#and because his adhd was never properly handled by his teachers

[lilislegacy]

percy has been called smart by hazel, reyna, and annabeth (twice).

to say he’s actually dumb is to disagree with those three women. and if you are disagreeing with 3 of the most knowledgeable, capable, and badass characters in the series… what are you even doing?

#stop saying percy is dumb #he is NOT #he just ACTS dumb #because he often says his first thoughts aloud before thinking #and his adhd has so many different effects on him #and because his adhd was never properly handled by his teachers #so #he grew up thinking he’s an idiot #but he’s NOT #percy jackson #annabeth chase #reyna ramirez arellano #hazel levesque #heroes of olympus #percabeth #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #the son of neptune #the house of hades #the demigod files

[noddaduck]

What gets me about Kipperlilly is that while her trauma envy is messed up, she really is facing an opposite problem to the Bad Kids.

Some people on here are saying that if she wanted to go on big adventures she should have done it herself and not expected some kind of plot hook to give her an opening. But we are seeing how that is going for the Bad Kids this season, and it clearly sucks. Fabian went on his first date with Mazey, yet so much of that conversation and role play was still about the mystery and the mission. Gorgug lost a chance to spend time with his bio parents because he was trying to get into a really learning heavy class. The Bad Kids are such good friends, but they can only spend time together in shared classes or as part of the mission. Why would you expect that of anyone?

Most Aguefort kids aren’t going on big real-world adventures like the Bad Kids cause that’s literally being in High School while also working a full time career oriented job. And yet some of these kids know that this is all just leading up to that real job that they’ve never really experienced or seen proof that they could handle. Is it so weird for a child to want confirmation that they’ll be able to do all the things they’re supposed to do as an adult, especially when they are seeing other kids get that confirmation?

Riz isn’t strong because he suffered, he’s strong because he has an amazing mom he looked up to and learned from and who taught him. Having that vision of his own best self, not just a copy of another person but really something he loves that he was able to really learn thanks to the support he was lucky to get DESPITE his and his mom’s financial situation. He chased his own dream of being a master detective, of dishing out justice, and he got so good at it that it let him kill an ancient red dragon.

Personally, I was one of the smart kids in class, but I wasn’t one of the gifted and talented. One kid was working with circuitry in a class where I was learning about screws and levers. In a photography class I got paired up with a kid in a lower grade than me who full on made his own model rocket fuel for homemade bottle rockets. Combining that with having ADHD that nobody properly educated me about, I always thought I was just missing something. I’m taking my medicine, I’m going to class and trying to join clubs, why is it that every time I ask someone to teach me they don’t have time for a total beginner? Why is being my own teacher the only way to learn these things, and why can’t I do that if apparently everyone else does?

I just don’t blame Kipperlilly for being upset when she is presented with the Bad Kids as an example to follow despite the fact that neither she NOR the Bad Kids are given proper time to actually work toward that goal. The Bad Kids don’t actually have the time for adventures on top of their regular lives, but they are forced to do it anyway. Kipperlilly allowed for time so the Rat Grinders could have whatever their normal lives looked like, at least until they all were taken by Ancarna. If your choice is to either work yourself to death and be told you did the correct thing, or to take your time and be shown that you are wasting it, why wouldn’t you be angry?

#dimension 20 #fantasy high junior year #fantasy high #fhjy #fhjy spoilers

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hello mbti-notes, 28F ENFP here. I have written to you a few times, one of them about my relationship with my 27M INTJ boyfriend and the other about my childhood trauma regarding my ENTJ mother and how it was keeping me from pursuing my art career.

I have been on the road of Fi development and lately I have started to develop Te. Some major life events happened since the last time I wrote to you; I had gotten diagnosed with ADHD after suspecting having it for years; then, my younger cousins got diagnosed with level one autism (Formerly known as Aspergers), and after my mother conversed with their mothers, we reached the conclusion I and other members of the family are also autistic and ADHD, since I displayed symptoms of both as a child.

With this new knowledge, I have been making all the changes necessary to accommodate myself and do the best I can and pull my own weight. I am almost finishing University, and my boyfriend (he’s pretty much my husband at this point) started his doctorate and is now an art teacher at our local arts University. (those issues I had written to you prior were resolved and we have been very happy together and supportive of each other since).

I have been slowly tearing down my perfectionistic tendencies; I am no longer unhappy about my work or extremely self-critic to the point I put myself down. I have gained confidence and trust in myself and handling problems, crafting solutions, planning (even if short-term) and improvising. I have been re-enganging my Ne in a healthy manner, focusing on my projects and progress instead of being scattered and wanting to do everything and anything.

Despite that, and all the growth I have done already, I feel that I have an unsurnamable mountain of obstacles to pass through. Over the last year, I have realized just how little my ISTP, probably autistic and bipolar father and ENTJ, probably ADHD mother completely failed to prepare me for life. I was emotionally neglected, made a scapegoat for their problems, made to pick up after myself because of my autism and ADHD being seen as failures of character instead of disabilities.

They saw I was intelligent, and rationalized it as “not needing help”; then, when my problems with executive disfunction and organization started flaring up due to their neglect, they yelled and blamed it on me, worsening the situation. I grew up with no understanding of boundaries; I wasn’t allowed to advocate for myself and everytime I tried I was yelled at; I wasn’t allowed to discover myself and my identity properly so I clinged to my special interests like a moth to a flame; I was shamed for my way of functioning and that impeded me of developing proper knowledge of myself and what I needed.

I now notice my social differences, my trouble dealing with and regulating emotions (and why I put off dealing with them), and my lack of social skills and differentiating levels of relationships. I feel angry that the time I needed to be using to deal with these issues, during adolescence and early adulthood, was taken away by autistic burnout, depression, and dealing with a disfunctional family who had no idea how to care for me and never tried to, and spent pursuing bad relationships, hyperfixations and changing interests, all the while not being able to put effort into what I really wanted because of the shame and judgement they placed on me.

I have been trying my best to pick up the slack, but it’s hard. I can see now how I was unjustly punished for my differences my whole life. I finally understand now why people get upset with me with things like being unable to regulate tone or asking clarifying questions (when I’m just trying to understand them).

I have accepted myself; I know my difficultities now and I know what I have to do to regulate myself, but I still can’t stop feeling angry at this injustice. I do my best to be proactive and helpful in the communities I join and make friends, but people will turn on me the moment I do something impulsive like vent to chat about my parents doing something rude to me that day (which happens regularly). The bridges I put effort into building get destroyed in minutes, and I feel like all my progress is undone.

Family is a tricky issue for people, I get it. There are different times and places to say things, I get it. But It still happens. I know the way to fix it would be to leave, but due to the housing crisis, inflation and my expenses of trying to finish my degree, I can’t move out of this place and still currently live with them. Rent is unnafordable, my boyfriend is going through his degree and busy, and I’m already at capacity fully comitting myself to art and doing the best job I can with chores and house stuff.

I know my parents have issues and I try my best do understand and be empathethic, but they aren't doing anything to get better or to resolve them. My dad is on disability and unemployment aid right now, he does minimal chores and watches TV and sleeps all day. My mother is a pre-school teacher and constantly overworks herself because that's how she learned to get through life.

A few months ago, my mom almost ended her marriage because in her words, she developed a "platonic crush" for another man. It was a huge fight, and one they tried to drag me into. When they're not having outright fights, they act lovey-dovey; but they soon have another nasty fight, and the cycle goes on.

My dad is extremely misoginistic, judgemental, and cynical. Everytime he tries to engage me in conversation, I act uniteresting so he leaves me alone. I am uncapable of building a relationship with them after all they did to me.

I just can’t stop feeling I got dealt a sh*tty hand in life and there is nothing I can do about it. I realize this is Si grip talking, but this enviroment completely kills all my optimist, motivation and will to move foward in life, and I’ve been doing this dance for way too long and just want it to end once and for all so I can keep progressing. I know I’ve already come a long way, but I can’t stop feeling it still isn’t enough, and I’m afraid that feeling won’t ever go away. So I turn to you for guidance on what to do.

Currently I am sitting on a few unfinished projects (a comic and animation) that will be my portfolio só I can start working while I finish my degree. My parents are paying for the remainder of it (honestly, the least they could do after the horrible lifetime they gave me) but I plan to start paying for it myself as soon as I get some work. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I'm doing everything to try and make things better, but I feel like they never will, and I don't know how to deal with that.

----------------------

Whenever people tell me about how they're making progress, even trying to develop lower functions, but also suffering from inferior grip, the alarm bells go off in my head, because it usually indicates some form of troublesome denial. In terms of type development, inferior grip is one of the most serious signs that something is not right psychologically.

I never want to poopoo on people's efforts to improve. I definitely believe that you've been putting forth your best efforts. However, if the outcome is inferior grip, it means there's a problem with your approach or method.

The way that you're stuck in blaming your parents for your misfortunes is not just a sign of Si grip, but also Te loop. If you're suffering from Te loop, it means Fi development hasn't progressed to the point where you are ready for Te development. Being a lower function, trying to develop Te when you're not ready is only going to exacerbate Te loop and eventually lead you into Si grip.

I won't deny that the people around you every day have a big influence over you. As a Feeler, their moods can easily affect yours. When that happens, the best thing to do is to draw up boundaries, to try to shield yourself from those negative influences as much as possible. However, what you've done is the opposite.

You've been drawn into the negative influence through blaming them, fighting back (mentally), judging them for their flaws, indulging pointless "what if" scenarios about your past, etc. In short, you have been swallowed up by the negativity partly because you didn't do enough to protect yourself from it. This is related to Fi development because Fi should inform you about what is needed for self-protection.

Now, since you find yourself in a hopeless place and can't accept the feelings of helplessness, the recourse is Te loop. You wish to actively "correct" everything that you perceive is "wrong". However, this is a futile endeavor. Why? Because those things are not for you to correct. You have overstepped/violated boundaries by wanting to solve problems that aren't your responsibility. This only serves to entangle you in them.

You mom and dad's flaws, your mom and dad's relationship, are none of your business, but you are all up in there. Even if they try to involve you, as an adult, you have the power to refuse. Because you care about them, it's hard for you to refuse, but refuse you must. That's what it means to draw healthy boundaries.

Yes, it's tragic to have been deprived as a child. One thing you realize more and more deeply as you get older (especially if you have children of your own) is that parents are human, their knowledge is limited, and people can only do the best they can based on what they know. Many, many people are ignorant about psychological issues because they have had no opportunity to learn about them. What's worse, sometimes what they have learned is misinformation or outdated information based on what was being taught when they were growing up.

I say this not to excuse the bad things that parents do, but to foster empathy for the fact that people can't do better when they don't know better. You are the same. You didn't think to change your behavior or didn't know how to do it in the right way until you learned about ADHD. You live, you learn.

Empathy for others starts with empathy for oneself. Instead of pitying yourself or being angry about your past, healthy Fi should prompt you to express empathy for your struggles today. There aren't enough signs that you possess this depth of empathy, which indicates Fi development has a long way to go yet. It's hard to feel empathy when you're in the thick of negativity, but that's the time when it's most important to practice it.

An important part of having empathy for yourself, aka self-compassion, is allowing yourself to move at a realistic pace in life, a pace that takes your challenges into fair consideration, rather than always trying to live up to unreasonable ideals. Feeling "not good enough" and being afraid of that feeling never going away is directly related to Fi development and lack of self-acceptance. You must accept the truth of yourself and the facts of your situation before you can move forward in a meaningful way.

Also, if you find yourself speaking inappropriately or not giving enough consideration to social context when your feelings get too big, it means you haven't done enough to set up a good social support system and create more appropriate opportunities to explore your personal issues. Expecting parents or colleagues to give you support that they are not capable of giving is basically wasting energy barking up the wrong tree. In other words, don't look for love in all the wrong places. This is related to Fi development in terms of doing what it takes to care well for your well-being.

You are well into adulthood. At some point, it has to be fully your responsibility to craft the life you want. By continuing to blame your parents for not living up to your ideals, you are the one keeping yourself tied to past unhappiness, rather than moving forward. It is a choice you make.

I always say that forgiveness isn't about other people. Forgiveness is something you do for yourself. It's not good for you to live in a state of resentment, anger, or hate. It's not good to keep revisiting and rehashing such emotions on an endless loop. Therefore, you have to learn to forgive the mistakes of the past so that you can have the emotional stability necessary to focus on improving your life today and into the future.

Forgiving your parents for being the imperfect human beings that they are is difficult but necessary, not for their sake, but for yours. You can set yourself free from the past at any time through learning how to be more accepting, empathetic, and forgiving, which is very much tied to Fi development. This would be a healthy way of lifting yourself out of Si grip and mending your mental health.

#enfp #auxiliary fi #te loop #si grip #boundaries #self compassion #empathy #forgiveness #blame #anger #resentment #ask

[anonymous-eggy]

A while back @mahirublue asked "What would be Alfalfa and Simon’s future career? (what would they want to be when they grow up??? Would Nicky and Connor let them go to school, I just remembered one of the dialogues of Nicky that when you go to school you’re one of those 'rich or upstate people' so it could be optional?)" and i finally finished putting down everything 😂

A big influence on Alfalfa’s future career is their social anxiety. Alfalfa shows a lot of signs of being neurodivergent and struggles with it, living in a society where that isn’t well known or...properly handled. It’s not represented in a good way, either. But Alfalfa isn't exactly anti-social. This kind of opens a whole new door for Alfalfa to bond with Connor because Connor has ADD and also struggles with social anxiety.

I can imagine Alfalfa worrying over their future career because of their wandering interests and Connor talking it out with them, eventually settling on either owning a plant shop or working at an animal rescue.

Both plants and animals ease Alfalfa’s anxiety around people, making a job oriented around either of those perfect for them. Once they have the confidence, they’re outgoing and bubbly! I think if there’s a job the includes both of those and a lot of movement and exploration, Alfalfa would love that.

I imagine Simon’s mischievous and charismatic nature would have him grow up to be some sort of influencer, or at least someone with a lot of people who love his beauty and mysterious nature (imagine black hair Howl from Howl’s moving castle. That’s pretty much what I imagine him looking like, just mix in Nicky’s self-assured personality and an appetite for causing trouble sometimes).

Perhaps he would be an actor/model? I know he would definitely write books, he loves being creative.

Now I’m just imagining Simon visiting Alfalfa at their plant shop as adults and talking to Alfalfa about the most recent interview he did while they tend to their plants like the two used to do when they were kids oooh goodness I’m gonna cry.

I do remember reading that dialogue, though! I enjoy going through his route and picking all of the different dialogue options to understand his character better!

I don’t think Nicky would be the type to force his kids to go to school if they don’t want to. Connor definitely wouldn’t force them to go to school, he hated the school system and barely graduated despite being really smart. Connor isn’t sure what the school system is like now, but he’s not going to force his kids through that when he and Nicky could teach them just as well and in an engaging way.

Plus side of the 1920s is that they can get away with this, but I think Connor and Nicky would start them both out in normal school until they are old enough to decide for themselves.

Simon would probably enjoy school a lot. He would be popular and love the attention while breezing through assignments and causing minor trouble. This really makes him sound like a spoiled brat, but he really has a good heart. He was more than a handful as a young teen (13-15 was the worst) though and probably got a few lectures from Nicky.

There is no way Alfalfa stayed in public school past 5th or 6th grade. They enjoyed school and were described as very bright by their teachers, but once they hit 5th grade, they struggled more and more with focus and the environment.

This is pretty much how Connor confirmed his suspicions of Alfalfa having adhd because they already showed all the signs, but the fact that they had followed the same pattern other kids with add/adhd had, he was sure.

So Connor kind of took Alfalfa under his wing and helped them learn how to manage it in a healthy manner, something Connor wished he had been given when he was Alfalfa’s age. (This is a whole adorable thing that I won’t go too deep into because that’s not what you asked for) Alfalfa learned from Connor, Nicky, and whatever they learned from Simon instead.

