trevor didn't trust him but it wasn't personal. Then he found out that Jelani, who he was hanging out with a lot, was Lo's younger brother and when he saw how they were with each other he liked Lo even less but this was because how they treated each other reminded him of him and his younger brother who'd died of pneumonia. Lo found out Trev was uncomfortable around him so he gave him the space he needed until one day they just started talking and got along pretty well. As the years went by they just kind of hung out a lot. And then a lot of years later they fucked for a while and then just stayed really good occasionally fuck buddies especially after Jelani and Angelus became boyfriends.

Jelani: Let's get the obvious answer outta the way first. It's Loke. Those two would die for each other and on several occasions have actually almost died protecting each other. They're never far apart for long, neither of them like it.

There's also Trevor who's been a really good friend ever since they met. At one point Trev became the third one in the group and the three of them were inseparable.

And many, many, years later Jelani and Trevor fucked for a while. I like to think their friendship is really solid. Was a little rocky after Jela was crushing on borderline in love with him but things went back to normal after Jela got over it.

Angelus: Well, first and foremost it's Ginger. They liked each other the second they met but as soon as each they found out that they were both arcanists it was like heart eyes motherfucker! Like Loke and Abigail they're a power duo in the field and anything one doesn't know about anything arcane the other will know. Basically Ginger is his bff.

Close but also the big brother he never had is Trevor. He thinks of Loke the same but more so Trevor. At one point after he was in his grandfather's custody and was recovering physically and mentally he went silent. Didn't want to talk at all to anyone, not even Jelani. It wasn't out of anger he just couldn't bring himself to talk. Trevor had experience with this because his little brother was mute. Also tbh Trevor really felt for 'im. Jelani told Trev and Lo how he'd found him and then later the three of them found out what had happened to him during all those years. During that time he wasn't talking Trevor managed to communicate with him and after he gained enough confidence to speak he was usually seen talking to Trevor a lot. He absolutely loves Trevor and will fuck you up if you even breathe wrong in his direction.

And of course there's his husband who he considers his best friend and safest person to be around in the world. J's pretty much been his first everything. Well, except for boyfriend that was someone else. He was in love with him but kept it a secret and took every chance he could to be with or near him until muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch later he accidentally revealed it. The rest is history.

Lol Trevor might be friend shaped.

17. Who is the person they hate most in the world?

Loke: Man who killed his grandpa and the man who killed his fiancé.

Jelani: Man who killed his grandpa. I'd say he hates that man more than even his peers from his "previous" life that betrayed him.

Angelus: His abusers for obvious reasons but at the same time he doesn't hate them. He hates everything he had to endure but at the same time he was conditioned to believe he deserved it and even in modern times he still kinda thinks the same way so in a way he feels like any hatred he feels towards them isn't justifiable. These mixed feelings also extend towards his grandmother and one of his uncles. Both were the worst of the bunch with his grandmother allowing all the torture and knowing about the raping done by his own uncle but not caring. Then her emotionally and mentally abusing him.

To say he got some sense of relief after he got some payback on his uncle is an understatement.

He kinda hates his father as well. If it hadn't been for his dad selling him to his grandmother to leave his dad and mom alone none of the abuse and attempted murder woulda taken place.

25. How do they handle being complimented?

Loke: He likes to follow up a compliment with another. If you compliment him he'll cheerily compliment you back.

Jelani: For someone who's always confident and sure of himself on the surface every time he gets complimented by someone he gets easily flustered and he immediately smiles and does this thing where he kinda bites one of the corners of his lower lip.

Angelus: Setting aside all the obvious things like being shy and insecure he kinda doesn't know how to react to compliments. His default is to lower his eyes and says a simple thanks but then he worries if he sounds like he wasn't enthusiastic enough or if he says more than thanks he worries it sounds disingenuous. Even in his better more confident days he'll still give a simple thanks but his tone will be louder and may add more to it.

32. If they could change one thing, what would it be?

Loke: Kind of a tie between not having asthma or hemophilia. Both are his biggest worries.

Jelani: Oh boy there is a ton he would change. But the one thing that he would change if he could would be to be a berserker like the rest of his family. Yes, even after finding out what he is. Hell, especially after what he is and how he was back then. He wants nothing to do with that part not with everything that went on, with those who betrayed him and those he hurt.

"He's a Maker. Why doesn't he just do it?"

Can't. Deities are deities whether they like it or not. They can live as anything else and mimic that species as best they can but they'll always be deities. The most they do is forfeit their duties and exile themselves or literally just walk away from it all and come back when they so choose. Those are his only two choices.

Angelus: What doesn't he wanna change? But for the sake of sticking to just one it would definitely be to have no mental illnesses whatsoever. He haaaaaaaaaaates the fact that he was the victim of years of every abuse you can think of and he's left scarred, knee deep in therapies and medications meanwhile his abusers are living good normal lives as if they didn't fuck up a child just because he's a Crossed Breed and not an Outsider.

36. Do they believe in destiny?

Loke: Tbh he kinda doesn't really care much about destiny or has even thought much about it. He just takes things as they come.

Jelani: No. Glossing over the irony of this answer he just doesn't believe destiny somehow controls your outcome. It's you who controls that.

Angelus: He's not a believer in it but he doesn't deny it either.

46. Are they a fast learner?

Loke: I think he's more average in terms of learning things he isn't too interested in or knows much about. He is definitely more practice than theory oriented tho.

Jelani: Yes. A very fast learner. Theory or practice it doesn't matter. He catches on fast and learns fast.

Angelus: Also kinda average but he needs both theory and practice and examples help a lot.

[tumblunni]

DOPPEL THOUGHTS

I wanna develop her more as an oc! Vague thoughts so far!

* She's technically a ditto and not a gengar, but also not just a ditto transformed into a gengar? She's the ghost of a ditto and things kinda got muddled along the way.

* Going with the headcanon of dittos being failed mewtwos, cos i love that one! It opens up a lot of avenues for slightly different dittos? Like if theyre collapsed messes that cant maintain a mew shape, maybe some of them might still have some mild mew traits and that could be a poke-variations thing. Like one that still has cat ears or a tail or big anime eyes instead of the standard ditto face or one that gallops around on four paws but is otherwise still a blob. Or even ones that are most of the way to being a mew but just look subtly wrong? Like a very wobbly kitty. Maybe even ones that might look perfect but lack all of mew's powers, still just a jelly blob with a slightly shinier coat of paint!

* Doppel in particular was a clone that failed so badly in holding its shape that it wasnt even as stable as a regular ditto. She couldnt transform and had really raspy breathing and constant fatigue. the lab technicians stopped even bothering to feed her cos it was obvious she'd die soon. But weirdly enough, dying was exactly what she needed! It seems that the problem with her was that while trying to recreate mew's dna containing all dna of all pokemon, the scientists gave her an imbalance of slightly too much ghost type. So she ended up as a ditto-gengar fusion and only lived for a few weeks so she could..well.. Continue to live! She just nodded off one day and woke up without a heartbeat but otherwise much more healthy. I guess having a physical form was a vestigal trait?

* I've been thinking about an oc for her trainer and i settled on a neurotic former rocket grunt with big floofy hair and an even bigger heart! He never believed in any of the rocket stuff, he knew it was evil and he hated himself that he'd sunk so low that he'd do something he knew was wrong for the money. (He was homeless when they recruited him) Eventuallu one day his morals won out and he quit, and the catylyst was accidentally seeing the secret experiments the scientists were performing. Like just stealing stuff is one thing but now we're talking animal torture to make some sort of wprld domination superweapon?! I thought i was in a petty gang not a spy thriller! So he pulled off a grand escape setting all the dittos free, and they ran off into the wild to eventually breed and become a new species. Team rocket couldnt find the original escapees cos they all easily hid in disguise amoung the rattatas and stuff, and now even if they managed to catch the still-pretty-rare fourth generation crossbred dittos they wouldnt be any use to the plan as their mew dna has been polluted.

* former rocket oc dude ended up with doppel because he found her still in her preevolved ditto state, and she was the only one so weak she couldnt manage to run when he opened the cage. So he scooped her up and carried her while he vaulted the wall, and then just kinda ended up getting attatched while he tried to nurse her back to health. It was really depressing to wake up one morning and find the lil thing cold as the grave after all he'd done to try and save her. But then she just jumped up out of her body like "helo fremd, i am fine!" He almost died too from the shock XD

* And thats how he ended up with this ghost pokemon even though ghost types are his biggest phobia. He keeps telling himself that she's not really technically a real gengar. Though really she is, the only difference is the face as a leftover of the pokemon she used to be before she died. And really the reason he's not afraid of her is because he got to know her and he knows she's harmless, and maybe someday through therapy and gentle exposure to ghost types he could end up realizing the same thing about the rest of them? But in the meantime caring for doppel is kinda passively healing his fears a little bit. She's a great support pokemon for this poor traumatized dude!

* oh and just to add that thankfully his financial situation is a lot better now! Having a pokemon means he's able to take the traditional trainer journey and be able to make prize money through battling. Its just a little bit more important to him cos he's literally living on how good he is at fighting. Normal kid trainers might have to camp out a bit and sometimes be low on cash, yeah, but they still have a family back home to help them out. So anxiety-man's goal is to become a league champion not because he actually likes fighting but just because its A JOB and he might be able to RENT A SMALL APARTMENT PERHAPS! In fact he really really hates fighting and its super ironic that he's actually kind of a huge badass. "I dont like conflict!" he says while curbstomping all of team rocket in a revengey rage!

* also doppel likes icecream

[alphawave-writes]

Snow days

Hank loves winter. Gavin doesn't. But Gavin is here to visit his boyfriend for a date and he's hoping they'll spend this winter day getting intimate. Instead, he has to endure the freezing cold,  run away from men in white camo, and try not to think too much about Hank in a sexy santa costume.

It's by no means what Gavin expected, or even necessarily wanted, in a date, but as long as Hank's smiling and having fun, he's happy.

You guys ever wanna chat with me, hit me up on my discord server ‘Alphawave’s den’ for sneak peeks of my latest chapters and cool advice for anyone struggling with schoolwork or writing.