Despite their differences in school opinions and performance, I don’t think Simon and Alfalfa would let it get in the way of their bond as siblings. I think Alfalfa would enjoy learning about what Simon is learning in school every now and then, and Simon would enjoy teaching them. Simon enjoys teaching Alfalfa things because he has to make it engaging and use his creativity, and Alfalfa learns fast.

Simon would want a higher education, despite knowing full well he wants to be an actor/model. He just likes collecting knowledge, and Nicky can respect that. Nicky never got to stay in school, his father didn’t give him the option, so he would want to support Simon and be there for him.

This was quite a bit, but I hope that was at least enjoyable to read! Sorry for taking so long! im so glad you asked though, it was very nice to think about this! thank you! ☺️💖✨

#fictif nicky #fictif nicky valentino #fictif two against the world #fictif nix hydra #fictif tatw #nicky valentino fictif #fictif mc #fictif oc #connor tatw #alfalfa tatw #simon tatw

[one-abuse-survivor]

before i start, thank you so much for doing what you do;this blog has given me good advice countless times and i really have to thank you for that.

my issues with my parents are that they don't take me seriously. i can literally go up to them and say: "mom/dad, i think i might be autistic or have ADHD (both would be quite likely) can i get that checked out" and list a bunch of examples why i think that and they'll just be "nah, that can't be, you don't seem like that at all" as of i didn't break my mind over it researching it and talking to people who have it to see if we've had similar experiences just to get some kind of reference as to why i feel the way i feel and why i struggle so much with things that so many other people find so easy.

but then, in the following weeks and months (after talking w them) they just randomly point out things about me that kinda annoy them, like me talking out of turn a LOT or me not looking at people or me having trouble focusing if there isn't also music and a movie going at the same time or mom saying that i seem hyperactive to her because i'm always moving my legs or pacing around or rubbing my hands or drumming on the table with pens. things like that (plus a lot more) were the exact things i was telling them about and they just put it off like it's nothing but as soon as it affects and annoys them it's suddenly very real. at this point i'm struggling to talk to my parents about anything even remotely more serious than generic smalltalk and i'm having a hard time believing myself that my struggles are in fact real and i'm not just making them up.

and also on a less related note; the thing i hate most about my parents: if i'm wearing headphones and couldn't understand what a parent was yelling from somewhere else in the house then it's my fault. but if it's the exact same situation but i'm the one calling and they couldn't hear me, then it's obviously my fault too (i kinda get the first one but srsly how could i not wear headphones when they're constantly arguing with my brother in the room next to mine) (either way if one of the scenarios is clearly my fault, then the other shld be clearly their fault bc that's how logic works)

hhhh, this got quite long. i would love to hear your thoughts about this

a continuation from the other ask about my parents not taking me seriously even when i ask them for help with my hardest problems. that ask didn't really go in the direction i had planned but there is so much going on between my parents and me that i really need to talk to someone about

background: i'm around 15-16 rn and have a brother who's 18. primary school was academically very easy for me (lots and lots of great and even perfect grades) but my brother didn't have it as easy (lots and lots of mediocre and meh grades) so my parents really just kinda let me do my thing while they were constantly busy with my brother. so i got really independant and did all of my stuff on my own bc a) i always had done it that way and b) my parents were already busy and stressed. but after my brother got his first computer and got into video games his grades dropped and my parents started constantly arguing with him and taking away his computer and stuff like that so there was always a lot of tension (and i got to a point where i can't handle people yelling; that's what i was referring to with the headphone thingy at the end of the last ask) i don't know if i can go that far and say that my parents kinda neglected me and my emotional needs in favour of saving my brother grades but that's pretty much the way it feels.

i'm now a sophomore (school works a bit different here but i'm the equivalent of a highschool sophomore afaik, here it's just 10th grade) and starting from about mid 8th grade (end of 2018) i've been struggling a lot with self care and upkeep of my already minimal social circle and academic stuff (i'm at the academically highest level of school you could be at my age without skipping any years) and also mental health.

i got quite depressive and started isolating myself and casting away friends and my grades went down a lot, which really disappointed me because my great grades were kind of my trademark thing. but i didn't feel safe talking to my parents because of the huge distance that we built by me "never" needing their help with stuff.

in that time (almost a year ago, our anniversary is in twenty days or so) i got a girlfriend and i'm hella glad that i can talk to her about everything but i feel like i can't just go dump trauma and parent issues on her forever

about last november or so i was at a pretty low point and was suicidal and that's kind of when i snapped and went to my parents to talk so being cast away and having my issues invalidated really really hurt then and made me spiral even deeper and my gf was the only thing keeping me afloat.

i'm kind of a bit better now but i have rebuilt my view of my parents from "idk we never really interact" to "trying to interact or talk is not worth the energy" and needless to say i don't like them that much

oh and i forgot about all the times i got panic attacks and sensory overloads @ school because there are so many people there (1700 students + 200 teachers) and it's loud everywhere and of course asking my parents for what to do if suddenly everything is too bright and too loud and you can't move or talk because of it didn't get me anywhere (and since i didn't know what it was called or how to describe it properly, i didn't really find any Information online either

and just typing this makes me think of so many more things that they did that aren't okay things to do (a lot of gender identity stuff for example because i'm also neck-deep in that) . but writing this has also helped a lot right now. thank you for being there and listening.

and just in case i'm ever gonna pop back in to say something i'm gonna drop a name for easier identifying

sincerely - 🌌 milky way anon

Hi, nonnie! Thanks for the kind words, I'm really glad my blog has been of help ❤️

I'm sorry your parents are making it hard to believe your struggles are real :( you deserve to be taken seriously and to get access to all the help you might need. Just the fact your symptoms are there and you're noticing them and they're interfering with your daily life is enough to get them checked, regardless of if you need a diagnosis/meds/anything else. No one deserves to live wondering if their struggles are worth discussing with a doctor or professional.

And you're right: if one of those things was your fault, then the other should be theirs, logically. But I don't even think it's "your fault" you didn't hear them because you were wearing headphones, to be honest. I think it's just something that happens from time to time and that doesn't warrant getting mad over; I think it's the kind of thing that simply needs to be talked about so everyone in the household knows how to communicate with everyone else without getting frustrated. It's as easy as saying "hey, whenever I put on headphones I'll just text the family group chat to let you guys know I won't hear you. If you need anything in those moments, just text me instead". I do this with my girlfriend sometimes—if we're wearing headphones and we're in the same room, we simply pat each other when we need something and wait until the other takes off their headphones to talk. It really doesn't have to be an issue where anyone is to blame. You're allowed to take steps to feel safe and comfortable in your house without getting punished for it.

But, of course, this doesn't work if the people around you choose to prioritise "being right" and proving you're wrong over a peaceful and healthy cohabitation, which is what most toxic and abusive people do.

As for your second ask, I would say if it feels like your parents neglected you and your needs because they were always focusing on your brother, then it's okay to say that they did. The fact alone that those feelings are there makes you deserving of talking about it and wanting to heal from it; the cause of those feelings doesn't have to be something major, or sound deeply traumatising when you say it out loud, in order to "count". And people whose emotional needs were consistently met don't feel like they weren't.

I've already shared this video before, but if you want some resources on identifying and healing from emotional neglect, I really recommend watching it. Please bear in mind, though, that the video says it's important to not blame parents for emotionally neglecting you, but I don't think that's the message a lot of people need to hear and I think you should allow yourself to feel angry at your parents for not meeting your needs and causing you trauma. That's pretty much the only thing I'd criticise about the video.

I'm sorry to hear you've been struggling with your grades and mental health lately, nonnie. I had a quite similar experience when I was in high school—I used to always get great grades, but my mental health and trauma put a lot of strain on them (as well as on my social life; I lost a lot of friends in those years) and it was really distressing to see the only thing that made me "worthy" crumble between my fingers like that. I'm still trying to unlearn this idea that your grades define your worth, and it's been really hard.

I'm so sorry your parents weren't there for you when you hit that low 😔 I'm glad your girlfriend could help you stay afloat in that moment, but they absolutely should've been there for you all those times you reached out to them for help with your struggles, and the fact that they didn't is emotionally neglectful of them.

I'm glad you're in a better place now ❤️ I really hope you can find out all the information you need on gender identity and sensory overload and any other issues that might be affecting you. Know that you deserve for your parents to be there for you. You shouldn't have to face any of this on your own, or even with only the support of other people your age. You deserve for them to care. You deserve to have your symptoms checked out. You deserve adult guidance to find resources to help you better understand and manage your struggles.

Sending all my virtual support your way ❤️ and happy belated anniversary to you and your girlfriend!

#Ask #milky way anon #Abuse #Abuse tw #Abusive parents #Toxic parents #Ableism tw #I'm not from the US either so I have no idea what a sophomore is hahaha #Emotional neglect tw #childhood emotional neglect #panic attacks tw #Suicidal tw

[iconsumeheadcanons]

persona characters autism headcanons!

hi im autistic and i started my day with sun so now im !!!!!!!!! some of these headcanons are from elsewhere on tumbr, but i dont know where :(((  so i am hoping someone out there knows that n that everybody knows that i love them <3

(also go check out mollypaup and i think hypeswap if you havent already! they post some good stuff autism+adhd hc too!!! i think.. oh! and thieves-in-the-palace!!!)

P5

Joker

there was some artwork from someone on tublr..where they pointed out that he doesnt really talk outside the metaverse so--hes hyperverbal as joker and just near nonverbal as akiren

he stims ALL THE TIME. that phone thing, the pencil thing, the little tappy tap of his foot, pulling at his bangs when hes embarrassed/smug. someone get him a fidget spinner. he’ll prob learn to do tricks with it

he probably sucks at focusing in class, like i know its just the game design but hes always surprised out of his daily “star out the window at the nearby office building” when his teachers ask him questions

mona mentions when the pt is at Wilton for the first time (after they run into shido) that joker eats like shit, and that could have multiple causes at the start of the story of course, but when i first played i thought that joker was a picky eater and that the variety (and amount of food) at the buffet would be an Ordeal...

tho mona makes that comment bc joker looked pale after having a little ptsd moment from shidos voice, but i didnt know that the first time i played

maybe when joker makes a face at ryuji putting so much ginger in his gyudon? joker probably does not like pickled ginger lol

his favortive foods are all spicy, which is why the curry he makes for his friends is always ‘overly spicy’, and why kasumi makes him a curry bento and joker kept going “...?” .... “....?!”

overly reflective glasses have been a great plus for him bc now he never has to make real eye contact every again!

mona Soft. play with Ann hair. maybe Braid. nice

puns (Gorou the Goroumet)

he has so many options to be straight up rude sometimes in game. he probably no clue on his own, which is why he defaults to Not Talking. people probably mention his constant scary face, which is just him being nonexpressive, squinting at all the fucking bright lights, and Tired

executive function who? we do everything last minute folks

high pain tolerance, which is why he was the kid that was always climbing trees in elementary school to get basketballs unstuck from the branches

his sixth sense lets him see treasure and possible places to climb/crawl bc 1. Shiny? Steal it. Steal it Now. and 2. Could i fit in that? Time to Find Out

probalby a bit of a klepto too oops. he’ll return it tho!! but he has to do it dramatically or he’ll die

cant sit properly to save his life

smells and touch are Great, they can keep him grounded when his brain goes off to police or dead rivals or guilt or

if a friend hung out with him and gave him total reigns of the agenda, he would choose to nap on the floor while his friend does something off to the side quietly

hyperfocuses on handy tasks (i.e. lockpicks, coffee brewing, cleaning, his part time jobs) and some things like movies and books. everything else is a tossup

his (normal) navigation app is his most used app bc he still doesnt know where hes going, even though he only goes to the same few places in the city

hates being sweaty, literally cannot stand it. probably double exhausted during the summer

but Needs Compression so hes often Struggling

Futaba

paraphrase from p5d “i have no motor skills so i cant play rhythm games :(” need i say more? (i will regardless)

echolalia all the time, from anime, memes, the PT

those headphones she wears all the time? noise cancelling ear protectors babey

only talks about her interests, “normal” talking is Not Easy, but she is still communicative w others despite her worries. shes not “hard to understand” at all but she feels the anxiety nonetheless

only talks informally, cannot talk ‘politely’ with out imitating someone around her

shes had meltdowns and anxiety attacks in game :( i relate so hard

Technology. thats it

def had an egypt phase that pops up every few months. probably came from yu-gi-oh

has Immune to Bright Lights buff.  joker is very jealous

“Time to make like a tree and leave!” and 30 other iterations

video game metaphors are the only ones that makes sense to her

probably relates hard to robot characters in anime for their general androgyny and confusion about human emotions and connections

probably gets told that shes “too smart to be on the spectrum” by teachers >:( she fails their classes on purpose

wakaba’s autistic too that just how it is

the Connection that she establishes with Joker is so Warm. my life goals include adopting an older brother like futaba has lsdkfjslkfj

also eater of 5 foods only, i mean, she brings cup ramen to the beach. i just really admire her...

hides in small spaces for comfort

doesnt she have like uhhhhh hyperthymesia or something like that?

Yusuke

art

his entire social link is learning how humans work, which i relate

talks seriously all the time

“sarcasm? who is that? are you saying I was sarcastic?...how?”

cant remember to take care of his body, and madarame did not help with that either

lot of uncomfortable staring, hes overdoing the eye contact thingy

infodumps all the time, doesnt know hes doing it

needs a lot of support even if he doesnt think he deserves it. no one ever complains about helping him out tho

visual stims my friends

he didnt know that you could look up pictures on the internet but he does know you can stream live videos of waterfalls and fluffy animales!!

I am certainly in the mood

for something salty today.

he and joker are scared of math. numbers do not interact

Yusuke, futaba, and akiren are a trio and i know this bc their first day of non-thievery interacts is Akiren clearing Futabas room w/o permission, futaba hyperfocusing on destroying medjed, and yusuke rearranging futabas figurines so they are more visually appealing

morgana is a support friend for all of them bc igor knows they need it

P4

Souji/Yu

yes, he mostly wears gray semi formal clothes bc parents tell him to, no, he will not changes this

Schedule or Death

“sorry, could you repeat that?” “huh? oh yeah, i was saying that--” “yeah that’d be cool.”

cats, fishing, he just likes to be quiet. you can literally spend a day at the beach just to think if you want, and that is what yu want

has a lot of scripts for things (of which he shares with nanako!) but if he runs out he just stops talking..

inaba is a godsend bc its so fucking quiet and warm

he Yearns to hold his friends hands, but he shies away from a lot of touch (excepting yosuke, teddie, and nanako)

Cooking and Cleaning makes the world better. he and joker vibe together with this

unlike akiren, he strong arms any executive dysfunction into Be Productive or Else. his punishment is feeling the pure anxiety of having to make up for ‘lost time’. (another symptom of his workaholic parents)

writes everything down, notes are very neat, has pages dedicated for bad doodles when hes not feeling his usual Super Classroom Focus

Cannot handle secondhand embarrassment (most often caused by yosuke) and will quietly slip away to random cats or origami folding

hungry, crunch crunch folks. probably needs chewelry bc he used to chew on his shirt collars when he was younger.

cleans up after everyone in the food court, constantly worries about them accidently hurting themselves. likely spends half of group conversations watching peoples hands

he canonically eats expired food, nanako plz help your brother

really clumsy, but people only notice after they decide that he is a cool person

video games are too chaotic for him

exhausted every night from the pure amount of masking he does, if a friend spends the night (or is like yosuke) they will know his more comfortable weirdo self (tho everyone knows hes a weirdo eventually)

hyperempathetic, sometimes just understands animals and children better than peeople his age or older

Yukiko

her jokes

she and souji get in ‘trouble’ together, she and joker commit crimes together

she and chie have to coordinate outfits, its important

actually understands metaphors, but does not understand people

like me, had no clue that creepy kid was flirting with her

she is very angry when she has meltdowns that might involve slamming doors and shouting. her parents call these ‘tantrums’ and ‘unfitting for a polite daughter’ but really thats because her meltdowns tend to be caused by arguments w her family after a long day of school and TV world traipsing

the metronome meme, except hers goes between Loudest Person in the Room to Quietest Pin Drop in the Planet. she is completely unaware of this

her atmosphere brightens when chie appears. that is not only the lesbian energy within her, but also because chie is like her Favorite Person

Cannot wear Pants. No (tho she wants to try it! but she puts them on and her soul instantly squashes)

happy flappy lesbian! watch out!