Everyone knew that Hank Anderson loved snow days. Countless stories dating all the way to his youth talked about how he played in the glittering white when school was cancelled, making snowmen, starting snowball fights with friends and strangers alike. If Hank could, he'd probably live in the snow, but unfortunately for him, he was only human and thus was limited to his exposure to the cold. Not that androids fared much better in the cold. It's one small advantage to humankind.

That being said, those who knew Gavin Reed knew that he was more of a summer person. Which meant that he hated winter with a vengeance. So it would be to the surprise of many when, on a crisp winter afternoon, Gavin Reed found himself outside of Hank's house to participate in one of Hank Anderson's patented Snow days™. Luckily, Gavin found that there was no one who knew he was in the neighbourhood—not even Connor, which was great, because just being here was humiliating enough. It's hard enough to pretend he hated Hank when he didn't. It's even harder to pretend he wasn't so fucking excited to be alone with Hank today. Much as he'd loathe admitting it, he had been eagerly awaiting today and the things they could do together, preferably within the confines of Hank's bedroom.

Gavin rung the doorbell and quickly shoved his hands into his coat in an effort to look cool and nonchalant. Hank opened the door with that smug old man smile that he simultaneously loved and hated.

"Took your time, didn't ya?" Hank chuckled warmly.

"Yeah yeah, you try and get here from my place," Gavin grumbled. He quelled the urge to smile when Hank leaned over and gave him a slobbery smooch to his right cheek. The urge to reciprocate overwhelmed him but he decided not to. Not now, while he's still at the front yard where he could be seen by anyone.

"You've got an awful amount of lip who willingly came here," Hank smirked. "Miss me that much?"

"Yeah, with a bullet, but my aim's getting better."

Hank only laughed at that, silently ushering Gavin into his home. Gavin stood by the doorway shaking the snowflakes embedded onto his hair and clothes while Hank went into his bedroom. Sumo, sensing the presence of a guest, ran toward Gavin and nearly tackled him over.

"F-fucking hell, you're gonna give me a heart attack," Gavin yelped. He put his hand towards Sumo. "Down, boy. Down."

But Sumo did not speak English, nor did he have the necessary training to understand anything more than the word "food" and "walkies". He continued his assault on Gavin, raining slobbery kisses all over Gavin's face. Gavin's futile protests quickly dissolved into weak giggles. Sumo's kisses were only slightly wetter than Hank's, and with far more tongue too. At this rate, Sumo was more likely to french kiss Gavin than Hank today.

Hank finally emerged with his trademark jacket and sighed wistfully. "Come on, Sumo, get."

Sumo whined.

"Seriously, leave Gav alone, it's my time to pester him."

Sumo let out one final whimper before dragging himself to his bed.

At the sight of Hank putting on his coat, the number of activies Gavin thought possible was drastically reduced. Gavin let out a quiet, disappointed sigh, hiding it with an excessive shake of his head. "Is this what this is? Pestering?" He smiled.

"You agreed to get pestered as soon as you came here," Hank smirked. "Now come on, daylight's wastin'."

Gavin found that he could not say anything to refuse the old man, least of all when he was smiling.

From Hank's house was a 15-minute walk to a small park covered in snow. Deciduous trees were topped with glistening white, and the whole park seemed to shimmer in the light of the sun, snow crystals transforming into diamonds that glitter and glisten with glee. At that moment, Hank embraced his inner child and ran straight into a snow bank with little regard for himself, his reputation, and the cold. Gavin giggled quietly, watching what used to be the most depressed man in the DPD turn into a five-year-old at the sight of what was essentially frozen water.

"Come on, Gavin, join me," Hank called out to him from behind the snowbank.

"It's fucking freezing. I'm not built like a bear like you are."

Hank popped his head up. "Did you just call me a bear?"

"Not that kind of bear. I meant it literally." Gavin let out a huff, trying not to let that mental image creep into his head and tint his cheeks. "And you call me the perverted one," he mumbled.

"I mean, I suppose I am but…I mean, do I count? Do I have to get some kinda experience with this, or am I just…" Hank paused and turned to Gavin with a slightly more serious expression. "Do you…think I'm a bear in the, er…other way?"

Hank blushed crimson, and his rosy cheeks conjured up an image in Gavin's mind of Hank in a Santa costume smiling sweetly as he awkwardly shuffled out of the clothes. Gavin wasn't sure what to make of that mental image. If he was able to convince Hank to wear a Santa costume to the bedroom, he's not sure he's ever gonna look at jolly Kris Kringle the same way again.

At this rate however, he'd settle for just getting Hank into the bedroom in the first place.

"F-fuck no," Gavin mumbled. His cheeks burn as he quickly wiped the image away from his mind before the rest of his body got the cue. The one good thing about embarrassment was that it made Gavin feel a little bit warmer. At the same time however he wished it didn't make him feel this warm. Winding his scarf closer to his neck, he went around the snowbank and approached Hank, who was in the process of packing up snow into crude little columns.

Gavin crossed his arms, more because he was still fucking cold than to make a point. "Please tell me we're not doing what I think you're doing."

"What's so wrong about building a snowman?" Hank asked.

"I don't know, the fact that it's childish?" Gavin glanced around the park nervously. "What would happen if someone sees us?"

"We're just two men making a snowman together. What the fuck's wrong with that?"

"An adult making a snowman with his kid is normal. Two grown men making one is just weird."

"If you think people are gonna presume we're gay, newsflash, but we are."

"You're bisexual," Gavin corrected.

"A bisexual man who's currently in a very gay relationship with another gay man." Hank gestured to the snowman. "Now are you going to help me with this or not?"

Gavin took another cursory glance around the park. He didn't know if Hank chose this time because he was being considerate, but it really was deserted. The only people he could see were a couple kids but they were at the opposite end taking turns on a swing set. No adults in sight, no one that he recognized.

He took another glance at Hank who was kneeling down, trying to keep the crumbling base of his snowman together. Gavin repressed a sigh and crouched down, bundling up snow in his hands into a ball. "Hank, you gotta compact the snow so it sticks together."

"I knew that," Hank said quickly.

"Did you really?" Gavin smirked knowingly.

"…Maybe not," Hank admitted.

Gavin chuckled, leaning forward to press a quick kiss to Hank's cold lips. "What would you fucking do without me?"

"I'd certainly have much less to complain about in my weekly therapy sessions," Hank remarked, trying to hide the smile creeping up his cheeks.

Gavin rolled his eyes, grabbing snow from the snowbank to compact. He'd never made a snowman before, not even as a kid. It was rather difficult to make one when you used to live in California and it's perpetually warm and sunny. He had no idea if he even had to compact snow to create a snowman, or if there was a better method out there than whatever the hell he was doing, but just the simple process of creating something was strangely meditative. Dare he say it, he might actually be having fun?

He took another glance at Hank who was smiling serenely into the snow. His eyes trail downward to Hank's cold hands, almost blue from the cold. He forgot his mitts again. Fucking idiot, he thought fondly. He considered giving his own mitts to Hank, but it was only out of the principle of self-preservation (as well as the fact it was cold as fuck) that Gavin kept his on. That didn't stop him from grabbing Hank's hands in his own and heating them up.

"So you don't get fucking frostbite," Gavin said.

Hank just raised his eyebrows and smiled knowingly. "Sure that's the only reason, Gav. Sure."

They worked as a team in relative silence. Not a good team, but a team regardless, and eventually their pile of snow began to roughly look like a ball. The snow pile that they were using as ammunition was running low, so Gavin moved onto the next closest pile of snow beside the only evergreen tree in the park. It's a tedious process, mostly involving shovelling snow behind himself into Hank's general direction, but it's fine because he'd rather let Hank work on the artistic side of things. Heaven knew he was a shit artist.

The pile is nearly depleted, and Gavin was about to find another pile of snow for Hank to work his latent artistic skills on when he felt something buried in the snow. It felt like a plastic bag filled with something. Against his better judgment, he grabbed the bag and brought it out into the light.

It's a bag of red ice, and a full one too. He quickly dropped it in surprise.

…Did he just accidentally find a drug stache? Here?

"Er…Hank? Can you come over here?"

From far away, the sound of a slightly annoyed huff could be heard. "I'm kinda busy, Gav."

"Hank, seriously..."

"Give me a minute, I almost got the second snowball up on this goddamn snowman."

"Seriously, Hank, not to sound like an even bigger asshole than normal, but you need to get your ass here right now."

There's another loud sigh as Hank finally plodded his way over. "OK, what the fuck did you want me to…oh." Hank's eyes widen slightly. "Oh shit."

"'Oh shit', is that all you have to say?" Gavin wildly gestured at the bag. "Fuck, Hank, what are we going to do with a random ass bag of red ice?"

Hank narrowed his eyes. "You've done drug busts before, haven't ya?"

"Yeah, when I expect to find drugs. Not in the middle of a goddamn snowy park." Gavin rubbed the back of his head. What the fuck was happening?

"Look, let's all calm down and take a deep breath." A gentle, soothing smile eased out of Hank's lips. It quelled Gavin's racing mind, gave him something to focus on. Hank continued, "Treat it like a case, Gav."

Gavin closed his eyes and exhaled, not because it was sound advice but because it was Hank who was saying this. Whether he hated him or liked him, the result was the same. He couldn't help but obey Hank Anderson on an instinctual level.

"Did ya touch the bag?" Hank asked.

"No. Not even with the mitts." Gavin wiggled his fingers to make his point, not that it told Hank much.

Hank nodded. "Does the bag look like something a user might leave?"

Gavin carefully observed his surroundings. The bag was left right next to the only evergreen tree. There were cameras in the park except for this blind spot. And the sheer amount of red ice here. This wasn't something a person would just forget about. Someone left it here. "It's a drop," Gavin uttered.

"Seems like it," Hank shrugged.

Gavin crossed his arms. He should probably know the street value of red ice by now, but the number of drug busts he'd done was pitifully small in his long career in the force, and he was content on sticking with his usual homicide cases.

Still...he did need to ask. "Hank, er...how much—"

"200,000 dollars."