Naoto

the pouty face. all the time lskdfjlasdkf

hes really snappy sometimes and i love that for him. he and akechi should fight just to see what would happen (please read Bang Bang Shoot Shoot on AO3)

“do not touch me or my hat, thank you”

no one has ever seen him shutdown and no one ever will (except for his grandpa)(and kanji)(and rise)

probably likes certain food textures and will stand for nothing less, probably feels embarrassed about his preferences with friends

constantly jumps between ‘everybody hates me so i should act like them so they dont hate me’ to ‘i refuse to be anything but very comfortable as myself, and i dont care that im making you upset sir’

he and souji are the king and queen of subtle stims, but for unhappy reasons :(

does not make jokes. cannot joke around. understand? yes, do? no.

loose clothes are the only good clothes, but all tags and obtrusive seams will be obliterated by kanji tatsumi

not very empathetic so he probably comes off as an asshole to strangers (like when he throws away his classmates confession letters without reading them) but he tries so hard to sound comforting when his buds are struggling.

his understanding of others emotions/reactions come from his learning as a detective, which seems cold+clinical to others, especially compared to souji, whos completely unexpressive but very introverted people person

P3

Hamuko/Minako/Kotone

big personality!! very people-oriented!! koromaru and her are buddies!! when shes having a real bad time, shes very quiet and expressions turn off

interrupts herself in the middle of conversations all the time. no one knows where shes coming from. her brains is thousands of km ahead of her body

bouncey legs, swingin arms, twirlly skirt, little somersaults! when will she stop? never!

very obvious music stims with her hands and arms! people are like “oh there she goes! happy as usual!” shes listening to minatos heavy metal playlist

switches from exhausted to excited within milliseconds. no one can predict, not even her

SEES has to ask her for context all the time cuz she’ll just continue shit from 2 weeks ago without warning

professionals will assume shes very childish bc of how chipper she is, but she is beyond mature for her age and only feels comfortable enough to have serious conversations if a person has proved themself able to handle it

collects every little thing. her room is a mess and she has to get rid of most of it every time she moves :(

hates cleaning! smells bad, feels bad hhhhhgggg

dont let mitsuru-senpai see her bedroom

gets lost in the middle of conversations with others bc shes thinking about a story connected to one(1) word that was said earlier

 no sense of time and place, she just sees her friends and goes “ah, this is the right place, then” but junpei and akihiko are also lost so now theyre all screwed

Minato/Makoto/Sakuya

no talkies, no walkies

his story in the movies is him literally learning how to function around people he cares for

doesnt get jokes, expressions, body language, empathy, subtlety, metaphors, physical contact, or eye contact. aigis is probably the only person he truly understands right away

he is still nice to people because he doesnt see a reason not to be, but also he has very limited energy so only his senpai and old people get his most polite-kindnesses

cannot describe feelings for the life of him. the team wont know hes injured or sick until hes passed out

everything is too loud, time to drown it out with my loud ass music

rocking and chewing stims, ryoji is the first person to point him out for these subtle stims (not accusingly of course, just general pure curiosity and love for the uniqueness of humanity)

likes to cover his face with whatever is available, lives like a bat in a dark dry cave

will wear anything that has pockets and his blue/gray/black palette

sleepy at all times bc he never has much energy

when he was younger he probably needed a lot of support, especially after his parents died, because he wouldnt communicate like a neurotypical and would shutdown for hours in the middle of school without warning. probably missed a lot of lessons and field trips out of pure overstimulation

eating at all times. no preference, just whatevers closest

his meltdowns probalby include humming whining noises and curling up in a ball, which makes people want to touch him, but that is the LAST thing he wants. put a blanket on him! play some music! do not talk and do not expect him to speak

aigis is the only person who can touch him normally bc her hands are cold and he likes cold

never nude, feels mmmmmmmmm without clothes and probalby wears a full robe in the hotsprings

will not do things that take more than one step w/o someone else walking him thru it, which Same

#my writing #p3 #p4 #p5 #persona 3 #persona 4 #persona 5 #ren #futaba #souji #hamuko #minato #vibes straight thru the sun #i sincerely hope the read more works #im so srry for grammar problems #i literally cant read rn

[spockandawe]

Okay, I want to pull together more detailed thoughts at some point, I think, because the sheer amount of material means I have about ten billion thoughts to sort out. But I’ve read all three of the mxtx novels now, and loved all of them, in different ways. Though I already tried to figure out if I can pick a Favorite, and tbh, I can’t. I love them all in ways that are too distinct to let me rank them easily. And... man, it’s lucky for my friends that social distancing is in place, or I’d be hassling them shamelessly to give these novels a try.

RIGHT. So.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: Shen Yuan goes to bed full of rage directed at a trashy webnovel with a grimdark blackened hero who conquered the world and collected hundreds of women into his harem.... and wakes up in novel, while that hero is still an innocent youth. As the hero’s abusive teacher. Who is doomed for a horrifying death unless he can somehow turn things around.

I think I had the most fun with this one. I really enjoy self-referential stories, and stories poking fun at certain genres, and I’ve run into the concept of transmigration before (the idea being a person enters a fictional world, a la lost in austen), though I’m blanking on any media like that I’ve actually consumed. This was chronologically the first book mxtx wrote, and it has less of a sprawling cast with complicated relationships than the other two books, but it definitely has the thing where she lays early groundwork for later revelations that shatter my poor heart. 

And there may be fewer relationships to play with, but my GOD, do I love the relationships we got. I’ve been rolling around in svsss fanfic since I finished the book, even more so than mdzs or tgcf. There’s a lot of good crunchy relationship content with the 79 ship (they destroy me, all day every day), Liu Qingge owns my whole-ass heart, and Luo Binghe makes for a fascinating love interest. I love that even at his best, he remains a needy, needy, manipulative boy, who’s so smart and strong and nEEDY. I don’t love how the book handled moshang, but mmmm the fan content is Good. And Shen Qingqiu does the unreliable narrator thing that is usually not my jam, but works so WELL in these books, in that his unreliable narration is hugely skewed towards not giving himself nearly as much credit as he deserves. Xie Lian takes this to UNBELIEVABLE heights in tgcf, but in Shen Qingqiu’s case, it’s done on such a casual, immediate, personal level that I’m fascinated by everything he does. 

And, since Shen Yuan/Shen Qingqiu is a millennial fan of trashy romance webnovels who gets yanked into the universe of a novel he hates, into an old-timey xianxia setting, the prose is SO COOL. You swing between modern slang and old school high society courtesies at the drop of a hat, and I’m honestly awed that the translators were able to catch so much of that. Like, in-setting, I love all the nuance you can get in ‘qi-ge should give his a-jiu the scroll’ vs ‘yue-shixiong should give this teacher the scroll’ vs ‘you should give me the scroll’. But then it adds a whole new layer when the person ALSO has modern-day casual speech bouncing around in their head. It makes for a fascinating, fascinating reading experience.

The Grandmaster Of Demonic Cultivation: Thirteen years ago, Wei Wuxian died. And then he wakes up! In someone else’s body. I’m not going to try to summarize the premise of this one, go look up The Untamed if you want someone to do a better job of this than me XD

Ahhh, this was the book I read first. I still haven’t watched the show (only clips) and I’m not sure I ever will, because adhd is a hell of a drug. But it’s hard to purely evaluate the prose when there’s also this gorgeous, beautifully-acted visual adaptation all over my tumblr to bias me in its favor. I think this book benefits a lot from the MYSTERY of it all. From the very start, there’s the question of ‘what the fuck is up with this goddamn arm’ that the characters pursue, even as that takes them through flashbacks and other arcs within the story. It gives a thrust to the novel that I think isn’t exactly there in tgcf, though I’m torn on which one is “better.” This gave the story momentum, yes, but it also meant I was much more impatient in yi city and the 3zun flashbacks, because this isn’t what I was focused onnnnnn this is cool but how much longer will we BE HERE--

That being said, I think I’ll be more patient with those flashbacks on my next time through the book, now that I have a better picture of where everything is headed. I think the balance and structure of the book worked really well, I was setting myself up for self-sabotage because of the pace I was plowing through the thing. My reading habits didn’t lend themselves well to the nonlinear storytelling, and it speaks to the story’s strength that it held up that well despite me. And the CAST. My GOD. I went in not caring about anyone but Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji and maybe the jackass nephew, but... that Did Not Last. I didn’t intend to care about 3zun? Nope, too bad, you care so much now. Who cares about Xue Yang? Me. I care. Way too much. HECK!!!

And something that happens in this book and tgcf that was much less of a thing in svsss is that there are some meaningful holes in the story that I’d like to be filled, and I really care about filling-- and the story doesn’t go there. But it doesn’t leave me unhappy, it leaves me cheerfully scrabbling around in the throwaway details trying to piece together a picture of what happened when I wasn’t looking. What happened to Wei Wuxian in the burial mounds? How did Hua Cheng take control of the ghost city? Idk, but let us Rummage and theorize and roll around in ideas and have a fantastic, speculative time. Svsss might hook me more than the other stories from an au+shipping perspective, but mdzs and tgcf do a great job of making me want to roll around and create within the bounds of canon.

Heaven Official’s Blessing: 800 years ago, Xie Lian ascended to heaven. And fell. And rose again! And fell again. Now he’s ascended for the third time, and things are Awkward.

God, I just finished this, and I’m still reeling. This is the LONGEST mxtx book, that’s for sure. I also think it’s the most tightly edited translation. All the translators did an unbelievable job, I could never even approach what they accomplished, but I am genuinely stunned that a book this long was edited so well. I blew through this in about 3.5 days (if not for work, i could have made it in three dghsafdsgf) and my brain was cooking in my skull by the time I was halfway through, but I couldn’t STOP. I was ENCHANTED the entire time! I was reading so much my head was destroying me and I still sulked so HARD every time I had to put my phone down and sleep.

This book sprawls the hardest, I think, because it involves a cast made of mostly immortal/immortal-adjacent people, so time and space get... flexible. And I feel really bad saying this, because Lan Wangji is DEVOTED, but this is seriously the book with the most attentive and adoring and respectful love interest. Hua Cheng is..... god. I truly don’t think I’ve EVER read a character quite like him before, and I am so, so sad, because I don’t know how I’ll find one who lives up to these heights ever again XD I recommend reading this book just for the Hua Cheng experience, if nothing else. I was making audible noises at literally flailing at multiple points in the story, but most often, it was because of him. 

Shipping is what usually drags me into a fandom hardest, and all of these books do pretty well for themselves, all of them have a nice selection of fluffy and crunchy ships to choose from. And this one... goddammit. I just realized, that the best, most crunchy ships are too spoilery for me to be willing to talk about them here. Hell. Goddammit. But I think tgcf has the crunchiest ship of all, even better than xuexiao. I was so invested, and then there were Reveals, and then I was like OH NO THIS IS TERRIBLE BUT MY INVESTMENT HAS EXPONENTIALLY INCREASED. 

And something that I really, really appreciate, is that across the mxtx books, even though a lot of characters fit into strong archetypes, there’s nobody that is blurring together for me, either within or across the books. Liu Qingge isn’t Jiang Cheng isn’t Feng Xin. They’re all blunt, fighty boys, but all super distinct in my head, and what I want for each of them is distinct and character-driven. I want Liu Qingge to be properly cherished and I want Jiang Cheng to relax with his brother and nephew and I want Feng Xin to [goddammit i don’t want to spoil this book AGH]. It’s something I appreciated in the other books too, but I can really FEEL it in this book, with how long and luxurious it is. 

And last thing I have to say, I think, is that tgcf is so long. It’s so, so long. But I would FITE if anyone tried to pare it down at all. I can’t think of anything I’d be willing to sacrifice. I enjoyed every last piece of it so much, and it was all ultimately SO well-constructed and interlocking, that any piece I can think of snipping out would take away significant emotional impact from what was left. It’s a nonlinear story, like mdzs is nonlinear, and I loved mdzs a lot! But the construction here is so, so, so elegant. I’m just in AWE of how well it was assembled. I was in Agony as reveals happened, because oh no no no no, now that they’ve told me this, that casts this whole other scene in a brand new light! The one I read hundreds of thousands of words ago! Literally, I need to go start the book over so I can savor the shitty teens in new ways, given [redacted] as revealed in like, the last twenty percent of the book. The book was a fun experience, but there’s so Much here that I know I haven’t even absorbed yet. I loved the other mxtx books a lot, and in many ways, they were easier to get a grasp on than tgcf was, but even before I finished tgcf I was already despairingly trying to figure out how easily I could fit a full reread into my life, and I think that says a lot

#tgcf #mdzs #svsss #long post/ #[sad journaling noises as i realize that whatever ridiculous wordcount tgcf has still only counts as one completed book on my list] #i need to get an actual wordcount at some point #then stack up enough physical books to visually represent each of these monsters #i know i read a lot #enough that i very much want to know *how much* i read #because CHRIST

[catalinaroleplay]

Gender & Pronouns: Cis man, he/him

Date of Birth: December 20th, 1986 (34)

Place of Birth: Catalina Island, California

Neighborhood: Lafayette Square

Length of Residency: Native

Occupation: Professional Golf Player

Face Claim: Derek Theler

BIOGRAPHY

TRIGGERS: ADHD, Dyslexia, Car Accident, Suicide.

When Sylvie and Johnathan got pregnant with their second child, they weren’t ready for how different their experience with the boy would be from his oldest sister. Starting by his premature birth (by a whole month) in the middle of the holidays. He soon proved to be strong through, he wasn’t a quiet baby by any means, Gabriel tested his parents’ will power and patience every night when he made them have a taste of his healthy lungs at three in the morning, sometimes not keeping quiet the whole night. He would hear those stories continuously while growing up, especially when he brought girlfriends home to meet the family. He still thinks they are Sylvie’s finest way of making him feel embarrassed as any good mother should. It’s needless to say that he grew up surrounded by what most people envied: a good, supporting family. He was incredibly close to his parents, even closer to his sisters. His proximity with all that female energy made him inevitably stray away from some male stereotypes which didn’t make school any easier for him. He spent too much time with his mother in Carmichael Roses, which made him learn everything about flowers, including the best of each season, and as a teenager helped with their shipments for a while. The rest of his time would be spent in a green field, playing and falling in love with golf alongside his father and his older sister.

Gabriel never felt like he was a child as the other children around him. He was loud and rambunctious, yes? However, his mind was far too scarce for him, he was disruptive in class, impatient, he was forgetful of his tasks and had a difficulty in concentrating, not to mention, he constantly complained about his difficulty in reading and writing. It would take a while for the family to  this as more than a kid just being a kid, thankfully, his parents paid his symptoms much mind, and when Gabriel’s grades started tanking in elementary school, before everything got worrisome, he was sent to a therapist and diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. From that moment on, both Sylvie and Jonathan would do everything in their power to make sure that it wouldn’t hinder him in any way in his future and that he would have a chance as any other kid would, even if he was already behind by a grade from the rest of his classmates.