"Er…what?"

"That's 200,000 dollars worth of drugs in there."

Gavin was about to ask more when he saw in the corner of his eye a couple of people slowly approaching. They were all wearing white, clothing that perfectly allowed them to blend into the snow. Gavin looked back at the hole he made where the bag was and saw something glitter faintly, just beneath the red ice, a small black object no bigger than a watermelon seed.

An audio device.

"Phck," Gavin muttered.

He grabbed the bag and hugged it close to his body, urging Hank with his other hand to run, run, run. The people in the distance began running too until it's a chase away from the park. Hank's not slow, thank god, and the chasers were wearing clothing specifically designed for stealth and not speed, also thank god. The entire time Hank and Gavin don't stop running, not even to see where those chasers were, just mindlessly heading towards Hank's house. By the time they're there, as Hank quickly enters his car in one smooth move (something told Gavin Hank had practised that particular move before), the pursuers were nowhere in sight.

Hank started the car and began driving down the streets, nervously checking his mirrors every couple of seconds for signs of a pursuit but there was nothing. Gavin finally took the time to look at the bag sitting on his lap.

"Phck," he muttered again.

"Don't start snortin' it up, Gavin. Wouldn't want to see you more irritable than normal," Hank joked.

"I'm not that bad," Gavin said, knowing full well he was very much an easily irritated person by nature.

Hank pointed out, "The last time you stayed over at my place, you were grumpy as all fuck."

"You called me over to 'Netflix and chill'," Gavin said pointedly.

"So? We watched a movie on Netflix. We chilled at my place."

Gavin scratched the bridge of his nose. "You really don't fucking know what 'Netflix and chill' means, do you?"

"Well, then what the fuck does it mean?"

The traffic light turned red and the car stopped. Hank glanced over to Gavin just in time for him to see Gavin repeatedly poke his index finger in and out of a hole made with his other hand. Hank's blush returned as he turned his attention back to the road. "O-Oh. T-that…."

Gavin let out a puff of air as the light turned green and the car lurched forward once again. He glanced at Hank and saw the old gears turning ever so slowly in his brain. A part of Gavin regretted the crude way in which he talked to Hank lately. It wasn't the old fuck's fault he was so far behind the times he was practically last century…well, OK, maybe it was his fault, but it was also his choice to remain in blissful ignorance. He'd invited Gavin to his place to watch a movie with the nicest of intents. He'd invited him to hang out today, the first time in what felt like forever when they both had an off day. Hank meant well, even if he clearly was not picking up the signals Gavin had been projecting for months now. He shouldn't be so pissy when he's sexually frustrated.

Gavin waited a minute before he finally spoke again. "You know, I was sorta hoping when you invited me on this date that we'd…you know, take the next step further. Third base, or home base, I don't fucking know. Just…you know…something more than a couple of kisses every now and then."

Hank was silent. Gavin decided to continue.

"Look, I get it. You haven't been with anyone since your wife, I haven't been through it but I understand. And if you wanna take it slow, I'm OK with that, but for the love of god, you gotta tell me so we don't end up in sticky scenarios like this." Gavin gestured at the bag of red ice before him.

Hank chuckled weakly. "I don't think our sex lives could have ever determined whether we find a bag of red ice in the middle of the fucking park or not."

"If we'd gone all the way, we wouldn't be at the park, Hank," Gavin leaned towards Hank and stared meaningfully into his eyes. "We'd be doing something warmer and more fun than making a snowman, I can tell you."

Hank's embarrassment got the better of him, and he stayed silent, unable to comment. After a minute waiting for Hank to speak, Gavin turned, propped his head up with his hand, and stared at the busy Detroit streets that passed him by.

It's not long before they found themselves back in the DPD. The heated room was a saving grace as Gavin hefted himself out of his coat. He let out an annoyed sigh. The one time both he and Hank had an off-day and they both end up having to return to the office anyways for the craziest, shittiest reason ever. Just their luck.

Before Gavin could bemoan his misfortune verbally, Fowler is already out of his office after catching sight of them. His eyes flickered from Hank, to Gavin, then to the bag cradled in Gavin's grasp.

"You fucking didn't," he groaned.

"Jeffrey, I know this sounds ridiculous, but we just found a bag of red ice literally in the park," Hank said. "And I think this could be related to some of the gangs of that local area. If we could just analyse this, we might have a break." Fowler didn't look convinced. It didn't stop Hank. "Jeffrey, seriously, I—"

"Let me just stop you right there," Fowler sighed. "You're telling me you just found a bag of red ice? Just now?"

"Er…yeah?"

"Were you approached by three people wearing snow camo?"

"Yeah?"

Fowler slapped his palm forcibly into his forehead. "Hank, you fucking stumbled yourself onto one of the SWAT team exercises."

"Wait…what?" Gavin said.

"I just got a call minutes ago from Captain Allen saying two lunatics stumbled onto them in the park managed to accidentally dig up the fake drugs they had buried in the snow and ran away with it before they could do anything! And now you come here to me with it?!"

"I mean…it was hidden quite well," Hank chuckled nervously. "Cut me some slack, it looks like the real thing."

"Hank," Fowler said, "you're holding a bag of pop rocks."

Gavin peered into the bag and opened it. It sure didn't smell like red ice. He took a small bit of it and placed it on his tongue. "H-hey hey hey! What the fuck are you doing?!" Hank yelled.

Gavin's eyebrows furrowed. "It is fucking pop rocks." He smacked his lips experimentally. "Strawberry flavoured?"

With a groan, Fowler swiped the bag out of Gavin's hands. "I swear to god, I'm gonna get a migraine from you two." He shook his head incredulously. "What the fuck were you two even doing in a park anyway?"

Hank turned to Gavin. Gavin turned to Hank. The two men stared at each other, desperately hoping they had progressed into that stage of the relationship that they could telepathically communicate to each other because they were both sending the same signal. Shit shit shit shit, they mentally told one another. Whether it was out of ignorance or because of the lack of fucks in his possession, Fowler let out one last sigh before returning to his office, the bag of pop rocks in his hand.

That left Hank and Gavin awkwardly staring at each other in the middle of the precinct. Gavin glanced around, trying to see if he spotted any familiar faces but there were none aside from Fowler. Tina and Connor weren't around for some reason. A case, a really late lunch break together, or the earliest of Christmas miracles, Gavin didn't know but he fucking did appreciate it. He didn't know how the fuck he'd have to explain this.

Hank coughed loudly into his hand. "You, um…wanna…get out of here?"

"Fuck yes," Gavin said, quickly putting his coat back on.

They go outside into the cold, Gavin almost immediately shivering. The combined time they spent in the precinct and car had made Gavin acclimatized to the heater, so of course, winter had to give him a middle finger by making the wind pick up its pace, which had the effect of lowering the perceived temperature by about five degrees. That was ten degrees colder than Gavin could tolerate. He fucking hates winter.

He'd further curse winter's name if he could, but a warm arm wrapped around his shoulders, and suddenly he was pulled close to Hank. He whipped his head to Hank, who was very conveniently looking in the other direction. The sight of Hank's ruddy cheeks ignited a small chuckle out of Gavin's lips, warm and soft like the sun. The corners of Hank's lips peek upward.

"Well, this incident pretty much ruined any chance of us of us enjoying the snow today," Hank sighed.

Gavin could only shrug. Yeah, today's outing was ruined, but he wasn't so hung up about it. He was never all that crazy about being out in the cold. Making the snowman wasn't that bad though. Not that he'd say it out loud.

"A-about today. You…you thought me inviting you to hang out in the snow was another euphemism, right?" Hank asked nervously.

"Yeah," Gavin admitted. "But I kinda got the message of what you actually wanted to do when you began talking about things we could do. I got the idea you were being sincere when you started talking about fucking ice skating of all things a couple days ago."

It's Hank's turn to chuckle. "Still can't believe you can't ice skate."

"Well, what do you expect? I never liked winter, and I've never seen snow till I came here. I haven't even made a snowman before, which, FYI, is incredibly dumb and only appropriate for children, Hank." Gavin pressed himself closer to Hank. It's partly for warmth, but also partly because it felt nice.

"If you don't like winter, and you didn't wanna fucking hang out in the snow, then why the fuck did you come anyway? Why not just tell me you wanted to stay inside?" Hank asked, a childish curiosity seeping into his voice.

"Isn't it obvious?" Gavin let out a rare, quiet smile. "I wanna hang out with my fucking boyfriend, that's what. And if I have to suffer in the freezing cold to see you smile for once, then fuck it, I'll do it."

Hank's eyes widen in surprise for a second, but it soon faded into a gentle smile. Gavin knew it was a smile from the heart because Hank's eyes light up like fireworks exploding in the night sky. "That's the nicest thing I've heard you say, Gavin. To, like…anyone, actually." Hank rubbed the back of his head bashfully. "I'm not so sure I'm, er, worth all that extra effort. Or the nice words."

"It doesn't matter if you are worth it or not, because I'm gonna fucking say them to you regardless," Gavin grinned up to Hank. "You're not the worst human being in the world."

Hank scoffed. "Is that supposed to make you feel better?"

"I'm Gavin 'asshole' Reed apparently. That's the best compliment you're gonna fish out of me."

"I don't know, that bit about me being a bear might've been up there," Hank teased.

"Oh, so now you decide to flirt with me."

"Look, Gavin, I'm trying to insinuate something." And Gavin began to turn his head away derisively but Hank gently grabbed his chin and forced him to look him in the eyes. Hank was probably trying to do his best bedroom eyes impression, but to Gavin, he only looked like he was half about to go to sleep.

A giggle broke out of Gavin despite himself. "What the fuck are you trying to insinuate?"

"You were the one who wanted to know where we take this relationship, well…" Hank grabbed one of Gavin's mitted hands with his own, "…I think I'm ready to take the next step. Wouldn't want you to get tired of me too quickly now."

Gavin entwined his hands with Hank's. He could already feel Hank's cold hands seep the heat from his mittens but still, Gavin felt a little bit warm. It didn't matter if Hank stole a bit of heat from him. Not if they were gonna be generating a whole lot in the next hour or so.