From the moment he was diagnosed, Gabriel remembers working harder than ever just to fit in. He was still made from the same mold as his older sister, but as a young boy he couldn’t feel more different if he tried. His diagnosis translated into anxiety to deal with most social situations, but over time, and with the proper support, not only from his family, but medically speaking, he got better. Gabriel understood that quite possibly he would never be able to function the same way other children did, and it was perfectly fine. Both himself and his parents were completely against medicating him as a child. For once they were afraid it would cause some sort of dependency, and for Gabriel, he was scared of the side effects and that instead of giving him just enough to concentrate, it would numb him out and he was not interested in that. Therapy, stress management and educational support, not to mention cognitive behavioural therapy became normal in his life. His parents hired tutors to help him study after school in attempts to keep up, but he was always a step behind no matter how hard he tried. His difficulty with learning words and how to write properly, paired with a brain who thought too fast for how slow he was able to scribble words on a page, or read them for that matter. He hated math, the symbols confused him to no end and he thought that if he never had to see math in his life, he was fine with it.

As a part of his therapy, though, to learn how to concentrate better, his therapist told him not to abandon golf, in fact, she prescribed him more time on the field, as he had described a sense of peace and quiet whenever he was swinging a golf club.

Golf would soon become his whole life, much to his father’s happiness. It was as if he was someone else when he was on that course. He managed to get the queues without having to read anything on a board and his mind had its own way of processing what his hands needed to do, the exact amount of force he needed to put in to make sure that his swings were precise. Besides, it was nice to see people praising him, instead of being concerned over something that if he had any say in it, would never hinder his professional path. It was clear that he wanted to be just like his father and it was also clear to see that Johnathan took it as a compliment, especially when he saw his son had a natural talent for the game. Gabriel would want to start competing as soon as his father and his teacher thought he would be able to do so. Competitions brought a different side of him and made his fear of failure and being a disappointment flourish. He didn’t win every tournament under his belt, by any means, but it wasn’t until he was ranked high enough to participate in the 2000’s masters that a loss hit him so hard.

Coming back home as a second placer did not bode well with what he demanded of himself, thinking that because he lacked in certain areas of his life, he needed desperately to compensate in others. Everything pertaining to Gabriel needed to be handled carefully, it was easy to see that the boy didn’t treat himself kindly upon failure and naturally, the family had been wary of it, with reason too. After the failure in the masters and with other competitions approaching, he turned to performance enhancers. There was no denying his head felt more in the game, and he did better in practice. It wasn’t until the next year’s masters that he even attempted to take one for an official competition. He was busted, of course, his reputation tainted and he never saw his father as disappointed with him as he was at that moment. It was agreed that maybe he should take a break from the game, handle the penalties that were put his way and try another time, in a few years perhaps. Not knowing what he would do with his free time, Gabriel turned to working for Carmichael Roses, helping his mother with shipments and anywhere he couldn’t mess up. Golf had put him in a certain place at the school’s social hierarchy, but things definitely changed after his use of drugs hit the national news.

His next few years in school were a way for him to rebuild his reputation. He stopped using the enhancers and logged in extra hours in the therapist’s office to try and deal with the feelings properly. He got himself his first girlfriend, which would not end well on both parts, and while he wanted to follow the family’s footsteps and aim high for Stanford, he knew it was an unnecessary risk for his well being and years of treatment to try and fit in alongside people who were, for the lack of a better word, overachievers. By the time he was 17 years old, he had returned fully and carefully to golffing and because of the game, and how he was so good at rebuilding his image (alongside a marketing team, of course), Gabriel landed a sports scholarship to UCLA. Getting a superior education and having something to fall back on was Sylvie’s condition to let Gabriel play his game. It would soothe her heart, she used to say, but he was pretty sure that after the stunt he pulled on her, she would never stop worrying again. His father, on the other side, had forgiven him entirely after he apologized and swore to him he wouldn’t take anything. Truth be told, Gabriel missed the way golf made him feel, and while he had his fun while working at Carmichael’s, nothing quite compared to the thrill of being recognizably good at something.

His time at UCLA came with a nasty break, but breezed through. He was happy for the scholarship, although it wasn’t really necessary. He was the first, in a long time not to attend Stanford, but his parents seemed to be okay with it. He was trying and while he was going through college for his mother, there was nothing that could make him feel interested there. During the four years of university, Gabriel concentrated more than never in what he was there for. The close proximity with Catalina, made him able to commute and be home to practice with his father whenever the man could. Soon he would be making headlines again. Sports channels predicted a larger than ever return, because up until his 18th birthday, he had been only playing in minor tournaments, ranking himself up again, rebuilding his reputation from the ground up and handling all sorts of jokes from his peers. He would go on to play his next masters at 19, this time coming home with a victory, and that scene would repeat itself for the many years to come.

It wouldn’t be easy, but by the time he was 24 he managed to get his degree in psychology and the whole family was there to see it. Among every trophy and medal he had conquered so far, getting his diploma meant more to him than Gabriel was willing to admit. It meant, more than anything else, that he had conquered his childhood difficulties, and while he would always live with them in one way or another, he had spent years learning how to make himself better. Ever since he had enough money to do so, Gabriel has been very vocal about his support for organizations who do their part for kids who went through what he did and did his best to educate other people on what that meant for him and what it would mean for other children who had different experiences and harder experiences than he did. For years and before starting his own organization once he had a good influential level, he was a spokesperson for children and their parents. Especially those who weren’t as lucky as him. His condition was also one of the reasons why he chose his degree, and what made him even more proud to have gotten it. After his diploma, Gabriel would once again settle back in Catalina, despite his constant travels, the island would always be the home he would return to.

The next year, one day after his 25th birthday, Gabriel would receive a call in his parents home telling him of the passing of his best friend. Few things had been pivotal in changing the way Gabriel thought about things, or caused disruptive changes in his life. Peter had been someone he knew since he was 2 or 3 years old, he was always with the family, almost glued to Gabriel’s hip in a way and he had commited suicide. Gabriel was devastated and numb at the same time. He would spend his next few months (and the rest of his life) doing everything to support Peter’s family, but even when everyone had moved on, he didn’t. He got depressive and reclusive, only leaving home for practice and even then, he took too many weeks off the game to process what had happened. While Sylvie and Johnathan had raised their children in a free environment, as a young boy, Gabriel had turned to the catholic church for many answers, he was regular in his attendance to Sunday church, he had a good relationship with the community, he went to the confessional weekly and thought that all those rituals brought his mind some peace, but once Peter passed away, there were no answers his church could give him. He went soul searching, he took a break from the game, traveled places, met new religions, but none quite spoke to him like spiritualism. He doesn’t know now if he considers himself to have broken up from catholicism, but he definitely found a place that gave tranquility to his heart when nothing else had done ever since Peter died. Gabriel’s depression gave place to peace and he was able to close that chapter in his life.

From late 2013 to middle 2020 Gabriel collected trophies and ranked high among other golf players such as his own father (who had retired to take care of his family) and Tiger Woods. He got endorsements, appeared (much to his chagrin) in underwear commercials. He was officially sponsored by Nike for the 2014 Rio Olympics and while he didn’t come home with a gold medal, he knew how to deal with that now. Despite his romantic slip ups, and those were many, Gabriel didn’t lose his place as a hopeless romantic, saying in many interviews, he wanted what his parents had: someone to be with him for the rest of his life.

Enter Rebecca. They would meet at a journalist and players get together after a particular game, during interviews. Truth be told, Gabriel never cared for any sport other than golf, but he would listen to her going over football plays forever. He was struck from the moment he met her. He would ask her out on a date, which would not go good, and be fairly surprised when she was the first one to contact him the next day. They would be together for three years total before Gabriel popped the question. He didn’t do it in the middle of the field, or anything for the world to see, it was just between the two of them. She would go on to plan the wedding alongside his mother and while being a romantic at heart, Gabriel knew better than to put himself in the middle. As the wedding approached, Rebecca changed, Gabriel brushed it off for wedding jitters, since the nuptials were so close. It would be an intimate ceremony, just the family, no media, no press, no nothing. It wasn’t until he knocked on her dressing room door on the morning of their wedding that he found a small note. She had ran away with her best friend, and claimed to be in love with him. Gabriel never took such a high leap again, but he still made some minor mistakes for love over the next few years. He had to go through some awkward press conferences after he was left.

Gabriel was thankful to have his game to fall back on. Rebecca had been a big part of his life for the last four years, but he needed to move on. In some ways, he was happy that she was happy. Was there anything he could ask more? He started prepping for the next Olympics and ranking high enough to be a part of the team. He was okay with being resumed to the one thing he loved the most (aside from his niece and nephew, of course). Being left at the altar only hyped people’s interest over him, his PO box had never been more full and he had good laughs about it.

Around November 2020, Gabriel got into a car accident with another friend. They were just making a short ride from his parents’ house to his friend when a car came straight towards theirs. In an attempt to get rid from the collision, Gabriel’s friend swerved and they ended up hitting a tree instead. His friend had the seatbelt on, but Gabriel, because the ride was so short, didn’t. In attempts to soften the blow and buffer the impact, he put his right hand on the dash, which caused him to dislocate his shoulder, shatter his thumb, broke his wrist and tore a ligament. A concussion cost him his consciousness and he would only wake up hours later after the surgery was done. Naturally, he was worried about his game, and was relieved when the doctor explained that the injury wouldn’t cost him his grip or his swing, but he needed to be careful, take it easy and not overstep himself and injure himself further. It would take him months to return fully and he needed to be patient with himself, although patience wasn’t exactly what Gabriel was known for.

Since the injury took him out of any future competitions, Gabriel has moved back to Catalina full time now, getting himself an apartment in Lafayette Square, large enough for him and his big ball of fur. His mother has been overwhelmingly around, but he doesn’t complain about it. His time is both devoted to his physical therapy and everything he needs to do, but also he has been spending a lot of time on the organization he has helped fund about two years ago and became his baby. The Smile Foundation came from an effort to help underprivileged children with learning disabilities to reach their full potential, Gabriel spends most of his time now at their building close to his home and makes sure to speak to children and parents alike. Since it’s non-profit they thrive out of other people’s volunteering and donations, and they have been offering a good space. Naturally, Gabriel is doing everything in his power to return to where he left, but it doesn’t mean that for the first time in forever he hasn’t been enjoying some off time from the game.

PERSONALITY

Positive: Optimistic | Spontaneous | Fair-minded

Negative: Restless | Tactless | Naive

Gabriel Livingston is portrayed by Rosa.

#all #cis #man #lafayette square #adhd tw #dyslexia tw #car accident tw #suicide tw #derek theler

[artpoint420]

Melvin and the Silent Diagnosis for a Brilliantly Broken Psyche

Hypothetical Diagnosis Insecurity masked with narcissistic tendencies characterized with compulsive obsessions driven by blatant autism, and no that is not an immature insult I test extremely highly for Asperger's myself Here's the Evidence: (I will state before hand that Melvin-borg is a completely separate character in my mind, and thus will not be included in this particular theory.  Melvin decided not to turn out like him, so they are canonically separate characters) He is obviously and frequently inspired by George and Harold, but his deeply embedded fear of rejection makes him dangerously bitter, and it doesn't help that everytime he breaks out of this protective shell, he is rejected or betrayed once again. It’s important to note that while he may be high-functioning (aka: Aspergers) he is still Autistic. That’s because Asperger’s is not a form of autism- it is autism. Period. And any kind of autism or mental attypicality left untreated can develop in to many, many other severe mental disorders, or, in general, make life a metric heck ton harder and complicated than it already is. I also need to confess that I test highly positively for autism myself as well as being an INTP female (Myers-Briggs Personality Test). Not to brag, but all that combined with my naturally creative nature makes me rare af, but it also means I can't communicate or handle stress #liketheothergirls, so that has lead me to being/feeling bullied and ostracized.  I also have anxiety and depression issue which run in my family, and mild insomnia, and may or may not be relapsing into an eating disorder. Paired with psychical problems like acid reflux and severe neck tension, health, whether psychical or mental is of uttermost importance to me.  It suffices to say, autism is not easy to deal with and if not taken care for properly a person, especially if not made at least aware of what autism truly is, it can truly ruin their life. Combined with the neglectful nature of his parents (at least in the books) I and many others in this fandom truly believe Melvin is at least autistically coded. Not only does this fit the archetype of his character but it also fits the theme of the books to a TEE. At its core, CU, of all things, is a children's book series, about living your best life despite not being “normal.” Even characters like the teachers or Mr Krupp who strive for “normality” are shown to actually have deeply repressed creativity, or, in some cases, deep trauma from their own childhoods. It suffices to say that I resonate deeply with Melvin. Say what you want about him or me, I was able to relate to him the second he spoke his first line in the second book. Sorry to turn this into a long vent, but I feel it is best to use myself to support this theory as well as harder evidence, even if it is mostly a means of self-therapy. To start, we both are obsessed with school even to a detrimental degree. Ever since head-start (Pre-K but a million times better), these "book-smarts" were the first thing I ever truly excelled at. When the other kids bullied (or as I now know as teasing) me, I would lose myself in a stack of homework or a book 2-3 grades past my grade level (this is before I drew or wrote as a main hobby). Similarly, Melvin is rarely seen without a book or gadget, just like me. We both over analyze things and hide our feelings. We both have intense crushes on others but are terrified to dare express them, or do but to nothing but awkwardness. We were both science kids, and fascinated by words and/or numbers alone (I still am just in a more artistic way). We both struggle to communicate and relate to others. We both have a unusual sense of humor and are highly observant of surroundings all the while missing what’s in front of our noses. We both have interests that quickly spiral into obsessions and dropping the obsession only when sick of it. We both practice similar forms of stimming. We both not only thrive but crave control and structure with the world around us, even to the point of being "control freaks" and creating odd habits, routines, and rituals regardless of whether they are necessary or make sense. We both have an intense fear of intimacy and rejection to the point of practicing self-isolation and in some cases self harm or other unhealthy coping methods (seen with Melvin over eating sweets or over working himself. For me it’s disordered eating or self flagellation, something I have all but completely dropped but still) We also both tend to see ourselves as inferior to others and attempt to mask those feelings with a superiority complex (I feel bad for my siblings but I didn’t know what I was doing, and no it was not abusive just sibling rivalry and I’m the oldest anyway, and we are country kids and understand “rough-housing” =/= using each other as a punching bag, but accidents happen I'm sorry) We both seem to become easily overstimulated and have explosive mental and emotional breakdowns when things just . . . become too much However the harsh divide between male and female and fictional and nonfictional means we both present certain traits differently. Whereas he presents a more linear line of thinking my mind is overwhelmingly sporadic. Also, I have over sensitivities to touch and light (and sometimes certain noises, but not anything not normal? Wfk.) But maybe he does have oversensitivity but I can't think of an example off the top of my head. Enough about me however. I know Melvin and autism has been done to death.  Hell, I just did it to death.  My actual theory is more on the inner mechanisms of his mind and predicting how he will develop should the series allow for full character development. Also, similar to my Krupp theory, I will be listing his crimes out and give him a proper sentence for his age and maturity level (which will be light as I am sympathetic to his plight).   This is already getting too long, so Imma try to finally get to the point.  Characters with autism are honestly a mixed bag, sometimes there as standardized as my mystery Daddy Sherlock Holmes and other times they are as subtle as Pearl or Peridot from Steven Universe (has Rebbaca Sugar confirmed this? sorry). Honestly, it does distress me that autism is almost always used to have an evil genius character or some weird side character for brownie/ diversity points. (this makes me a bit hypocritical I guess, considering my own stories. I guess tropes are tropes for a reason) And while Dav Pilky May not be subtle with his scholastic politics or humor his one spectacular tool in his writing books has always been, when it comes to his characters, showing instead of telling. This is something I latched on to even as a kid, and I was already thinking up theories on the characters before I even knew character theories were a thing.  Like what happened to Harold's Dad (hint, hint).  Why was Harold's sister rarely used?  Does Mr Krupp actually like their comics (a now accepted theory, but not just min? And many many others I'm probably never gonna write.  It took until how long in the books to reveal George and Harold have ADHD? Before that they were simply described as being as smart as Melvin but just in different ways. Personally I feel that autism is inverted ADHD. This is an opinion I’ve recently formed so if I’m wrong bloody attack me in the comments. Anyway, Melvin presenting autism makes him the perfect foil to George and Harolds’ more sporadic antics. The only true difference between autistic folks and ADHD folks is that those with autism tend to crave a structured environment full of rules, and set goals to achieve, while such an environment is HELL to children with ADHD (aka:George and Harold). (Even though if with adults they can trust, children with ADHD thrive in structured environments if they are surrounded by adults or authority figures they can trust.)  I know some will tell me ADHD is on the spectrum, but I just learned this like actually the other day and don’t fully understand it.  My prediction is that Melvin will eventually and naturally mellow out if just because staying so high strung all the time is a huge waste of mental energy.  I know good as hell I had to.  Also, he mellowed our in the books and went from a screeching revenge exacting lil narcissistic white boi prick to a person who simply wants to pursue his interests and even helping George and Harold (selfishly, but help nonetheless). He even went from enjoying the fame and attention of hero-ing to realizing it did not fufill him. Indeed quite the opposite.  His true passion lay in solving world problems through science, and I don't think the ending for him in the books could have been any more perfect considering his character.   In the Netflix show, similar to how I think Krupp's personalities are merging, I believe that Melvin will eventually become more like his Broski alter ego (which I calmly demand more of).  Overall, given that this show needs to go back to the status quo more often than not, I don't think his core character will ever change, and it doesn't need to.  Multiple times throughout the series he's been shown to crave friendship from George and Harold, despite audibly hating him . Textbook Tsundere, I know.  He will form a friendly rivalry with George and Harold, I have almost no doubt about that, taking the season 1 finale, season 2 finale, season 3 first episode, and halloween special into consideration. (Yeah, if someone will send me clips I will give them my eternal gratefulness) To conclude, because by god this is long, Melvin is, SHOCKER, just a little kid.  A little kid who likes muffins and dolls and has big hopes and dreams.  A little kid whose love for science and unrecognized creativity is channeled into making inventions that are even more impressive than those of Professor P (sorry P).  But he is a little kid with his own needs and stuggles which at this point remain unmet.  His parents are canonically neglectful, I cannot repeat that enough times.  The effects of neglect are a hell-hole of its own regardless of growing up with undiagnosed autism.  But that's just a theory- Alright, that was a banger, I guess next up is Melvin-borg since writing this has given me some interesting ideas for him.  Let’s see how long this hyperfocus train will go!