"OK, first of all, I don't have the necessary supplies."

"Supplies?" Hank creased his brows. "You're not talking about…condoms?"

"…You've never been with a guy, have you."

Hank smiled sheepishly. "I mean…I know lube is involved, right?"

"Yeah, but do you have some?"

"I do, actually." Hank's brows furrowed. "...wait, can lube expire?"

Gavin withheld a sigh as he pulled Hank towards the car. "Fucking hell, I really do have to teach you everything," he shook his head. "You're taking us to the fucking pharmacy to get some lube and condoms from this century, and then we're going back to your place."

"Gonna show me the ropes, Gavin?" Hank laughed.

"You bet your ass I do," Gavin paused before adding, "and before you say it, yes I meant that one literally."

Hank laughed again. "I think we're gonna have to discuss the details in the car before one of us gets our rocks off."

Gavin eagerly agreed. Once they got inside the car, they got into what was the most mundane conversation about sex ever. Not that Gavin minded. Tried as he might, he couldn't help the swell of excitement rise in him. Regardless of what Hank said, today wasn't ruined. In fact, with all the craziness of finding those fake drugs, Gavin was already having fun.

Given the circumstances however, he might wait until after their activities before he considers telling Hank that though.

[livelivefastfree]

100% need a masterpost of your fics cause you've been drawing them and I love everything. But recs would be appreciated too!!

ALRIGHTY THEN.  One……VERY large post of my fics and my Motorcity recs, coming up.  ^v^  50+ fics for y’all’s consumption.

Let’s start with my fics, because I know them better, haha.

–

Save A Horse, Ride A Dragon

One of my fav fics I’ve done to date in any fandom.  Mike is a mercenary dragon trapped in the shape of a human, wandering the Michigan wastes in post-apocalyptic magical America, when he and his Burners get an offer from the mysterious Lord Vanquisher.  T+ at this point for suggestive moments and makeouts. Polyburners/Muckles.  Warnings for the Duke being The Worst, and for Mike being the DUMBEST oblivious thirst-lizard.

The Officer Present//Director Absent series (AKA Live Free and Welcome To The Kane Co Family)

A love letter to the Season 2 that never was, co-written by me and my twin sister toastyhat/HeatedHeadwear!  :D  Live Free chronicles the appearance of a new, menacing super-soldier in Motorcity, the shadowy machinations that led to his appearance and an overarching plan from Kane that could destroy Motorcity–once and for all!!!!!!  Welcome to the Kane Co Family starts shortly after the fallout from the first, with both cities struggling to come to terms with their new reality–but the world is changing and there are new threats on all sides, and if they thought their status quo changed in the first fic, BOY THEY’VE GOT A BIG STORM COMING!! >8Dc  Also Julie punches multiple people and generally kicks ass, it’s fabulousBoth fics are gen, they’re both rated T+ for violence, Evil Science, angst, etc.  Warnings for copious Deluxe worldbuilding, egregious amounts of backstory, a couple OCs I’ve been reliably informed are extremely fun, and chapter titles in the style of anime episode titles, because why not.  :D

Supersynesthesiac

Originally created solely to fill a prompt from a sexy prompt generator, this fic and the world it’s set in both spiralled wildly out of control, and a much more plot-heavy sequel is in the works.  Supersynesthesiac follows Mike Chilton, a vigilante superhero in Detroit Of The Future, as he finally meets his elusive, telepathic partner Blonde Thunder under the most dramatic circumstances possible.  Rated M for psychic makeouts, mind-melding and also there’s sex happening, probably.  It’s not nearly as lovingly described as the mind-meld porn going on in the foreground.  Polyburners is happening in the background, but this fic is basically entirely Muckles.  Warnings for Red being awful.

Rest In Pieces (Come Apart)

Mike is getting entirely out of control, and needs to burn off energy before he can get himself (and everybody else) in trouble again.  Fortunately his gang has a Plan.Rated M for sweet, loving and totally relentless polyburners gangbang.  Warnings for everybody being absolute dorks.  Also bondage and edging, if that’s not your thing. UoU

Werewolves Of Detroit

A series of vignettes exploring the world of Mike Chilton, rogue ex-commander werewolf, his vampire best friend, his highly unconventional pack, and the world they live in. EVERY section is illustrated and I’m very proud.Rated T+, mostly gen with mentions of Dutch/Tennie.  Warnings for Kane being a huge bigot, mentions of KaneCo-mandated surgery, and Texas being an asshole about vampires.   

Exposure Therapy 

Mike has a cool idea for a cool present for his cool boyfriend to totally cure Chuck’s fear of going fast in Mutt.  Rated M for dumb, fluffy smut and implied sex toys.  Warnings for unsafe driving practices.

Kiss And Tell

Somebody came into my askbox and suggested polyburners–but the rest of the city doesn’t know that’s their relationship, just that SOME configuration of Burners is together, and it seems to change CONSTANTLY.   Rated T+ for vaguely-implied possible sex at some point off-screen.  Warnings for nothing, this fic is a perfect warm fluffy representation of my poly-burner feelings and I love it.

Wreck

A little snapshot from an AU I’m not really planning to flesh out–I mostly wanted to capture a certain kind of bittersweet emotional conflict.  Chuck’s doing his best to keep his head down and live through college when a face he hasn’t seen since The Accident shows up at his door.  Vaguely Muckles-ish.  Rated T+ for reference to a nasty car accident and the aftermath, warnings for Kane being, just, Not A Good Dad.  

Override 0

Not exactly an AU, more of a speculative fic about the Burners finding out that Chuck’s enhancements go a lot further than just the weapons systems in his arms.  A realization prompted, of course, by the Duke of Detroit’s thirst for drama.  T+, no pairings.  Warnings for, in the words of AO3′s tag system, “#Loss Of Limbs”, mind control via brain-hacking, and mentions of unethical scientific/surgical procedures.

So Real In The Dark

I challenged myself to write people pining for each other while simultaneously being in a relationship, and a sci-fi AU with an artificial amnesia hookup service turned out to be the solution.  Half a fic about boys being incredibly dumb, and half a fic about trauma, bigotry, coping mechanisms and communication, and how you can love somebody and know them incredibly well and still not really understand them.  Explicit, Muckles, background Dutch/Tennie and Claire/Julie.  Warnings for brief stranger danger, aphrodisiacs, more poor treatment of cyborgs, and emotional gut-punch.

 –Stuff I Post About That Isn’t Posted/Finished Yet–

Burnerswap

A universe where the Burners are grown-up villains, and the former villains of the canon series are our new teenage heroes.  They’re dysfunctional and weird, but they’re doing their best to protect the clean, orderly, shining city of Deluxe from the gangs and bots and nasty, climbing bots that Ms. Kane sends up from the city below.  UoU  Likely to be rated T+ if I ever post it. Not much in the way of pairings except Ms. Kane’s right and left-hand man are VERY married and VERY tragic because you know I gotta fit Muckles in there.  

–Collab Fic / Gift Fic–

Chilton 2.0 by me and LaughingStones

The Kane Co. super-soldier program needs a volunteer, and who better to be superhumanly enhanced than the rising star of the Security program, Commander Chilton?  He’d never betray Kane Co, or need to have his brain overridden!  There’s no way this project can possibly go wrong!  Rated M for some pretty fucked-up treatment of cyborgs, and also for sexy future reasons. Warnings for Mike getting really messed up physically, emotionally and psychologically by bad programming and free-will overrides, and also for dumb boys stumbling awkwardly through impromptu sex-ed together.  Muckles.

i’m not the same kid from your memory by roachpatrol and also I helped

Kane Co. captures Chuck and manages to do some nasty shit to his brain before the Burners come and re-capture him.  Chuck does NOT appreciate being held captive by Burner Scum.  Emotions!!! Angst!!!!!  …it’s rated T+ on AO3 but there’s sex so just, be aware of that.  UoU  Muckles!

Experiments In Cross-Species Makeouts by LaughingStones

This one is very hard to explain, because Jem and I like to bounce of each other’s AUs and fics and write derivative fics of fics–there’s an OC in the Live Free/Welcome To The Kane Co Family universe who has what is essentially a nasty brainy kismessisitude/hate-love relationship (not fully explored in the fic, but very fleshed out in my mind, haha) with Chuck.  And this is….those two, but with the races/species from Werewolves of Detroit.  So…supernatural AU Chuck/OC hate-sex.  M, obviously.  Warnings for vampires getting drunk on siren blood and Live Free/WttKCF spoilers.

Recalibration Nation by HeatedHeadwear

!!!! A fic for my picture of Chuck as the Duke’s cyborg bodyguard, because toasty is great.  A+ hurt/comfort and recovery and bittersweet life-goes-on vibe, aslkfjsadf I love it.  T+, no pairings, warnings for anxiety/panic attacks, ear trauma, violence, emotions.

Proper Disposal Of Project Materials by LaughingStones

A scene in Chilton 2.0 I didn’t get to write; Chuck is a Failed Project, and Kane Co. has no used for Failed Projects.  Fortunately, the techs he grew up working with have his back.  T+ for (yet again) unethical treatment of cyborgs.  

Making Friends The Superhero Way by LaughingStones

Set before Supersynesthesiac; Mike’s good at his superhero job, but sometimes everybody needs help.  In this case, help just happens to have cat ears.  Gen, rated G.  Warnings for trouble breathing and also Mike being a doofus.

The Space Shenanigans series by LaughingStones and roachpatrol 

Loosely related to/based on the Forget Me Not, but set much later.  I’m not sure FMN is going to be poly or not, but these fics are inspired-by, so they go in this section. :D  The various sexy shenanigans of space-captain Mike, cyborg Chuck and Julie the terrifying space princess.  M for sexy shenanigans.  Warnings for (acted/fake) dubcon for the benefit of an asshole, and…..just various sexual shenanigans, I would check the warnings on the fics, haha.  :D

–Aaaaaand some non-me recs!–

(((I’m going to have to speed through these a little bit more, but I love them also, this post is just getting VERY long)))

All Steamed Up by Gumbridge 

Gen, G: coffeeshop AU, technically. Chuck would REALLY like a new espresso machine, he has done the MATH, it’s GOOD BUSINESS, MIKE!!!!!

Artificial Nocturne by Icka M. Chif (mischif)

Gen, T+: Mike accidentally trespasses on the territory of a mysterious guy who calls himself “Hound”.  Mike immediately sets about pushing past the emotional barrier of standoffishness and the physical barrier of giant, repurposed KaneCo HOUNDbots, and ends up with two awesome new friends out of the deal.  (The “Chuck is a constantly-terrified badass with an army of bots” AU)

Atlas and Copernicus by charcoalmink

Gen, G: A piece about how Kane can think of Mike and Julie both as his children, but feel so completely different about them.  Hurts so good, ahhh ToT

Behind The Throne by intravenusann

Duke/No. 2, Explicit: Number 2 would never really leave.  But sometimes it’s nice to be reminded why she stays.  

Bittersweet by EnsignCelery

Gen, G: Sometimes they get stressed.  Sometimes you just gotta lie down and cuddle.

Chicken Soup For The Burner Soul by renquise

Gen, G: Mike’s immunity boosters start to wear off and he goes down like a tree.  Good old-fashioned soft sickfic hurt/comfort.

Constantinople And Timbuktu / By(zantine) Any Other Name by (orphan_account)

Mike/Chuck, G: oh my god, this fic is strange to explain but so fun?? Historical AU–Chuck’s an orphan who ended up a body-double for russian royalty in like 1500, until he ends up kind of ambiguously kidnapped by a Tatar horseman who doesn’t speak his language but has a really nice smile and a fun come-and-go family of other riders from other countries.  In the words of the author, “ [the Russian nomad!au] “

Degreaser by Gumbridge

Claire/Julie, T+: Claire can tolerate getting dirty down in Motorcity, but it has to be under the right circumstances. Julie provides those circumstances.

I Thought You Were Dead by Caligraphunky

Gen, G: Jacob thought all the androids he created for KaneCo were scrapped.  But here’s unit CHUCK, back again.

In The Lost Age Where The Jewels Hide by roachpatrol and LaughingStones

Chuck (Lord Vanquisher)/Mike (Smiling Dragon), Explicit:  The LARPing group plays WAY crazier games than Mike is used to, but he could really get used to in-character Never Have I Ever if it always ends with stuff like this.  WOW.  Sex is GREAT.

Loaded Up And Truckin’ by RaccoonDoom 

Gen, T+: Smokey And The Bandit AU–AKA Jacob has a truck and uses it to run illegal goods; Mike and Chuck run interference and keep the cops off his tail.  Trucker AU, heyyyy. :D

Love Free by Prim_the_Amazing 

Multi/Polyburners, G: KaneCo has the algorithms, the expertise, they determine the most perfect possible partner.  So what do you do when the person KaneCo chooses isn’t the person you wanted?

Never Quite Thought We Could Lose It All by LaughingStones

Mike/Chuck, Explicit: It’s not weird for a KaneCo tech to have a huge blank spot in their memory, but it is unusual for one of their childhood friends to show up at their cubicle dressed as a physical relief technician, looking stressed and desperate and acting like Chuck should know him.  Warning for implied/referenced noncon.

The Obligatory Fantasy AU series by LaughingStones 

Mike/Chuck, G/T: Chuck’s a Mage On A Mission, and he’s not going to be derailed by the fact that his bodyguard is definitely a dragon who definitely considers Chuck his beautiful, golden-haired treasure.

our guts can’t be reworked by roachpatrol

Mike/Julie, Chuck/Mike, T+: Mike finds out he’s bisexual in the most confusing possible way: BODY-SWITCHING.  

Pyrrhic Victory by Clementine

Mike/Chuck, G: I live for Mike and Chuck LARPing dramatic emotional scenes and being dumb, dorky boys and that’s what this is, and I LOVE it. 

Quiet by deanon

Mike/Chuck, Explicit:  Mike makes the mistake of wondering about Chuck and sex and being noisy, and get catapulted abruptly into terrible, flustered pining.

Quit or Retry by Caligraphunky

Gen, T+: a really short but really nicely done piece that slowly illuminates more and more of a single scene until you get the full picture.  fear. android Chuck.

Riding Shotgun by Oisiflaneur

Polyburners, T+: I’ve never smoked pot but I’m all for the Burners hanging around being chill and kissing and occasionally also Mike does shotguns and people make out.

rise if you’re sleeping (stay awake) by RaccoonDoom 

Gen, T+: Another cyborg fic, this time about Mike and Chuck and insomnia and nightmares.  Sweet hurt-comfort. UwU

Rule Number Eight by drown (teii) 

Chuck/Texas, Chuck->Mike, T+:  the fic that got me into Chuxas–starting with the aftermath of one-sided Chuck/Mike and chronicling Chuck’s descent into weird, Texas-related madness. 

Scars by corelton

Claire/Julie, G:  Julie’s line of work puts her in enough danger for her to actually have scars, like, old-fashioned scars from actual injuries.  Claire is fascinated by them.

searchlights in the parking lots of hell by roachpatrol

Gen, T+: I don’t know if it sounds like a compliment to say this is one of the most subtly, gorgeously horrifying fics I’ve ever read, but that’s basically how I feel.  Mike is a kid in a cyborg program, and he keeps ending up in sparring matches with the same kid, over and over again; it’s a different kind of unsettling every time.  There’s something about seeing a scenario that’s obviously intensely messed up, through the point of view of a character who thinks it’s normal and good.  It gives it a special, extra punch.  

Sex Level: Texas! by LaughingStones

Texas->Mike, Texas->Burners, Explicit: Texas has some totally cool and sexy thoughts–mostly about Mike.  WHAT?  It’s not like it's weird.   

Spend Life Fighting For Your Sanity by roachpatrol 

Dutch/Tennie, T+: Deluxe has no patience for rebel scum, free-thinkers or artists.  Unfortunately for Dutch’s continued health and well-being, he’s all of those things.  Even if he can’t really remember what he did.  AKA: Deluxe re-captures Dutch and comprehensively fucks him up, but SUCK IT you can’t take away the colors in his SOUL.  

Sprouts by renquise

Gen, G:  a fic about Dutch finding ROTH, and Dutch and Chuck becoming ROTH’s weird programmer dads.  ROTH is adorable and the characterization is great, A++ 

Test Drive by renquise 

Mike/Julie, Explicit: Julie and Mike have a fun adventure in pegging together. 

thursday’s child has far to go (and they go so very, very quickly) by thinkingCAPSLOCK

Gen, G:  Kane loses one child, but at least he still has the other.

Walls Twice As Strong by deanon

Mike/Chuck, T+:  in the words of the original summary: “When Mike and Chuck fight, everybody knows.“ 

We Are Golden by renquise

Polyburners, T+:  Mike kisses everybody, and it’s soft and good and makes my heart feel all happy. 

We Can’t Punch Good: A Love Story by heartsinhay

Dutch/Texas, T+: Texas is pretty sure Dutch has just gotten immune to Texas’s sweet Texas Moves, but that’s okay.  Texas has got more than one trick up his sleeve, and he knows what Dutch likes.  Probably

yellow highway lines (that you’re relying on to lead you home) by renquis

Gen, G:  A delicious exploration of the world that might exist outside the dome, and also THE BURNER ROADTRIP FIC YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR.  The kids take a package from Rayon and go on the road, headed for San Fran come hell or nuclear superstorm.This is one of the first Motorcity fics I read, and It’s a big part of why I started making things for this fandom in the first place. :D  Very recommend, A++

[theabominableblogger]

My Reaction to “Gotham” S2E12

Non-chronological order reaction post?  Yep.  Probably should be working on the other ones instead?  I’m gonna say yep.

I just wanna see how they do Mr. Freeze here.  If they wreck him, then I might be a little mad.  I’m still mad at Ed- I never liked Ed.

AN:  I managed to record my reactions to this episode and hopefully I can transcribe what I said into this post. 

Oohhh, flashback!

Oooh, drumroll!

They use a drumroll for the background music all the time when it comes to the GCPD.

“[Jim] You then pursued Cobblepot and his men, correct?”  “Yes, but I was unable to locate them.“  *jaw drops in shock*  Oh my God...

*claps with each word*  Jim, you are lying under oath!

“At which point, you [JIm] decided to flee the city before law enforcement could question you?”  “Yes, for that, I have no excuse other than to say I was concerned for the safety of my fiancée [Lee].“  *gasps*  SHE SAID YES!!

Yeah, this is basically just a recap of what happened in the winter finale.

“Were you [Jim] present at the time of his murder?”  “No, I was not.”  Oh my God!

“Do you [Jim] have any information regarding the case that you have not shared with us?”  “No, I do not.“  OH MY GOD, JIM!

“Were you [Jim] involved in Theo Galavan's murder?“  OH MY GOD, JIM!

“No, I was not.”  OH MY GOD, JIM!  OH MY GOD, YOU LIED! 

*on verge of losing voice*  JIM!

Lee!

Jim, you ass!

“Then what's wrong [Jim]?”  “Nothing.  Long day.“  LIES!  YOU LIED UNDER OATH!

THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!

“I [Barnes] believe your [Havey Dent’s] investigation has found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.”  “Careful. You're starting to sound like a lawyer.“  Hoo hooo...

Oswald C. Cobblepot?  What’s Oswald’s middle name?  Chester?

AN:  It’s Chesterfield.

There’s that [Jerome cult] graffiti again!

Oh my God... he [Oswald] looks so mangy... and gross

Oh my God, they put a screwdriver in Butch’s stump?!?  That’s... kinda awesome.

I like Tabitha’s look in this scene.  Like A+

“I [Butch] bet that was your [Tabitha] plan all along, huh? You're just that fond of me.”  “Strangely enough, I [Tabitha] am kind of fond of you [Butch].“  This is gonna come back and bite us in the butt in the S4 finale AAAHHH

“We [Tabitha and Butch] have history.“  *grimaces*

*Tabitha kisses Butch*  Ohhhh!  Ohhhh!!