#captain underpants #melvinsneedly #melvin #georgeandharold #george #harold #mrkrupp #davpilky #theory #cutheory #thetheorizer #thetheory #filmtheory #booktheory #tvtheory

[luckjustkissedyouhello]

No joke, I often wonder what my life would’ve looked like if I wasn’t born in 82. If I wouldn’t be struggling to find a diagnosis at thirty-fucking-eight to explain why my brain, my life is like this.

long post is long

All through elementary school I had 1 friend, the other outcast. This happened in two separate elementary schools in the district. Two separate groups of kids decided there was something ‘wrong’ about me that they didn’t like, and that was that. In my first school, I was put in group therapy (and didn’t even fucking realize it, I was the kind of kid that just went with what they were told - always desperate to please). I don’t remember much about it other than the leader - the school psych split between 4 elm schools who would come in once a year to say ‘hey I’m here if you need me’ - and a kid talking about being hit in the face with a waffle maker (I remember being fascinated by his black eye, it was so black and puffy and it took sooo many meetings to heal properly). That’s all I remember. That’s all the school ‘did’ to help me.

One time my mom was giving me a bath, and she was like ‘why are you covered in bruises?’ (Ironic b/c she was a hitter) and I just said ‘oh the kids on the playground’ like it was normal for me to get my ass beat. She went to the principal. This was probably like 90/91. He had me write an essay about the other things I could do to stay away from the mean kids - I think he’d been told I followed the bullies around. Idk, man. I didn’t get social cues, I thought we were playing, etc. (for the record, my mom did tell me to leave the office and then told the principal she wouldn’t contradict him to me, but she thought that was an awful way to handle me getting bullied - again it was the 90s, I don’t fault my parents much for not realizing something was *seriously* different about me. That’s the point. Autistic was just for nonverbal kids. ADHD was for those so active they couldn’t sit in the classroom. Neuro-typical or Neuro-Divergent were not terms anyone know about. They didn’t discuss or know much about the spectrum of neurodiversity. They sure as fuck didn’t see it in AFAB kids like myself. I was just ‘weird’ and I have the mental scars to prove it (typing about elem school right now? Making me sweaty and nauseated- that’s how I feel when I look back at most of my childhood in school. Actually. My eyes are sweating too)

I struggled academically. When I tell people now that I was in the lowest reading groups from K-6th grade, people are surprised: I’m a librarian. But there is some kind of diagnosed learning disability in me that made it impossible for me to pass a spelling test - and I still fucking can’t - and since school tied writing with reading, they decided I needed the lowest group. They knew something was up because my compression was good but I failed the spelling tests. They tested me for dyslexia in 15 minutes one day in third grade. I sat at a machine, looked in, and pointed my finger in the direction the letters were facing. I remember it clearly. From that test, they were like ‘nope you just slow’ and put me in the remedial reading groups. Now, a large difference between comprehension and spelling would be a flag that would’ve been investigated. I know this because 2 of my sisters kids have dysgraphia. Something that wasn’t tested for in the 90s, or if it was not in a school nurse’s office.

Do you know what my grades looked like, even in college? Cs in most everything but my major classes. Grad school, I got a 3.7 - almost as if, and this is a shocker to you neurodiverse folks, I know, almost as if I could only really excel in the things my brain was interested in...wow. Shock.

I often say you couldn’t pay me to go back to high school. But then I wonder. What if I was a student now. Would they have found out about the probable ADHD/Autisim? (I’m not sure which I am but I do know I’m not neurotypical!) Would I have been given resources to help fit into the world I still clearly struggle with? Would I have so much trouble in my carrier as I have now, because people make assumptions about me being lazy or weird or not ‘right’ and dislike my mannerisms and speak and dissect everything I say? Like, no joke, I forgot how to explain the summer reading club in front of an audience once, and the librarian that went with me told the director I was awful. Shit, would that have happened if I was properly medicated? If I knew how to handle my brain forgetting shit, or how distracted the crowd of kids made me (funny thing, I can do standup just fine if the stage lights blinding me from looking out, but the second I see the crowd I get distracted and start mumbling things at people rather than the prepared jokes).

There are positives. I see *everything* happening in my story time. So i see when I’m losing the kids, I see when a sibling is beating the crap out of another. I see those kids in the audience when I talk about the summer reading club that are harassing another student, etc. I think I keep my library safer because I see every-fucking-thing going on.

But I think I’d do so much better in life if I was helped younger. I know I’d feel better about myself. I’m working through my shit self esteem but the truth is I’ve hated myself for not making it work, for not fitting in, my whole life. And the people that say ‘embrace your differences’ don’t know what it’s like for your stomach to drop out when the teacher says ‘find a partner’ because you know nobody will be yours (once, my teacher called my mom in tears because we were planning for a zoo trip and everyone else had a group, and when she asked who would take me, two groups raised their hands and she said ‘I’ve never seen her face light up like that’ - this was the exception to the norm)

Soooo.. yeah. I’m crying now. I’m not sure why I even wrote all this. This is tumblr. Nobody reads and responds much. I guess that might be why. I just...everyone neurotypical is born with a manual I just never had. And I can’t reconcile that with the idea that if I was born 20/30 years later, maybe I would’ve been at least allowed to glimpse the manual from time to time.

ETA: Talking about being undiagnosed with a learning disability and spell ‘because’ wrong every single time....i didn’t do that on purpose.

#moon life #sorry about the rambling #it’s sad hours here today i guess #neutrodivergent #i didn’t get a manual #I’m old #i need to be tested #tw bullying #tw child abuse

[hmhteen]

HMH Teen Teaser: THE LOVE LETTERS OF ABELARD AND LILY!

We’re so excited about this one, people! This is the love story of Abelard, who has autism, and Lily, who has ADHD. They’ve known one another since they were kids, but one fateful day in detention, Lily kisses Abelard. Their relationship deepens and changes in ways difficult to describe in words. Especially because Abelard’s autism makes it difficult for him to communicate verbally...so they write one another text messages, often quoting an old book they both love, and just when they think they’re finally connecting, a decision Lily makes about her own mental health changes everything. 

You can read the first four chapters of this romantic YA below! 

CHAPTER ONE

The day Abelard and I broke the wall, we had a four- hour English test. Seriously.  Every tenth grade  student  in the State of Texas had to take a four-hour English  test, which is too long to sit still even if you are a normal person. And I’m not a normal person.

After the test, I told my feet to take me to geography. If I didn’t tell myself where to go, if I let my mind drift, I’d find myself in the quiet calm of the art wing, where the fluorescent lights flickered an appealingly low cycle of semipermanent gloom. Or I’d stand in the empty girls’ room just to be alone. Sometimes I think I’m not attention deficient but attention abundant. Too much everything.

When I got to geography, Coach Neuwirth handed out a boring article about the importance of corn as a primary crop in the early Americas. Then he left the room. He did this a lot. Ever since basketball season had ended, Coach Neuwirth seemed like someone who was counting the min- utes until the school year was over. To be fair, he wasn’t the only one running out the clock. 

Thirty seconds after Coach Neuwirth left, the low murmur of voices turned into a conversational deluge. I sat in the back of the room because that’s where the two left- handed desks were — in the row reserved for stoner boys who do not like to make eye contact with teachers. Two seats in front sat Rogelio, turned sideways in his chair, talk- ing fast and casting glances in my direction.

“Cosababa, pelicular camisa,” Rogelio said, and the boys around him all laughed.

Okay, this is probably not what Rogelio said. I’m not a great listener. Also, my Spanish is terrible.

“Camisa,” he repeated.

At the word camisa, Emma K. turned to look at me, and whispered something to the blond girl next to her. I instantly wondered if I’d been talking to myself, which is a thing I do. It attracts attention.

Then it sank in. Camisa. Spanish for “shirt.”

Maybe there was something wrong with my shirt. Maybe the snap-button cowboy shirt I got at a thrift store was not charming and ironic as I’d imagined, but seri- ously ugly. Emma K. had whispered about my shirt. Even Rogelio and his friends, who often wore snap-button cow- boy shirts, had laughed at my shirt. Or maybe not, because my Spanish isn’t good, and anyway, Rogelio could have been talking about someone else. Not Emma K., though. She looked straight at me.

What if I’d popped open a button at bra level and I’d been walking around all day with my bra exposed, and was I even wearing a nice bra, a sexy black bra? Or was it just one of those tragic old bras with a ribbon or a rose that might have been cute once but, over repeated washings, had turned slightly gray and balled up like a dirty piece of dryer lint stuck to the center of my chest?

I clutched the front of my shirt, and Emma K. and the blond girl giggled. My shirt was properly buttoned, but I couldn’t sit in my chair for another minute. School was a molasses eternity, a nightmare ravel of bubble sheets and unkind whispers unfurled in slow motion. I had to leave, even though I’d promised my mother that I would under no circumstances skip school again.

I stood. My feet made a decision in favor of the door, but a squeaking metallic noise stopped me.

I turned.

Directly behind me was an accordion-folded, putty- colored vinyl wall, along with a gunmetal gray box with a handle sticking out of one end. The squeaking noise came from the metal box. The handle moved.

When our school  was built in  the sixties, someone decided that walls impede the free flow of educational ideas, because some of the third-floor rooms are all double-long, cut in half by retractable vinyl walls. Apparently, the archi- tect of this plan had never been to a high school cafeteria to experience the noise associated with the unimpeded flow of ideas. The wall doesn’t get opened much. 

 Last time anyone opened the wall was during Geography Fair. One of the custodians came with a strange circular key he inserted into a lock on the side of the box. He’d pushed the handle down and the wall had wheezed open, stuttering and complaining.

Now the handle jiggled up and down as if a bored ghost was trying to menace our class, but no one else was paying attention. I wondered if the custodian was trying to open the wall from the other side. It didn’t make sense.

I left my desk and walked to the box. I leaned over and grabbed it, surprised by the cool feel of solid metal. And suddenly, I felt much better. The world of noise and chaos faded away from me. The touch of real things can do this.

The movement stopped. I shook the bar up and down. It didn’t range very far before hitting the edge of what felt like teeth in a gear.

I pushed down hard on the handle. After a momen- tary lull, it sprang up in my hands, knocking with sur- prising force against my palms. I put both hands on the bar, planted the soles of my Converse sneakers, and pulled against it with all my might.

There was a loud pop, followed by the whipping sound of a wire cable unraveling. The bar went slack in my hands. The opposite end of the vinyl wall slid back three feet.

Everyone stopped talking. Students near the door craned their heads to see into the other classroom. Dakota Marquardt (male) said, “Shiiit!” and half the class giggled.

A rush of talking ensued, some of it in English, some in Spanish.

I dropped the handle and slid back into my chair, too late. Everyone had seen me.

Coach Neuwirth ran back into the room and tried to pull the accordion curtain closed. When he let go of the edge, it slid away, leaving a two-foot gap.

He turned and faced the room. “What the hell hap- pened here?”

It’s never good when a teacher like Coach Neuwirth swears.

I waited for someone to tell on me. Pretty much inevi- table.

Dakota Smith (female) stood and straightened her skirt. She pulled her long brown hair over her shoulder and leaned forward as though reaching across a podium for an invisible microphone.

“After you left, the handle on the wall began to move,” she began. “Lily put her hands on the handle and pushed down and the cable broke and — ”

“Thank you, Dakota.” Coach Neuwirth strode to his desk. “Lily Michaels-Ryan, please accompany me to my desk.”

I followed him to the front of the class, keenly aware that every set of eyes in the room was fixed on me. Coach Neuwirth filled out a form for me to take to the office, not the usual pink half-page referral form, but an ominous shade of yellow with pages of carbons. As I stared at the razor stubble on top of his pale head, I realized I’d messed up pretty badly. So badly, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to see my father in the summer.

“It wasn’t just me,” I said. “There was someone on the other side pushing down. I didn’t mean to break the door, it’s just . . .”

Coach Neuwirth ignored me.

“You’ll note, Miss Michaels-Ryan, that I have filled out a Skrellnetch form for you. Your mother will have to sign the kerblig and return it to the main office before you can be burn to clabs . . .”

This would be a good time to mention that I’d stopped taking my ADHD meds about a month earlier because they made me puke randomly and caused my head to ring like an empty bell at night. Side effects.

“. . . Your parents will have to sign the kerblig before you can be burn to clabs. Do you understand me?”

He waited, holding the Skrellnetch form that I needed to take to the office. Clearly, he had no plans to hand me the all-important Skrellnetch form until I answered him. I contemplated my choices. If I said yes, he would hold me responsible for remembering every clause in his statement, and I would be made to suffer later because I had no idea what he had just said. My heart pounded with a weird mix- ture of fear and exhilaration.

However, if I said no, Coach Neuwirth would consider it a sign of insubordination and general smart-assery. It didn’t look good for me.

“So . . . what copy does my mom sign again?”

Peals of laughter erupted from behind me. Someone muttered, “Ass-hat,” and the laughter increased.

“Get the hell out of my classroom,” Coach Neuwirth said. He threw the Skrellnetch paper across his desk at me.

I began my trek to the office, hoping I wouldn’t run into anyone while I held the stupid Skrellnetch form. After the noise and glare of the classroom, the quiet calm of the hall, with every other row of fluorescent lights off to save on electricity, was a relief. Six steps of cool dark, six steps of bright white burn. Down the stairs. The first floor had a band of colored tiles at shoulder height: white, mustard yel- low, white, blue. I held my right hand out and touched only the blue tiles as I passed through the hall, feeling my jittery state of anxiety mute into a dull, sad place in the center of my chest.

Down at the office, kindly Mrs. Treviño eyed my yel- low Skrellnetch form with visible regret.

“Lily, what happened?” she said, as though I’d twisted an ankle in gym, or had some other not-my-fault kind of accident.

“I broke the sliding wall between Coach Neuwirth’s and Ms. Cardeña’s rooms.”

Mrs. Treviño sighed deeply. I looked away as my lips started to quiver. A gray cloud of shame descended on me with remorseless speed. I’d like to be the good, thoughtful person Mrs. Treviño had mis- taken me for. A person who doesn’t break stuff.

“Well, you’re not the only one,” she said. “Come on back.”

She escorted me to the inner chamber. There, by the vice principal’s office, were two ugly orange chairs. On one chair sat Abelard Mitchell. I took one look at him and knew he’d been on the other side of the wall pulling up on the handle while I pushed down.

Mrs. Treviño gestured to the empty chair and left us alone in the waiting area.

I’d known Abelard since kindergarten. Since my last name was Michaels-Ryan and his was Mitchell, we stood next to each other at every elementary school function. Abelard was tall and slim but broad-shouldered, with a mop of sable brown hair and dark blue eyes. He was gorgeous, but he had some sort of processing delay, mild autism or Asperger’s syndrome or something. He didn’t interact like everyone else.

But sure. Neither did I. When I was seven, I acciden- tally smacked Abelard with my metal lunchbox because I couldn’t stop swinging my arms. I cut his cheek, but he didn’t cry, and no one noticed until later, so now he had this little scar, which was weirdly sexy. Abelard never said anything. He had to have noticed that I was standing there in front of him swinging my Hello Kitty lunchbox with happy, maniacal abandon.

I liked to believe that he could have cashed me in to the teacher and he didn’t.

I dropped into the chair next to him, feeling suddenly nervous to be sitting on a chair that was actually bolted to his chair — as though even the furniture was there to be punished.

“Hey,” I said, a little too loudly. “So you were on the other side of the wall? Who knew it would break like that? You’d think a handle roughly the same age as the Titanic would be sturdier. Although I guess that’s a bad compari- son.”

He said nothing. He was probably thinking about com- puter games, or quantum physics, or the novels of Hermann Hesse. From all available information, which I’ll admit was limited, Abelard was pretty brilliant.

“You were on the other side of the wall.” Abelard glanced at me and looked away.

“Yes.” I felt a strange thrill of complicity. “Usually, I’m here by myself. Why did you . . .”

I stopped before I asked him the stupidest of questions: Why did you break that? My least favorite question in the history of questions.

“The mechanism was squeaking. One of the gears is rusted. They need to oil it.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say, or if there was anything to say. I thought of Abelard, under the same anx- ious impulse to touch everything in the world of the here and now that we could feel with our hands. But unlike me, he was thinking about the hidden gears in the box, years of neglect and humidity, gears rusting away unused. He wanted to fix things, not destroy them. A more evolved monster, Abelard.

He leaned over and peered at me from under his shaggy fringe of hair. I caught a hint of his warm scent. Nice.

“Lily Michaels-Ryan,” he said. “You were in my English class last year. You hit me with a lunchbox in first grade.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said. “I hope it didn’t hurt too much. On the plus side, I really do like the scar. It makes you look like a pirate, a little disreputable, you know?”

Abelard brought his hand to his cheek and traced the edges of the scar as though checking to see if it was still there. Suddenly, I wanted to run my hand along his cheek- bone to feel for that slightly raised skin, proof of my earlier bad act.

The sight of his hand on his cheek made me conscious of where my hand was on the arm of the chair, touching the sleeve of his shirt. A phone rang in the office around the corner. Mrs. Treviño’s voice came from the outer office, but it felt like she was on the other side of the world. We were alone.

“Abelard, why didn’t you tell anyone that I hit you with my lunchbox?” I said. “I never got in trouble for that.”

Abelard frowned in slow motion. He seemed slightly offended, like I’d accused his seven-year-old self of being a tattletale and a snitch. I’d been right. He had protected me, one freak to another. I felt a swell of something more than gratitude, more than surprise.

Abelard’s lips parted slightly, like he had something to say that he didn’t want anyone else to hear. I wanted to know what he was thinking. Suddenly, what Abelard had to say seemed like the most important thing in the world.

I turned my head and put my arm down on the chair to lean in so he could whisper in my ear. My arm slipped on the ancient vinyl, and I accidentally moved too close to Abelard, which is a thing that I do. I’m not good with per- sonal space.

Abelard didn’t say anything. I felt his warm breath on the side of my face, a thousand little hairs on my cheek moving in the soft breeze, and I thought of his cheek and how I’d wanted to run my finger along the edge of his scar. And still it seemed like Abelard had something to say, but it wasn’t coming, and maybe he was too anxious to speak. I didn’t know what to say either. My brain was not forming thoughts in English.

I lifted my face and he looked away. But his lips were there, centimeters from mine.

I kissed him. The kiss was over before I really knew what I was doing, just a momentary soft press of my lips against his. A stray impulse that didn’t make sense, my wires crossed by the randomness of the day.

What was I thinking?

“Well, it was nice of you not to tell on me, even though you were only seven.” I went on talking as though I hadn’t just kissed him. I do this a lot. When you live at the mercy of your impulses like I do, you pretty much have to.

“Maybe you should have told someone? You probably needed stitches. Not that I don’t like the scar — it’s a great scar.”

Abelard brought his index finger to his lips and frowned. He had one of those serious, symmetrical faces that a slight frown only improves.

“Lily,” he said slowly, “I — ”

I braced myself for a quick, awkward rejection, but before Abelard could finish his sentence, Vice Principal Krenwelge rounded the corner. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

CHAPTER TWO

My mother came to get me at school. She arrived look- ing frazzled, a small coffee stain over the left breast pocket of her shirt, lipstick reapplied but the rest of  her  makeup faded, leaving her skin blotchy, nose reddened by the sun. I expected her to be mad, but this was far worse. She looked defeated. Friday, the end of a long week, and now this.

Mom had a brief conference with Vice Principal Krenwelge, and then we drove home in silence. I was tired, beyond tired, needing the comfort of a darkened room.

“Are you mad at me?” I finally said.

We were stopped on Lamar at the light in front of Waterloo Records, where Dad’s band had a CD release when I was five. I remembered Mom in a tight camisole and brightly colored skirt, holding a sleepy baby Iris on her shoulder. Her hair dyed magenta red. Happy clothes. Sexy, even. Afterward, we walked to Amy’s for ice cream. Life in the before time.

“No, Lily, I’m not mad. You’re just lucky Abelard’s mom volunteered to pay the damages.” 

This made me sit up.

“Why? Abelard and I broke the wall together. It was as much my fault as his.”

“Not according to your vice principal. Mrs. Mitchell seemed to think that it was Abelard’s idea to break the wall, and you were just following along.”

Mom rolled her eyes to let me know what she thought of this explanation. Me in close proximity to a broken thing: cause and effect. Mom knew who was at fault.

Why would Mrs. Mitchell think that Abelard was at fault? There could be only one reason. Abelard must have taken the blame for me. It didn’t feel right. Abelard wasn’t the breaky type. If I hadn’t pushed down on the stupid handle, Abelard might have found a janitor to oil the gears. “Abelard said the wall was already broken. Abelard said the gears hadn’t been oiled in an eternity.”

“Well, the next time Abelard decides to ‘fix’ something, don’t volunteer to help, okay?”

“Volunteer to help,” I mumbled.

I liked the idea that I’d jumped up because I’d intuited that the situation needed my special breaking expertise. But what if breaking and fixing were really the same activ- ity, reversed?

Did Abelard really “fix” things, or did he just break things, like me? I wanted to ask him about his experience fixing things and breaking things. I thought about the time I’d pulled up too hard on the back seat handle of the car door while pushing against the door with my hip, and the handle broke. And then for some reason, I flipped the child lock switch thinking it might fix the door, only it didn’t. It locked the door, permanently. I’d tried to fix it, I really had. “. . . and Mrs. Screngle says tuber work.” Mom glanced over at me. “Lily, are you listening?” “No,” I admitted. No point in lying. “Did you eat today?”

I had to think about it. The day seemed like an eternity, as though the time before I broke the wall and the time after served as a clear demarcation of events, like the birth of Jesus or the arrival of the dinosaur-ending meteor off the coast of the Yucatan. And now my mind was filled with thoughts of Abelard. Why had he covered for me?

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Is your lunch still in your backpack?” Mom asked.

I dug through the backpack at my feet. Sure enough, my lunch was untouched in the outer pocket.

“I would have eaten, but they told us to eat during the test, and I was still working, and I just sort of forgot about it, and then we had to go straight to sixth period, so I didn’t have time.”

“Are you hungry now?” I nodded.

We drove through P. Terry’s for veggie burgers, and we split a chocolate shake on the way home, like I was being rewarded for screwing up. I was happy enough, but I couldn’t let things go. I kept thinking about my dad in Portland.

At the start of the school year, Mom had promised that I could visit Dad if I kept my grades up and didn’t skip class. I’d been trying, but things hadn’t been going too well. My grades are all over the place, and I try not to skip, but sometimes I can’t help it.

“So, Mom, about the summer . . . I mean, could I still see Dad?”

Secretly, I planned to go visit Dad and just stay on. Dad taught English at a homeschool cooperative connected to the farm where he worked, kids getting life credit for milk- ing goats and picking organic beets. Heaven. I’d miss Mom and Iris, but clearly I belonged in a “less-structured learn- ing environment.”

“I know you want to see your dad.” Mom paused. It wasn’t quite a pregnant pause, just an awkward millisecond or two. “But it’s not that simple. We’d have to talk to him, and he may not be in a position to have houseguests . . . and of course, your grades . . . and no more skipping . . .”

I stopped listening. A qualified yes is almost a full yes. I’d have to improve my grades and attend all my classes, blah, blah, blah. I could do that.

“You know, Lily, seeing your dad again isn’t going to solve all your problems.”

I nodded to let her know I’d heard her and stared out the window. She was wrong. My father had solved my big- gest problem. There was no reason to think he couldn’t solve my smaller ones.

***

My father taught me how to read.

When I was in second grade, the school reading spe- cialist decided I was dyslexic. She told my mom to read to me every single night, but Mom worked nights. So Dad read to me.

In the beginning, he read me books about cat warriors while he drank craft beer. When Dad got tired of reading books about cats, he picked up Nancy Drew and the Three Investigators from a used book store. These books amused him with their gee-whiz ’thirties and ’forties references: chaste country club dances, German housekeepers devot- edly making strudel, and clubhouses with secret tunnels made out of packing crates and junk. Nancy Drew ushered in cheaper beer: Tecate in cans. I laughed at Dad’s earnest voice for Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s straight-arrow boyfriend, and I fell asleep worrying how Nancy was going to get out of that cave by the ocean before high tide.

“Choral reading,” my mother said, echoing the reading specialist’s advice. “Dad reads a passage, Lily reads a passage.”

My father sat by my bed with the book held between us as I painfully sounded out each little word. I learned to read the same way Hercules learned to hold a full-grown bull in his arms, by having to brute-force sound my way through every syllable until the words got longer and heavier. At first, I read individual words, then sentences, and eventually paragraphs.

Together we read all of Harry Potter; The Lightning Thief ; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Inkheart; and Diane Duane. When the words began to swim on the page, Dad read to me from his own personal library of medieval classics. By this time, I was sharing a bedroom with my sister, Iris, and she listened with rapt attention.

Dad read Le Morte d ’Arthur and Physica by Hildegard von Bingen, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.

At about the time we started on Tolkien, with a nightly supplement of The Prose Edda and the Nibelungenlied, my father had discovered vodka. Cheap, easy to hide, and packed more of a punch than beer.

I never questioned the hours I spent sequestered away in my bedroom with Dad, reading while he drank. It was fun, and it was too good to last.

The end came when I was in fifth grade. My mom caught me alone in my room with her copy of Jane Eyre.

“Are you reading?” she asked, hands on her hips. Her dark green eyes glittered with some internal fire I recog- nized as hopefulness. She had a sort of feral alertness that alarmed me.

“What? . . . No,” I replied, thrown off my guard. I quickly regained my composure. “This book is weird. I can’t understand this language. What’s it about?”

“It’s a love story about a girl with a strong moral compass. It’s an older book, so the language can seem a little stilted, but it’s really good.” She smoothed the hair away from my forehead and attempted a wan smile. She looked sad. “You should have your father read it to you.”

“I will.”

I felt bad about lying to her, but mostly I felt relieved. Crisis averted! My father read me Jane Eyre, or he reread me Jane Eyre, because I’d already finished it by then. I didn’t care. Mom was happy; Dad was pleasantly drunk. Life was golden.

At the end of fifth grade, the school tested me again. I’d never seen my mother so thrilled. She came home wav- ing her copy of my test results over her head.

“Your phonemic scores are still relatively low,” she said. “But your comprehension is off the charts. You’ve made amazing progress, Lily.”

I didn’t immediately get the magnitude of what I’d done, but I think my father did. He greeted the news that I was in the 98th+ percentile in reading comprehension with a queasy smile. I’ll never forget the look he gave me. It was as though his usefulness on the planet had suddenly ended. Maybe he knew divorce was not far off.

“I’ve heard about this book Wuthering Heights,” I said, hoping I wasn’t overplaying the wide-eyed thing. “I don’t think I can read it by myself, though. It’s for older people, right? But we could read it together.”

“Sure thing, Lil,” Dad said, his eyes distant.

We all smiled at one another. The happiest part of my life ended there in the fifth grade.

 CHAPTER THREE 

Monday morning my mother woke me while it was still dark. She stood by my bed with a cup of tea and a piece of toast.

“Eat the toast,” Mom said. She hovered over me, already dressed for work in a white linen shirt and a fifties beaded cardigan that may have once been an ironic statement for her but that she now considers an heirloom.

“It’s the middle of the night.” I rolled over to face Iris’s twin bed next to mine. “Look. Iris is still asleep.”

My sister was an inanimate lump of covers. Iris usually springs out of bed like Snow White, ready to polish silver and sing with birds, but it was so early she wasn’t even stir- ring.

“I have to go to work early today,” Mom said. “You need to take your medication.”

“I can’t take it on empty stomach.”

“Hence the toast.” Mom thrust the plate at me. Reluctantly, I bit into the toast. At this hour of the morning, food  seemed like a human rights  violation. I chewed twice and swallowed with difficulty before slump- ing back on the bed.

“Now your medication.”

I took the pill and swallowed without hesitation. She handed me the lukewarm and very weak tea with milk to wash it down.

“You don’t trust me anymore,” I said.

“It just doesn’t seem like you’ve been taking your medi- cation lately, Lily. Maybe you’ve forgotten. I thought I would help you remember.”

Every morning for the past month, Mom had left a cup of tea, a piece of toast, and a pill on a plate for me by my bedside. And every morning I’d taken that pill and stashed it in an old pickle jar under my bed. I didn’t like the drug. It sucked the creamy goodness out of life.

Antidepressants tend to do that. I should know. This wasn’t the first one I’d been on.

Bells and whistles went off in my head. On Saturday, the day after Abelard and I broke the wall, Mom offered to take me and Iris to a movie. She didn’t go with us, and at the time, it seemed kind of weird. She must have gone home and searched the room for missing pills.

I probably should have flushed the medicine in the toilet so downstream fish and migratory waterfowl could expe- rience an unexpected rush of jittery calm and the sudden ability to meet deadlines and organize paperwork. Yes, I could have shared my drug bounty with the ecosystem, but a strange frugality had stopped me. The stuff was expensive.

Once Mom left, I looked under the bed. Sure enough, the pickle jar was gone.

I’m sure Mom was relieved to find my hidden stash, because I’d saved her a couple hundred bucks. One thing was for certain: She would never mention the pickle jar, and neither would I.

*** 

School. I met Rosalind at our usual spot under the live oaks in the courtyard for lunch.