Selina, what are you doing?!?

*Victor freezes a cop*  Whoaa!!

What?!?  Wait wait wait, Mr. Freeze has his tech before he becomes Mr. Freeze?!?  What is this?

Oh my God, this is just the opening.  Hoooly crap.

Yep.

Oh they didn’t play the theme at all!

Ha, Jim just strolls in like “Ah yes, a regular day!” and everyone’s like “...Jim?!?”

“That's it? No hug? No kiss? No "welcome back"?”  “You don't deserve these lips.“  Heeheeheehee!

Jim’s like “...OK... I can roll with this...”

*Ed dips a rose in liquid nitrogen*  Oooh, yay!  Flashback to eighth grade science class!

“Which means your suspect wasn't using liquid nitrogen. He was using supercooled liquid helium.“  What? 

Liquid helium?

Ed... control thy anger!

“I [Ed] found Mr. Cobblepot wounded and dying in the woods.  I nursed him back to health.  He owed me his life, which is why I trusted him when he said he had changed his ways.  It was an innocent mistake.“  ...Really?

*Barnes brings Oswald in in handcuffs*  Whoa!

Take a shot every time they use the word “skell” in this show.

How did they catch him [Oswald]?

Freakin’... Oswald...

“You [Oswald] confess to murder?”  “Yes, I do. Proud of it. I'm not a criminal, you know? I'm just insane.“  Hooo...

Aaahhhhhhh....

“Jim, I'm trusting you.  Don't make a fool out of me [Barnes].“  HOOOAAHHHH...

Y’know, so far, for an episode called “Mr. Freeze,” we’ve only seen Mr. Freeze once.

Oh wait, there he is!  Speak of the devil!

[Victor’s]  Just gonna leave this dead, frozen corpse in the back of his truck!  I mean...

Nora!

God, the actress who plays Nora [Kristen Hager] looks like a mix between Michelle Williams and Brie Larson

“I [Victor] need to find the correct ratio of liquid helium to glycerol cryoprotectant.”  “Now tell me [Nora] what that means in English, honey.“  *chuckles*

“I [Victor] can bring your temperature down to 200 degrees below zero, and I can stop this disease from killing you [Nora].“  What’s the disease though?

What’s the disease though?  Like what is this tragic disease that Nora always has?  They never explain what she has!  I think “Batman and Robin” was the only one that actually tries to put a name to it.

Like it’s not really that contagious because he [Victor] just kissed her [Nora] on the forehead!  What is it?!?

“Good news.  Nygma did some digging, found one company in all of Gotham that makes liquid helium:  Wayne Enterprises.”  Oh but of course!

OK, so he’s [Victor] working with cryogenics... is it similar to what whatever Hugo Strange is doing at Indian Hill?  It’s gotta be, right?

Oh, that [Victor’s basement lab] doesn’t look shady at all!

Frickin’ Ed!

“[Oswald] You doing okay?  You look kind of funky.“  Hahaheehee!

Vitrification?  That’s a word?

AN:  It’s the process of turning a substance into glass, like in ceramics.  Which is also used for cyro-preservation

*Victor turns on the basement lights*  Whoaaa!

Oh my gosh, he [the corpse] is actually blue!

I don’t think the body can survive below -100 degrees.  There’s no way!

AN:  You can survive extremely cold temperatures for a moment, especially if concentrated on a very small patch of skin. The larger the surface and longer the exposure, the less likely that you’ll survive.

Oh my gosh, can we get more of this?  Jim, Lucius, and Harvey going out for lunch?  Can we have more of this?

Can we have more of the Crime Trio here?

It’s Proto-Team Batman!

I wanna know what that restaurant is...

Meanwhile at Arkham Asylum...

Please don’t tell me that is who I think that is...

Nope, OK.

Oh no, why am I thinking that?  Jerome’s deaadd! 

For now.

I want Oswald to have like this dramatic speech and then just prat-fall off the table.

*The Arkham inmates start to riot*  Well that clearly didn’t work, now did it?!?!?

“Solution A14.  I [Victor] knew it would work!  I knew it!  Ha!  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!“  But the guy’s dead!  He’s totally dead!

Why did the body melt?!?  Why did it melt?  It should not have melted.  Whaa...

*Nora starts hacking up blood*  Uhhh... call 911?!?  Should we call 911 maybe?  Can we please call 911 for Nora?  Please?

“If you [Nora] have another attack and you don't have this medication, you could die.“  Yeah, what does she have?

I actually do like that we get time to get to know their [Victor and Nora’s] relationship.  I do like that because half the time they’re like “Oh yeah, she’s already in ice!”

We get to see his motivation but we never get to see her as a character and how she interacts with Victor.

Goddd, who the crap is this?

Oh my gosh, this dude at the counter at the pharmacy is a diiiiiiccckkk!  Oh my God!

Oswald just looks miserable!

OH MY GOD, THAT IS HUGO STRANGE!

Why is he at Arkham?!?!?

Oh my God, B.D. Wong is such a perfect choice for Hugo.

“Chief of Psychiatry?”  Oh my God, NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

*Victor freezes the pharmacist*  Whoa...

*Jim and Harvey accidentally run over one of the frozen victims*  OOHHHHHHHH!

Oswald, for some reason, reminds me of one of those really snooty popular girls.

AN:  Think Megan Fox from “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen”

Oswald’s like “I’m gonna pour myself some tea.  Why not?”

Or scotch, whatever that is.

I really like the focusing shots on Hugo’s eyes.  Makes a really nice shout-out to the comics.

“And don't worry; here at Arkham we have a number of intensive treatment programs.“  Uhhhh....

Yeah, I’m with you, Oswald.  I would not trust Strange with an inch of my life!

So does Nora know that he’s [Victor] dragging dead, frozen bodies downstairs to experiment on?

“Victor?  Honey?”  God, she’s gonna go downstairs and see it!  Noooo!!!

Noooo, she’s gonna see it!  Nooooo!!!

No, I don’t like this, I don’t like this, I doooooonn’t like thiiiss!  Not at all!

She is gonna see all of this!

“Frice?” 

‘I’m really good with names,’ are you, Harvey?!?

*continues to contemplate the correct pronunciation of VIctor’s last name for the rest of the episode*

Where’s the freeze guuuunnnn?

Noooooo my God, is he [Victor] gonna target Jim and Harvey?

WHOA!

“See no evil, do no evil.”  *jaw drops open in shock*

WWWWWHAAAAAAT?!?

“My husband did terrible things.  But he did those terrible things for my sake.  I'm dying.  He wants to save me [Nora].”  What are you dying of?!?

What are you dying of?  Just tell them!

Whoa...

*Victor walks into the precinct*  Ohhhhhh snap!

What?

Wait, why are there other people claiming Victor’s work as their own?

*gasps when the frozen body on the lab table is gone*

Ummm... exCUSE mee?!?

*gasps and covers mouth in shock when the victim is revealed to be thawed out and alive*

“I'm [Victor] coming for you, Nora.  I'm coming to save you.“  She’s not gonna be there!

Strange, what the hell are you doing?

God, that’s so hard because I know two Dr. Stranges:  one’s a good guy and ones a bad guy. 

*yells in frustration*

Holy crap, I forgot Indian Hill’s under Arkham, isn’t it?

“Treatments will include immersive aversion therapy and radical psychotropics.“  Ummm, I didn’t know what half of that meant, but it isn’t good.

WAIT, PSYCHOTROPICS CHANGE BEHAVIOR!  WHA-

“Our young lady arsonist refuses to cooperate with our experiments...”  *gasps*  Firefly!

Oh my God, noooo...

“Hello, Mr. Freeze.”  *cue small high-pitched yell*

*jams out to ending theme*

[phantombones]

JANE LONGBOTTOM really is the spitting image of SEYCHELLE GABRIEL, right? For someone only TWENTY-TWO ( AQUARIUS/PISCES CUSP ) years old, JANEY has been forced to endure so much. Yeah, that HALFBLOOD has been scraping by at the sanctuary for EIGHT MONTHS now, working as a HEALER in the DIVISION OF HEALING. SHE identifies as CIS-FEMALE and is known to be PERSNICKETY and SELFLESS but also HARDWORKING and ALTRUISTIC. Best of luck surviving through this. 

CHARACTER PARALLELS: Cosette ( Les Misérables ), Beth Greene ( TWD ), Lexie Grey ( Grey’s Anatomy ), Emma Woodhouse ( Emma ), Steve Rogers ( MCU ), Kara Danvers ( DC ), Jemma Simmons ( Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ), Primrose Everdeen ( THG the Books )

PINTREST BOARD: [ x ]

- Jane was given so much, it almost a surprise that she didn’t up greedy & selfish. Whether it was the love her siblings & parents gave her, whether it was the individual little kindnesses in the world that seemed like man made moments of magic, For the first few years of her life, Jane was with a mother who didn’t know how to take care of her, though she desperately tried to. The woman was still dealing with emotional scars from the previous Wizarding War and got a job at The Leaky Cauldron -- where Hannah was now the owner. Hannah saw the woman have a hard time with her child, and let her bring the young girl to the Leaky so she could keep an eye on her. Jane was calm, collected and observant even as a child and extremely kind, always offering smiles and compliments to patrons. Always trying to help anyone who worked there, having the best intentions even if she sometimes accidentally got in the way. The Longbottoms had been looking to adopt another child for a while, so when the young mother confided in Hannah that she could no longer her child and didn’t know what to do -- The Longbottoms thought it was the perfect opportunity then, to try to adopt Jane and they ended up succeeding.