Rosalind is my oldest friend all the way back to kinder- garten. She’s tiny and plays small children in local theatri- cal productions. With her long dark hair in braids and her giant brown eyes, she can pass for twelve. Maybe ten on a really big stage.

Rosalind was eating out of a bento box filled with brown rice, raw carrots, and seaweed salad. Rosalind’s parents are restricted-calorie-intake people who have formulated a plan to live for all of eternity. Like the children of vegan, mac- robiotic, gluten-shunning parents everywhere, Rosalind’s favorite food is pizza — though she likes classy pizza: feta cheese, black olives. Her dream is to move to New York and eat nothing but pizza. Also — acting.

“Lily, how was your trip to the vice principal’s office?” Rosalind  asked.

“Gripping and poignant. I laughed, I cried — ”

 “Was your mom mad?”

“Weirdly, no. I have a week in detention, but that’s it. She even said I can still see my dad this summer.”

“Really?” Rosalind raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Your mom said you could go to Portland?”

“If I keep my grades up and don’t skip class.”

Truth be told, Rosalind didn’t entirely approve of my plan to visit my dad and then refuse to return. She didn’t think I was cut out to be an organic beet farmer. Also, she would miss me.

I glanced across the courtyard. Abelard sat at his usual spot on the low wall under the crepe myrtle. Alone. The sight of him through the milling crowd sent a jolt of electricity up my spine. I realized I’d been scanning the halls all day, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

I settled on the bench next to Rosalind, carefully avoid- ing a patch of grackle poo, and opened the lunch that Iris had packed for me. A tomato sandwich, apple, Oreos. I nibbled on an Oreo and set the rest aside.

“You’re not eating?” Rosalind said. “Why, if I had a sandwich on actual bread — bread made from real demon wheat, mind you —”

“Here, have it. It’s yours. Taste the evil.”

I handed Rosalind my sandwich, but she just shrugged. I suspect she actually likes brown rice.

“So you aren’t eating. What’s up?”

“I’m back on my drug-based diet. My stomach will

refuse all food until five thirty, at which point I will eat my entire day’s calories in two hours, mostly in potato chips. Straight out of the bag. If we even have potato chips. Might be stale crackers.”

“Healthy,” Rosalind said. “I thought you weren’t going to take the drugs anymore.”

“After my little  trip to the  vice principal’s  office, my mother decided she would watch me take my meds,  like some hospital matron in one of those old movies your parents love.”

“The Snake Pit, Olivia de Havilland,” Rosalind said. “Whatever.”

Rosalind frowned.

“The drugs aren’t good for you, Lily. They change you.” “It’s not like I have a choice.”

“Um, you know how my mother is always talking about . . . balance between . . . gluten and sugar can . . . talk to your mother . . . only if you . . . off the medication . . . take you to a dark place.”

I shrugged, uninterested in the topic of my medication and diet. Abelard was eating cookies or crackers, reading something on his phone, dark hair falling over his eyes. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was an attractive nui- sance, a shiny object.

“What do you think of Abelard?” I asked.

Rosalind followed my gaze. “I don’t know. He’s kind of in his own little bubble. Why do you ask?”

“He was on the other side of the wall when I — when we broke it.” Breaking the wall was beginning to feel like a shared secret, a source of pride. Abelard and I destroyed something — together.

“Okay,” Rosalind said slowly. Dubious. I know that look.

“He took the blame. For both of us. He didn’t have to do that.”

“And you think that was about you?” “Maybe it was about me,” I said.

I continued to stare. It was easy to stare at Abelard. He never lifted his head, never glanced in my direction. Plus — kind of beautiful. Rosalind had a point, though. Abelard was self-contained. Maybe he hadn’t thought about me once since I’d kissed him in the office. And here I was thinking obsessively about him, imagining we had some sort of secret kinship just because ten years ago I hit him in the face with my lunchbox.

“I’m just saying, don’t construct an elaborate fantasy about him before you find out what’s really going on in his head,” Rosalind said. “Abelard is not like everyone else.”

“Neither am I.” Rosalind sighed.

“You know what I mean, Lily. Unlike Abelard, you can carry on a conversation —”

“Almost like a normal person,” I interrupted. “You are a normal person,” she said.

I kind of loved that Rosalind thought there was nothing wrong with me that couldn’t be cured by regular helpings of wheatgrass shots and a little extra understanding. This was why she was my best friend — but it bothered me to hear her say Abelard was not like everyone else. Broken.

Whether she admitted it or not, I was also not like everyone else. Why be polite — why not just say “broken”?

I am a proud Broken American. There. I’ve said it. 

CHAPTER FOUR

Normally I leave school each afternoon like I’m running the bulls at Pamplona. Not that afternoon. I went to the bathroom and fought for space at the mirror with the girls who did their makeup.  I  brushed  my hair  in the corner, but then one of the mirror regulars, a raccoon-eyed blonde named Montana Jordan or Jordan Montana, took pity  on me.

“Here.” She waved me to a free spot in the mirror. I touched up my base and put on some lip gloss.

“You should really sclur your blash,” Montana Jordan/ Jordan Montana said. Her voice echoed noisily against the bathroom tile. “Screeb pretty.”

“Sure,” I replied. Screeb pretty. That was me.

“Sclur your blashes,” she said, holding out an eyelash curler.

“Oh.” Curl my eyelashes. My brain took the visual cue and made sense of the words. “No thanks. I’m on my way to detention. Coach Neuwirth.”

I stared at my reflection in the mirror — a slight bump on the bridge of my nose, skeptical green eyes. My wavy brown hair already starting to look like my time with the brush had been an exercise in futility. I couldn’t see how curly eyelashes would be much of an improvement.

“Really?” she said. “Me too.”

And then she went back to curling her eyelashes.

*** 

Abelard was already in detention when I arrived. The only other people in the room were Richard Hernandez from my algebra class and Rogelio. An emo boy I didn’t know wandered in after me.

I dropped my backpack on the floor and sat at the desk in front of Abelard, my heart pounding. Coach Neuwirth could show up at any moment. I turned around and faced Abelard before my heart rate settled.

“Okay,” I said. Extraneous hand movement. I do this when I’m nervous. “Why did you take the blame for break- ing the wall when it wasn’t just your fault? Because my mom said that your mom told the vice principal that you said you were to blame.”

I stopped because I’d run out of breath. Also — tortured sentence.

Abelard looked up. His eyes were a clearer, deeper shade of blue than I had remembered. He looked away.

“And when I hit you with the lunchbox in first grade, you never told anyone, but you probably should have. It wasn’t like we were really friends or anything —”

“You came to my house,” Abelard said in a surprisingly loud voice.

Tectonic shift of the earth’s crust, a realignment of everything. Abelard and I had a prior history, a reason I’d felt a natural connection between us. I wished I remembered.

“You came to my house,” Abelard repeated. “I was five. We watched Pokémon together. You insisted Charizard was a dragon, not a lizard.”

I’ve had an obsession with dragons ever since Dad read me The Poetic Edda. There’s a dragon in Norse mythology who chews on the roots of the tree of life. A bad thing, right? But my father contended that without the dragon, the tree of life would become overgrown and eventually choke itself out of existence. My personal spirit animal — the destructive dragon.

“Because — fire-breathing,” I said. “I mean, hello, dragon?”

Abelard blinked.

“Char — lizard, Charizard,” he said slowly. “Etymology.” Beside us Richard and Rogelio switched their conversa- tion seamlessly from English to Spanish. Should have been a hint, but I was too excited to pay attention. A rustling

noise at the front of the room and throat clearing. “Turn around.”

“Oh, you did not just play the Pokémon etymology card,” I said, experiencing a rush of word-borne feels. More fun words than I’d had in a long time. “Dragons are everything! It’s a dragon who nibbles on the roots of the tree of life, because otherwise —”

“Miss Michaels-Ryan! Turn around!” a voice boomed. “Stop pestering Mr. Mitchell.”

Pestering. I was pestering. A word invented by teach- ers to mean “bothering” but sounding infinitely worse, like something you’d get arrested for doing in a movie theater.

I swiveled, and Coach Neuwirth locked eyes on me. I felt my stomach flop, but at that moment Rogelio muttered something hilarious in Spanish. Rogelio is a natural-born confrontation clown, one of those guys who always have to get the last word in. It didn’t help Coach Neuwirth’s mood that the last word was in Spanish.

“We’re going to break up your little party,” Coach Neuwirth said. “Mr. Mondragon, please move next to Mr. Kreuz, Miss Michaels-Ryan, next to Mr. Hernandez.”

I moved back a row next to Richard Hernandez. Abelard turned sideways in his chair and stared out the window. The room went quiet, unearthly quiet. Montana Jordan/Jordan Montana slid soundlessly into the  room and took a seat across from the emo boy. Coach Neuwirth glared at her from his desk.

“Nidhogg,” Abelard said in a voice that cut through the thick stillness. “Yggdrasil.”

Nidhogg — the dragon.  Yggdrasil — the tree of  life. I didn’t remember the names from Norse mythology, but Abelard did. Abelard, my secret cartoon-watching friend from a childhood I didn’t quite remember. Abelard, who knew Norse mythology and the finer points of gear mainte- nance. Was there anything he didn’t know?

***

Detention was pretty boring. Half an hour later, I’d fin- ished my homework. I hadn’t eaten my lunch, and I was hungry and tired, too burnt to read. There was nothing to do.

Richard Hernandez sat at the desk next to me, draw- ing. I leaned over, expecting to see badly drawn girls with gravity-defying breasts, motorcycles, guns — the standard Grand Theft Auto love letter to chaos and faceless sex. The stuff boys draw.

Instead, Richard was drawing Abelard. Abelard with a three-quarter profile, his right cheekbone illuminated by sunlight streaming in from the window. Richard had drawn the barest line of a mouth and was filling in the details of Abelard’s chin, muscles in his jaw shaded diagonally from top left to bottom right.

The only part of the picture Richard had finished was Abelard’s eyes. He’d perfectly captured the way Abelard’s dark blue eyes held the light, the open, almost mystical quality of his gaze.

I glanced at Abelard and felt a strange thrill in the pit of my stomach. There was something otherworldly about him. It wasn’t my imagination — Richard saw it too.

Richard finished Abelard’s chin and moved to his hair. “Wow,” I murmured.

Richard wrapped his right arm around his picture to shield it from my view and looked up. He had close-set, intelligent eyes and dark hair in a Caesar cut.

“That’s really good,” I whispered. Good was an insuf- ficient word for his drawing, like telling a rock star his music was nice. I felt a little stupid about that, but what could I do? Drugs kill thought — even the happy, helpful drugs.

“Shhh . . .” Coach Neuwirth hissed. “Thanks,” Richard mouthed silently.

Richard returned to drawing, and I continued to watch. Minutes passed while he sketched in rapid, assured move- ments. It was calming, watching Richard, as soothing as a lullaby. I almost forgot that I was hungry and that the skin over my skull was beginning to crawl and itch.

One of the basketball players came by to talk to Coach Neuwirth. They stepped out into the hall, and I leaned over toward Richard.

“You’re left-handed — like me. Also Leonardo da Vinci,” I whispered. “You shade in the same direction — top left to bottom right. Do you know they think da Vinci was dyslexic?”

I held my hands out to visualize this, making the clas- sic L for loser with my left hand. Kindergarten tricks. They never get old. 

“You’re making that up,” Richard said. “How could anybody know?”

“I’m not making it up. I saw it on Nova. Da Vinci wrote letters backwards and misspelled words. Classic dyslexic tendencies. I should know. I’m dyslexic, too.”

“No you’re not.” Richard looked up, his close-set eyes in a savage frown. “You can read.”

Richard said the word read with the naked bitterness I usually reserve for the terms late slip or instruction sheet. Dyslexia. You can pass for normal for a while, but even- tually the anger gives you away. The monster will out. I decided I liked Richard.

“Yes, I’m totally normal,” I replied. “That’s why I’ve been in the same algebra class with you for two years running.”

“But I see you reading all the time. You always have a book —”

“I hear talking,” Coach Neuwirth boomed.

Richard startled at the sound of Coach Neuwirth’s voice. His pencil slipped, and the picture of Abelard floated off the desk, slid across the floor, and landed face-up in front of Rogelio Mondragon.

Richard froze, a stricken look on his face.

Coach Neuwirth was in the hall talking, his back half turned but still in the line of sight. I eased out of my seat in a crouch and moved slowly toward the picture, hoping to snatch it before Rogelio noticed.

I was too slow. Rogelio spotted the picture and grabbed it. He glanced at Abelard and back to the picture as his expression changed from perplexed to positively gleeful. It was as though he’d found a secret love letter, ready-made for a million stupid jokes. Someone was going to be made to suffer in both English and Spanish. Rogelio scanned the room, searching for his victim.

At the exact moment Rogelio’s eyes settled on me, Coach Neuwirth strode down the aisle and ripped the pic- ture out of Rogelio’s hands.

“Whose picture is this?” Coach Neuwirth demanded. Richard looked a little sick.

“It’s mine.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying. Lies are like that sometimes.

Coach Neuwirth held the picture and examined it care- fully.

“So, this is your boyfriend?” Coach Neuwirth chuckled. “Pretty good likeness of our friend Abelard here.”

Hard to determine who he was trying to humiliate at this juncture, Abelard for being unlikely boyfriend mate- rial, or me for being, well, me. Sometimes I think Coach Neuwirth lets the cruelty fly randomly just to see who might get hit.

Abelard turned to look at me briefly. I couldn’t tell whether he was horrified, embarrassed, or intrigued that Coach Neuwirth just told the whole world he was my boy- friend. I looked away.

Coach Neuwirth handed the picture to me.

“Put it away, Ms. Michaels-Ryan,” Coach Neuwirth said.

I folded the drawing of Abelard and slipped it into my book.

 ***

In the afternoon when I returned home, the picture fell out of my book. Abelard, beautiful and distant. Richard Hernandez’s own version of the Mona Lisa, a mystery for the ages. Abelard, no doubt named for Peter Abelard from the twelfth-century text The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Strange.

I drew a thought bubble over his head and wrote the words I am Abelard, medieval French philosopher and time traveler. I have come to the future on a quest for love and beauty, but find only the barren wasteland that is high school. My tra- vails are for not!

I stuck the picture on the bulletin board and collapsed on my bed, empty. I opened my book, a novel about a girl on the run with her brilliant, eccentric father. After three pages, I quit reading, because I didn’t care what happened with the father’s new girlfriend or the daughter’s desire to go to a normal school for more than three months at a time. My head had begun that drug-fueled end-of-the- day descent, circling the empty runway of a town called Apathy.

I put my book away.

My sister came into our bedroom.

Iris is in seventh grade. Tall like me, brown eyes to my green. Same wavy brown hair, same bump on the bridge of her nose. Iris doesn’t seem to have inherited my moth- er’s large breasts like I have. She wishes that she had my breasts, but she is wrong about this.

Iris attends the Liberal Arts, Math, and Engineering Academy — LAMEA, or LAME as everyone calls it. She is the perfect student, equally adept at the long-form essay and robotics, and building musical instruments out of found objects. Found objects are a big part of the curricu- lum at LAME.

For someone with such a full curricular life, Iris has an overdeveloped interest in my activities. Like being me has a 1950s-motorcycle-and-leather-bomber-jacket sort of glam- our for her, because she has never tasted the fruits of failure. I could tell her that living outside the lines is not all that, but she probably wouldn’t listen anyway.

“What are you doing?” Iris said. “Nothing.”

“Who is that?” She leaned over the picture of Abelard, studying it with the dreamy intensity she usually reserves for K-pop stars with ice-blond dyed hair and too much mascara.

“No one,” I replied. “A kid at my school. His name is Abelard.”

“He’s adorable,” she said.

“No.” I stared at the picture. “Well, yes, he is.”

I thought about my impulsive kiss, and my heart flopped in protest. Continued exposure to the sight of Abelard’s faraway eyes was unfair.

“It’s dinnertime,” Iris said. “Mom told me to tell you.” “Not hungry,” I replied.