- [ OCD MENTION ] She was always so grateful and never bitter towards her biological mother, Hannah and Neville never were either, happy that they had Jane in their life and she grew up in a loving household nurturing  the heart full of love and kindness that she’d been born with. Her older brother Rhys was someone she was so fascinated with who was extremely protective of her and she loved her sister Violet’s personality, there was passion, love, support as well as someone who understood her. It was then she met her godbrother Albus as well, who was also adopted into one of the most famous families in the Wizarding World and the two became inseparable. When all her family was first shipped off to Hogwarts without her, Jane cried and missed them dearly. Yes, she had Albus, but he still had his sister and extensive family and while she felt close to the Wotters -- it wasn’t the same without her siblings. There was a guilt that she felt for not being more grateful. Jane started having obsessive thoughts and compulsions in an attempt to cope with the fears associated with her siblings both being away. Diagnosed with OCD at such a young age was an illuminating thing for Jane, her treatment process was something that further bonded her with Hannah. After months of treatments, exposure therapy, the support of her family & friends, and inner strength, Jane finally felt better and realizing all she wanted to do was give, and give that same healing power & love back to other people. It was clear in her mind then, she wanted to be Healer. It was her calling. [ END OF OCD MENTION ]

- Though Jane was incredibly well liked, she was also sometimes made fun of for naive brand of thinking, and though she had a pure innocence, she was not blind or unexperienced to hurt, mental suffering, and loss. She was underestimated by some as some saw her as a far too idealistic Hufflepuff, a naive girl, a perfect student and so altruistic & sweet it made your teeth rot. It was all genuine, kindness was her virtue and being kind to others even when they were unkind to her was something she frequently practiced. People thought her being a Healer wouldn’t work, they thought her meek, but Jane was even more hungry to prove herself, finding any way to advance & learn as quickly as she could to get to her goal as best & quickly as she could. Jane simply couldn’t wait. The hardwork paid off, and though Jane didn’t graduate early from Hogwarts, she had taken classes & done so many internships as well as pre-Healing programs over summers & during school ( helping in the infirmary with Miss Pomfrey kept her sane ) that she started her training immediately after school a year ahead. Her life was dedicated to that then, and the young girl many thought would probably faint at the sign of blood with how pristine she could act was always hands first in a body cavity doing what she had to. The first to respond to a scene that required extra care and thought. The first to get her scrubs beyond dirty and stained with blood if needed. Jane took authority, she was confident in a way that she didn’t display anywhere else.

- When the Inferi outbreak started, Jane had just finally graduated from the program and become a full fledged Healer with a research lab and a grant she’d gotten from the Ministry. She’d been focused on finding a way to cure Lycanthropy when people started coming in with weird symptoms, and bodies that didn’t look quite human started coming in ripped apart, missing organs. Jane kept calm, but deep in her gut she knew something was wrong and started preparing for the worse -- just as a precaution. It paid off, because when it was told that they Jane was one of the first people at Hogwarts helping set up the Division of Healing in Hogwarts, and has been there for 8 months since. Jane still is truly one of the nicest, kindest, selfless people you’ll ever meet  that it could kill her. Easily willing to help a person no matter what side they’re on, it’s hard for her to tolerate suffering in any capacity -- especially when doled out by brainwashed bigoted children. Jane is nonstop in working, she’s finally gotten to where she wants to start and she’ll be damned to let the world fall apart if she can help it. She wants to do anything she can to help the world and to help heal the people around her, and will do everything in her power to try.

RANDOM FACTS:

excellent chess player and hot chocolate maker

will try to set you up!!! even in this economy!! is so in love with people’s love life and would fuck around with the media bc she found them annoying but funny and always making assumptions so she just went with it and joked around fueling and feeding FAKE AF rumors

Her sexuality and her OCD were two things she had trouble thinking about and dealing with. Firstly, Jane had never really felt the same sexual attraction to people that everyone else had when she was in school. She could never imagine casually sleeping with someone and when someone mentioned a need for sex, Jane didn’t really understand it. She figured it’d come later, but it never did and for a while Jane felt broken by it, she felt scared that there was something deeply wrong with her. Albus was who she opened up to first, and he helped educate and reassure her that there was nothing wrong with her -- though she felt comforted it’s not something she’s thought about further. Especially during the zombie apocalypse. Her OCD now isn’t as compulsion driven now as it is obsessive thought centered. Survival mode is hard and definitely taking it’s toll on Jane, something she needs to take care of but feels she can’t. Other people are suffering more, they need her brain and they need her hands, she cannot think about things that will unravel her. So Jane pushes it down, as her anxiety grows and the number of hours she sleeps grows less and less.

but really if she sees two people who look cute and are acting cute together she’ll ship it

she really has no artistic talent??? she’s not the most knowledgeable on it either besides art from books like plays, but painting all that jazz?? how do u do that??

really pure, cinnamon roll, follows da rulez and probs tries to mother you like SHE WILL bc she cares so damn much

always always leads with her heart but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a sharp mind. she just prefers to lead with her heart and FEELS so much

will always be gentle and kind no matter what, it’s wild

loves herbology and likes potions a lot but jane really got good at it through hardwork, ambition to be a healer and curiousity.

imma stop now bc THATS  A LOT! but thank you for reading and if you’d like to plot just like this!! honestly ur the real mvp if u read this

[shewassoferal]

“Please don’t go, did I do something wrong?” -breakmuses [Fitz] (Bc why use one sentence starter when a combination is 12 billion times more heart breaking???)

@breakmuses

“No! No, you haven’t! You never could! You’ve been nothing but perfect!” the last word were yelled with despair as she turned around to face him; she had tried to do better, she had insisted she could go on a quick mission to at least grab some bio-samples and maybe force herself to take them back to the lab and work on them, exposure therapy or whatever that was.And then their team had been attacked, May had been grazed by a bullet, and she had lost it. She had known, and deep down she believed May had known too, with all their Tai-Chi and teaching her how to channel anger better, that the planet had made her violent in a special way, but the way she had gone through the enemy, like an actual animal, had been beyond simple violence. Or at least not the kind you’d expect from a human. She had hidden in the Zephyr bathroom, not speaking to her or the others, washing off blood from herself as best as she could, and had come back to the base only to find Fitz there, waiting for her, having no idea of what had just happened, just ready to work at the lab and with those blue lovely eyes that were so soft when looking at her. She didn’t deserve any of that.She had stormed out, and by the time Fitz had reached her room, she was shoving clothes in her bag even if she knew all too well she couldn’t be trusted around people and had nowhere to go. 

“You are so sweet! And-and good, and brave, and patient! You are wonderful! And look at me!” she grabbed the zipper of her jacket a bit too violent, shoving it down and shoving him her shirt, soaked with blood, “It’s not mine!” her lips pulled into an angry, hysterical smile, “There were Hydra agent there and I ripped them apart! You keep-I can’t even go to the lab, Fitz! I’ve been trying, I swear, and I didn’t say anything because I thought it could get better, because I wanted it to be better, I wanted to go back to you, to us, but it’s not, and you know why? Because I’m not your Jemma Simmons! I wanted to give her back to you, I wanted to be back, but that person is dead, that part of me is dead, Fitz! You never do anything wrong but I am wrong! I am so wrong, there has always been something wrong with me but not it’s up here, on the surface, and everyone can see it! I am wrong and I can’t stay! Look at me! Look at the way I’ve been behaving and all the things I can’t do and all the special accommodations needed so that I don’t accidentally kill someone! Am I even still a person? I’m just another thing like the ones that lived in that horrible planet!” 

[consultingdick]

PTSD, or the destruction of Sherlock’s psyche

SO I got an ask a few days ago asking if Sherlock has PTSD from Moriarty and my answer was:

Short answer: no. Long answer: he doesn't have PTSD (well. i need to think about that but I’m gonna say no for now). Moriarty was always like...a fucked up game, but Sherlock wasn't really that affected until TRF. The things Sherlock did post-fall are a source of pain, and the threat of Moriarty PLUS Eurus is very Not Good. But yeah not PTSD from moriarty's actions. [...] I forgot to mention he DOES have borderline personality disorder for other reasons, and anxiety + paranoia as like a result of that and from Moriarty

But then I was thinking about it and I read this fic and I’ve decided the answer is yes, Sherlock does have PTSD. Moriarty has a part in it, but unfortunately nothing is that straightforward.

FIRSTLY: I am not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or a doctor. I also do not have PTSD. I am basing this on the MIND and NHS websites, and the DSM-V criterion (or like. the online summaries of it I’ve found). I also have discussed this with several people with personal experiences of trauma and PTSD. I really want to be respectful and true about my portrayal so if I say / do something that’s wrong please let me know!! 

TL;DR: Sherlock has experienced a lot of tramatic events in his life, and is currently in probably the worst point in terms of his mental health. 

Warning: discussion of abuse. Triggering content is referenced to in a lot of the links I’ve put in as well!

Criterion A: Traumatic event

I’m going to try and walk you guys through my thinking, based on three traumatic events in Sherlock’s life. I won’t be going in chronological order, nor in order of severity. The order is mostly the order he experiences the aftermath (?).

“ Trauma survivors must have been exposed to actual or threatened:

death

serious injury

sexual violence

The exposure can be:

direct

witnessed

indirect, by hearing of a relative or close friend who has experienced the event—indirectly experienced death must be accidental or violent

There is no longer a requirement that someone had to have an intense emotional response at the time of the event. ” [Source]

A point I want to make is that not everyone develops PTSD after a traumatic event, and there’s a difference between ‘normal’ stress reactions after trauma and the ongoing experiences of people with PTSD. There are other traumatic events which have happened in Sherlock’s life that haven’t contributed to his PTSD. 

1. After the fall

✔ Actual (prolonged) serious injury [direct]  ✔ Threatened death & sexual violence [direct] 

So it’s canon that Sherlock went on a mission to destroy Moriarty, and it’s canon that he was tortured (the extent to which is left up to us). We see him being beaten and with lacerations all over his back in Serbia, where Mycroft has gone in himself to extract him. Only drastic circumstances would cause Mycroft Holmes to ‘wade in’ as he put it. Something went wrong.

Now Sherlock would have had some idea what he was getting into, taking down a huge criminal network. But he wasn’t in control when he was kidnapped and tortured (multiple times, in multiple ways). He may have escaped, he may have purposefully got caught in some cases, but torture is still torture. He probably didn’t know that Mycroft was coming to get him. It’s one thing to be suicidal (something I’ll touch on later and in other posts), another to be threatened with death. 

Sherlock is not the same when he returns to London. His manic energy has an edge of paranoia. Moriarty haunts him in his mind palace (illustrated in multiple episodes). He’s not really coping (hence the relapse after a stint of stability and sobreity during s1&2), and the trauma is renewed during S4, which I will now get into. 

2. Eurus & the murder maze

✔ Actual death [witnessed / indirect] ✔  Threatened death & serious injury [direct & witnessed]

This part I’m more hazy on as I’m still working on a timeline and story of what happened exactly. The fact that Sherlock has repressed all memory of Eurus also affects this -- what does he actually know? Did he know that she killed Victor* or did he just know that she hurt him in some way? Either way, he lost someone very close to him in a very traumatic way. On top of this, Eurus spent a lot of time making threats on Sherlock’s life. 

The effects of the trauma from this part of his life is seriously delayed. It has a part to play in his self harming behaviour and drug use. It has a part to play in his BPD. But because he has only started to even remember the trauma properly after visiting Sherrinford, the trauma is affecting him the most. The events that took place during the murder maze definitely made things worse, as flashbacks kept on being triggered while he was also under a lot of stress (watching people he cared about and strangers be killed and threatened). 

This compounds upon the trauma from the fall, but also brings back his childhood trauma from Eurus (as above) and from his father (below)

3. Abuse

Childhood abuse is slightly different when it comes to PTSD, as it can sometimes lead to Complex PTSD. Complex PTSD is caused by repeated exposure to traumatic events like abuse, and symptoms can develop a long time after the event itself. 

Sherlock’s father was emotionally and occasionally physically abusive. This included constant criticism, threats, emotional neglect, ignoring him, and unreasonably punishing him. He never said anything kind or positive, no matter what Sherlock achieved. The physical abuse was mostly as a form of cruel punishment, but as he got older it became a way for his father to vent frustrations. Siger only wanted one son, and only saw Sherlock as a nuisance, a burden. Unwanted. 

This culminated when Sherlock pointed out his father’s affair at the dinnertable. His mother kicked his father out after that, along with the discovery of his treatment of Sherlock. His abuse had begun to affect their relationship too, with manipulation and controlling behaviour replacing any love and affection. Sherlock blames himself for his parent’s divorce.

It’s a major contributor to his BPD and lack of self worth. This part of his life has shaped who he is, how he behaves, and how he sees the world. It drives him to try and stop bad things from happening to others, but also drives his destructive behaviour towards himself and his relationships. 

Complex PTSD is made worse by:

the traumatic events happened early in life

the trauma was caused by a parent or carer

the person experienced the trauma for a long time

the person was alone during the trauma

there is still contact with the person responsible for the trauma.

These all apply, but Sherlock has had some therapy to try and help with this trauma specifically. As a result, he only experiences symptoms like flashbacks and panic attacks when he sees his father (not every time, however) or possibly when discussing him. 

Symptoms

Below is a list of symptoms / criteria for PTSD. I’ve put in brackets which events he most experiences those symptoms for, and I’ve put ‘BPD’ next to symptoms that overlap with borderline personality disorder.

Criterion B: Intrusion or Re-experiencing

These symptoms envelope ways that someone re-experiences the event. This could look like:

Intrusive thoughts or memories  ✔ (All)

Nightmares related to the traumatic event  ✔ (1 & 2)

Flashbacks, feeling like the event is happening again  ✔ (2 & 3)

Psychological and physical reactivity to reminders of the traumatic event, such as an anniversary (e.g. being triggered by specific events)   ✔ (2 & 3)

Criterion C: Avoidant symptoms

Avoidant symptoms describe ways that someone may try to avoid any memory of the event, and must include one of the following:

Avoiding thoughts or feelings connected to the traumatic event  ✔ (1 & 2)

Avoiding people or situations connected to the traumatic event  ✔ (2 & 3)

Criterion D: Negative alterations in mood or cognitions

This criterion is new, but captures many symptoms that have long been observed by PTSD sufferers and clinicians. Basically, there is a decline in someone’s mood or though patterns, which can include:

Memory problems that are exclusive to the event  ✔ (2)

Negative thoughts or beliefs about one’s self or the world  ✔ (All / BPD)

Distorted sense of blame for one’s self or others, related to the event  ✔ (2)

Being stuck in severe emotions related to the trauma (e.g. horror, shame, sadness)  ✔ (2)

Severely reduced interest in pre-trauma activities 

Feeling detached, isolated or disconnected from other people  ✔ (BPD)

Criterion E: Increased arousal symptoms

Increased arousal symptoms are used to describe the ways that the brain remains “on edge,” wary and watchful of further threats. Symptoms include the following:

Difficulty concentrating  ✔ 

Irritability, increased temper or anger  ✔ (BPD)

Difficulty falling or staying asleep  ✔

Hypervigilance  ✔ (1)

Being easily startled

Subtype: Dissociation

Dissociation has now been set apart from the symptom clusters, and now its presence can be specified. While there are several types of dissociation, only two are included in the DSM:

Depersonalization, or feeling disconnected from oneself  ✔ (BPD / 2)

Derealization, a sense that one’s surroundings aren’t real ✔ (1 & 2)

Other problems

Many people with PTSD also have a number of other problems, including:

other mental health problems – such as depression, anxiety or phobias ✔ (BPD)

self-harming or destructive behaviour – such as drug misuse or alcohol misuse  ✔ (BPD)

BPD & PTSD together

There is controversy in the medical / psychological field about the difference between BPD and PTSD and the diagnosis of both. They are very closely linked, and have a lot of overlap (as seen above). Studies have shown that the two often co-occur. I make the personal distiction that BPD also has a strong fear of abandonment which isn’t part of PTSD, and has more severe personality and identity issues. Obviously mental health isn’t clear cut so symptoms aren’t experienced as ‘oh, this is BPD, and this is PTSD’. 

[biofunmy]

Peanut Allergy Drug Will Protect Children, Experts Tell F.D.A.

The first-ever drug regimen to blunt acute peanut allergies in children should be approved, experts told a Food and Drug Administration committee on Friday, because the therapy has the potential to reduce the risk of life-threatening reactions and to improve patients’ lives.

The new drug, called Palforzia and made by Aimmune Therapeutics, is an oral immunotherapy regimen that aims to reduce sensitivity to peanut allergens. It gradually exposes children to small amounts of peanut protein over the course of six months, until they can safely eat the equivalent of two peanuts.

But the treatment does not work for everyone, and is accompanied by side effects, including severe allergic reactions to the peanut exposure. Twenty percent of the children in the trial who received the treatment withdrew because of adverse events; 14 percent had severe allergic reactions that required treatment with epinephrine, compared with only 6.5 percent who received a placebo.

The regimen begins with trace amounts of the protein that are carefully measured and increased incrementally under medical supervision as tolerance develops.

The goal is not to cure the allergy, but to reduce the risk that an accidental exposure to a small amount of peanut will trigger a life-threatening reaction. It might also relieve some of the fear and anxiety that some people feel about the possibility of experiencing the effects of a severe peanut allergy.

“This is one of the most important unmet needs of medicine,” said Dr. James R. Baker Jr., director of the Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center at University of Michigan, who spoke at the advisory committee meeting on behalf of the company. He was compensated for his time.

The demand for treatment among patients and their families is enormous, Dr. Baker noted. “Right now the only approved approach to this allergy is to avoid peanuts, and the amount of effort and cost involved in making sure everything your child is exposed to is peanut-free is overwhelming to most families,” he said.

Yet even scrupulous efforts to prevent exposures fail, resulting in life-threatening medical emergencies. “Families spend incredible efforts, often altering their entire lifestyle to practice avoidance,” Dr. Baker told the agency’s advisory committee.

“The quality of life of patients and their caregivers is adversely affected due to fear and anxiety about accidental ingestions,” he added.

Because children generally do not outgrow peanut allergies, they must avoid peanuts, peanut oil and foods contaminated with traces of peanuts for their entire lives.

A double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of the new drug, published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that after a year, two-thirds of the 372 children who received the treatment were able to tolerate at least 600 milligrams of peanut protein — the equivalent of two peanuts — without having an allergic reaction.

Only 4 percent of the 124 children who had been given a placebo powder were able to consume that amount without a response.

Most of the participants were aged 4 to 17, and when they enrolled, all of them suffered from severe peanut allergies triggered by the equivalent of one-third of a peanut or less.

The trial, carried out at multiple medical centers, was designed and sponsored by Aimmune, the drug’s developer.

The drug itself consists of “defatted” peanut flour, carefully measured and packed into capsules or foil sachets of varying doses that can be easily opened and mixed with food.

The starting dose is three milligrams, which is gradually increased to 300 milligrams, the equivalent of one peanut, over a six-month period, followed by six months of maintenance therapy of the same amount. In order to retain their tolerance, patients would need to continue taking the maintenance dose, possibly indefinitely.

But the treatment doesn’t work for everyone. One in five children in the active treatment group withdrew from the study, many because of adverse side effects such as stomach pain, vomiting and nausea. And some children who were taking the drug needed epinephrine to treat severe allergic reactions.

Though many advocates for people with allergies have welcomed the new treatment — the first of its kind — there has been criticism.

In July, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit research organization in Boston that evaluates medical evidence, concluded in a scathing report that the oral immunotherapy treatment offers no benefit over simply avoiding peanuts.

Lianne Mandelbaum, who has a teenage son with a severe peanut allergy and writes the No Nut Traveler blog, said that the organization’s report displays a lack of understanding of what is required for parents to ensure that a child does not inadvertently ingest traces of peanut that contaminate many food products.

“It’s not as simple as it sounds to avoid a food,” Ms. Mandelbaum said. “We live with it and we do it, but it’s not black and white. You have to be vigilant 24-7, and things still slip through the cracks. You could do everything right and still get it wrong. In many cases of fatalities, there was just one time they slipped up.”

The institute’s report also called for more long-term data about safety and effectiveness, and said there was no evidence the Aimmune drug had any advantage over similar desensitization regimens that some physicians offer patients.

But many physicians do not offer the treatment, Ms. Mandelbaum noted, and it is not always covered by health insurance.

Sahred From Source link Science

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