“Mom made a really good salad. We’ve got Supernatural cued up.”

Supernatural. Salad. These are the things we do together, eat salads and watch Supernatural because all three of us, Mom, me, and Iris, think those guys are hot. Iris likes the taller baby-faced one, but Mom and I prefer the deep- voiced snarky brother. It’s like a miracle, Mom says, to find such transgenerational hotness on TV.

This was our familial idea of a good time. It meant nothing to me at that moment — good TV, hot guys in a seventies ride, salad.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll just lie here and listen to the inside of my skull buzz.”

Iris wandered off. I played Candy Crush on my phone until I saw little orange and blue striped candies exploding on the insides of my eyelids when I closed them, and still it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough pleasure, not enough light or color to fill the emptiness of my brain. It didn’t feel good or fun, but it was motion of a kind. If I stopped playing, I would realize that there were no thoughts left in my head and I was truly alone. This was what happened when my ADHD medicine wore off. This was why I hated drugs.

*** 

I left the picture of Abelard in my room, thinking I would show it to Rosalind over lunch. But when I packed my stuff up for school in the morning, the picture was gone. This didn’t surprise me in the least. Most pieces of paper I come into contact with disappear suddenly and without reason. It’s just the way it is.

******

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[denu-rising]

1!! 2, 8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 20, 22, 30, 31, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49 (im so sorry whenever i send these i always send a billion numbers)

Oh my gosh,so many questions! Don’t apologise, this is awesome! Thank you so much!! =D

1:Who is your clan leader(s)? What are they like?

Myclan leader is Nana. ^^ She’s an absolute sweetheart, soft spoken andshy, who just wants to see the whole world smile. She doesn’t run theClan by herself, but with her trusted council and closest friends,Hobo and Cookie. Hobo’s more of an honorary clan leader, sincepersonality and behaviour-wise he very much resembles an excitedpupper. He has a pure heart and would follow Nana through anything.Cookie’s a lot more help thanks to her empathic ability, which allowsher to pick up on any troubles that may arise in the Clan.

2:Who’s in charge of food? Do you have dragons in charge of thedifferent factions (hunting/fishing/insect catching/harvesting)?

Idefinitely plan to have dragons assigned to these roles, yes! So far,Scarlet is the only one who does any of these, and she always comeshome with her bags full of food and her clothes full of mud (much tothe annoyance of her stylist boyfriend). Guava and Lychee sometimesbring back food from their many adventures. Sunflower is my gardener,and the main dragon in charge of the gardens and crops. She’sassisted by her husband, Watermelon, who functions as a walkingencyclopedia for all things Plant, as well as a pack mule. =P

8:Does your clan have any occultists?

Wehave magic users galore, but when it comes to finding new forms andmethods of magic, right now there’s only Fantasia (plus whoever endsup being her permamate). She’s my dream sorceress, practicing the‘dream magic’ that she discovered and continues to experiment with.You can read a bit about it in her bio, but I should really write somemore about it! To put it vaguely, dream magic is about bringing outsubconscious or hidden knowledge and making it visible.

9:Storytellers or librarians?

Doscribes counts? Because I do have those! Planned, at least. At themoment, Galaxia is my only scribe. She records Dom efforts andcollects badges. I haven’t really kept this up to date, though, andhave been considering dropping this, but she’ll still be a badgecollector with awesome stories to tell about her badges. Just not allbadges. The two other scribes I want will record (previous) clanmembers and notable events that happened, like clan renovations orMarva visiting each year.  And I need a fiction writer too. Thescribes also function as librarians and storytellers. ^^

13:What about musicians?

Alsoonly one so far! I have this nameless lady who’s quite the excellenttrumpet player. Can’t believe I forgot to add musicians to my list ofneeded clan roles, so thank you for the reminder, hehe. =P

14:Dragons involved in other arts? (Theatre, fine art, ect.)

Fiesta!This bright baby is my dancer. He looooves dancing! He teaches aweekly dance class at the familiar spa, and loves performing for themany celebrations my clan throws. When there’s no party planned ordance routine to learn, Fiesta’s often out visiting other Clans tomeet other dancers and dance with them. And Cassius will get upset ifI don’t mention him here, but he’s my pretty stylist and he’s supervain.

16:Who’s in charge of maintaining law and order? Any dragons that takeup the mantle of policing?

Toa degree, everyone is. If they witness something illegal or immoral,they’ll be sure to inform Nana, Hobo and Cookie. Any actual issuesare handled by those three, though they’ll call a clan meeting if thesituation calls for it. Overall, though, this Utopian little bunchdoesn’t have much need for actual police dragons. (They do have asort of prison hidden away in the garden, just in case, though.)There are at all times a couple dragons ‘policing’ the borders of thefloating islands, but that’s just to make sure no one and nothingfalls off and visitors are properly welcomed.

20:Which dragon has the oddest job in your lair?

Ina sense, I’d say Hobo, but that’s because he’s such an oddballhimself that being on the council is a very odd position for him. Imean, he very rarely speaks in full (short) sentences, struggles toget out words at all, and the others can have a hard timeunderstanding him. Fantasia has the oddest job in the sense that herdream magic involves a lot of tinctures and potions made from specialmushrooms and hallucinations. She’s high as a kite most of the time,because that’s her job. She loves her job.

22:Who, in your lore, is the oldest dragon in your lair? What about theyoungest?

It’sa toss-up between Cookie and Luna. Cookie is the actual oldestdragon, both date-of-birth and lore-wise. I tend to mostly followactual dragon birthdays to determine who’s oldest. Luna, however, isa ghost, and who knows how long she’s been dead before Fantasia foundher. She might be older than Cookie, she might even be ancient. Lunadied at a young age, though, so I don’t know. Is she old? Is sheyoung? Youngest would have to be the last hatchie to pop out of anegg, but since I don’t keep those, I suppose this lady’s the youngestaddition to the Clan right now, and I still have no clue as to whather personality or clan role will be. ^^;

30:Do you have siblings that live together in your lair?

YES!I love siblings so much. I had more at one point, but right now, Istill have Guava and Lychee (the first sibling pair I got). They doEVERYTHING together. They even share their boyfriends, taking turnsnesting with them. It’s a bit weird, but whatever floats their boat.^^ Then there’s Skittle and Jellybean. I don’t have any lore for themyet, but I love them. Lamia and her unnamed brother. Might actuallynot keep the brother, but Lamia’s my Shadow ambassador. Sprinkle andSmiley, from my very first dream dragon breeding project. (I got twogirls, because more genes came out and now I’m stuck deciding, so whynot both? Still waiting for the second male, who’ll be the brother ofthe first, to complete the two pairs.)

31:Any physically disabled or mentally ill dragons?

… Doesbeing dead count? 'Cause Luna’s dead, and it’s definitely a physicalstruggle when you can only materialise with a special, hard to makeelixer from Fantasia. But then, there’s also plenty of advantages tobeing dead, like never stubbing your toe or having to sleep, so Iguess it evens out. Guava and Lychee most definitely have ADHD, andwho even knows what the heck is wrong with Hobo… Overall, mentalillness, if present, isn’t something that’ll be clearly stated, like'this dragon has autism’. I struggle enough with my own mentalillnesses that I don’t want to explicitly mention it, though I candraw characteristics and personality traits from them. Also, I’d beway too anxious about accidentally upsetting or offending people. ^^;I have no objections to people giving any labels to my dragons,though! =P

36:Flight reps?

Yes,please! I have Lamia, my Shadow ambassador, and Spring is my Windpriest. I have Rose put down as a potential Ice ambassador andSunflare for Earth, but that’s it, really. I want Flight reps foreach Flight, but it’s super hard to think of what they should looklike if they have to match my lair theme. What would a Flightrepresentative look like if they needed to be XYZ with all colours in adifferent range?

39:Do you still have the first dragon you’ve ever bought?

Idon’t have the first dragon I ever bought anymore, but I do stillhave the first dragon I ever got. I got Cookie as a gift from mybrother. The week leading up to the reg window, he’d been showing meall sorts of dragons and I really loved Cookie, so I got her as agift. In a way, I’ve had her longer than my progens, even. =P

41:Who has the most tragic backstory?

Luna!I mean, she literally died and spent who knows how long all alonewandering Sornieth, unable to find any sort of peace or happiness.That said, backstories are the only real place I can add tragedy, sothere might be more tragic backstories popping up in the future. Likethe story of how Hobo became Hobo, which I’m still eternally mullingover.

42:Who is your edgiest dragon?

Idon’t have one, I think, but I want one! It’ll either be Lamia or myfuture Plague ambassador, because enforcing stereotypes, yeah! =P Ilove Shadow and Plague, but I don’t have much room in my lore foractual Shadow/Plague themes, so whatever edgy little runt thoseFlights can produce, they can just punt on over this way. That’llprobably be the backstory, anyway. =P

43:Do you have any dragons that broke the clan’s rules? What was thepunishment for that?

Well,hatchies can be quite a handful and they don’t always listen yet,but… No, not really, nothing major. Well, Cassius, greedy and vainas he can be, will sometimes steal pretty fabrics or shiny jewels,but that’s just because he’s too impatient to wait to sign anythingfor taking them. He’s had a slap on the wrist a couple times, but nowthey just let him, because he needs that stuff anyway for hisoutfits. Cassius gets a visit once a week to take stock of the stuffhe’s taken.

47:Professor/teacher dragons?

Alsostill unassigned. Yeah, I know, I need to work on my lore more. =PFiesta teaches a weekly dance class, and anyone can learn from anyoneduring the many arts-and-crafts sessions. I still need an officialhatchling caretaker/teacher. Bunnyfly supervises hatchling trips tothe familiar spa and teaches the young ones about familiars and howto maintain positive relations with familiars and beastclans.

49:Orphan dragons?

Nana,my progen. She just sort of came into being, no family or anything.Also my precious little Bunnyfly. He was found as an egg and taken inby a clan of buttersnakes, before his buttersnake mentor/fatherfigure/best friend decided to take him to Denutena’s Candyclan,because the other buttersnakes were getting increasingly anxiousabout living with a dragon, even one that looks like a bigger versionof them, and the buttersnake (he still needs a name) thought it wouldbe better for Bunnyfly to be around his own kind. They now run thefamiliar spa together. ^^

[animeindoblog-blog]

3-gatsu no Lion 2nd Season – 06, 07

New Post has been published on http://animeindo.org/blog/2017/11/28/3-gatsu-no-lion-2nd-season-06-07/

3-gatsu no Lion 2nd Season – 06, 07

「小さな世界 / 手紙」 (Chiisana Sekai / Tegami) “Chapter 56 Small World / Chapter 57 Letter”

End Card

「梅雨の始まり / 蜂谷」 (Tsuyu no Hajimari / Hachiya) “Chapter 58 Start of the Rainy Season / Chapter 59 Hachiya”

Hina’s Predicament

Throughout these two episodes, Hina’s suffering continues on with no end in sight. Her teacher keeps brushing her off, and no one will stand up to the bullies. However, she does find solace within her household, although there’s a dire lack of permanent solution.

I think that we’ve been seeing an exploration of potential approaches, only to find out that these types of situations are truly delicate, and tricky to a fault. Too little effort, and you may as well have done nothing. Too heavy-handed, and some undesired consequences may arise. We see that even Takahashi’s intervention can only provide a brief respite, by momentarily raising Hina’s spirits. In fact, I would argue that his involvement only exacerbated the issue, since it gave the bullies a perfect narrative to push. They wasted no time in framing Hina as being a slut, who was fooling around with Takahashi.

Upon his immediate reaction to the unwelcome news, it was terrifying yet awesome to see Rei flare up in such a way. If we exclude his vulnerable outbursts from the first season, I’ve never seen such powerful displays of emotions coming from him, and it is here that we can see how the Kawamoto sisters have formed a cornerstone in his character development. No longer is he the pushover of old. Rather, he constantly strives to be a dependable person, who can look after the people he cares for. That said, he is still the same old, awkward Kiriyama, unintentionally startling some animals when he suddenly raises his voice in solidarity. Then again, who wasn’t on the same page? I personally feel an indescribable rage towards the bullies first, then towards the teacher above all else.

For someone who usually maintains a solid composure, it’s been really interesting to be reminded that despite being a mother by proxy, Akari is still a young woman with her own insecurities. Although Someji and Misaki are capable relatives, she worries about an extenuating situation, where she will have to go to school and confront the parents of Hina’s bullies. To be honest, I can see why such a concern would be legitimate. Imagine a middle-aged mother, who effectively enables her daughter’s terrible behaviour. Such an individual would be quick to protest her daughter’s innocence, and assert herself over Akari by ruthlessly putting her down. Even with all her love and best intentions for Hina, I could see Akari crumbling under such an unprecedented crisis. Let’s hope that the worst-case scenario doesn’t come about, right? I would hate to see such a beautiful smile getting fractured.

Rei vs Hachiya

In my opinion, this was the best shogi game depicted thus far in 3-gatsu. Due to the opponent, it was highly kinetic and fairly intense. Plus a new kind of difficulty arose. Rei’s perspective fantastically conveyed the unpleasant experience of playing against someone like Hachiya, who would fidget and make loud noises at sporadic intervals during a match. Often times, I found myself experiencing second-hand discomfort and irritation. By the way, these kind of physical reactions are a testimony to Shaft’s incredible directing. Anyhow, I wouldn’t blame people for thinking it’s a cheap tactic to unsettle shogi opponents. However, Hachiya strikes me as someone who suffers from ADHD. For those reasons, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and you could never really deny his sincere passion for the game. Combine all these quirky traits, and you might even find him endearing. I’d say he won me over, after knuckling down on Kiriyama in the post-mortem, while demolishing parfait after parfait.

Concluding Thoughts

Rei forges ahead into the semifinals, and with Nikaidou hot on his heels, I look forwards to seeing what the next few matchup brings. Just how far can his newfound determination take him, or even better, what will he do if he falls short?

So far, the pacing has been nothing short of amazing. Where most other shows would struggle to follow up from a climax, 3-gatsu just seems to naturally transition between moments, continually moving from strength to strength in its depiction of Hina’s problem with bullies. Shaft deserve credit for faithfully following on, but most of my praise has to go to Umino Chica, who set down the entire groundwork that made everything possible. Both her character and story-telling feel organic in their construction,

Anyway, I’d like to play the Devil’s Advocate for Hina’s teacher because reading the manga grants me the benefit of hindsight, thus altering my initial preconceptions. Otherwise, I suspect that I would also be up in arms over how she chose to handle Hina’s situation. While it’s true that the teacher’s passivity is utterly despicable, humans all have their reasons for acting in certain ways. Righteousness is typically the natural course upon which our feelings run, but over time, disillusionment over the system can slowly erode away our capacity to do what’s right. That is to say, we become paralysed by an indescribable fear of failure, to the extent that we’re prevented from taking proper action. Not that it justifies losing courage, when the weak and vulnerable are crying for help. However, it’s completely understandable that not everyone has the same kind of conviction we see within Hina.

Zaiden’s Anecdote

Early on in my school days, I remember that I was quick to stand up for my friends, getting in tussles with larger kids who picked on anyone I cared about. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for those who I thought were my friends. What I’m about to tell you precludes my most bitter memories from secondary school.

This guy who could never beat me at Pokémon battles thought it would be hilarious to dump an entire plate of spaghetti over my head out of spite. Not saying I was perfect, considering I was as arrogant as they come and a sore winner. But what shocked me was that none of my friends tried to help me, stand up for me, and all left the scene as soon as they could.

What’s more, this kid went straight to our Head of Learning, and straight up lied to them about how I was the one who threw food at him, landing me into two weeks worth of detention. The kicker? Not one person who I thought of as my friend stood up for me.

Their shallow reasoning was as follows. Judging by my character, they thought that I would be quick to forgive and forget. That is to say, by not choosing a side, they thought could keep both friendships, even though one side had clearly wronged. And the worst thing? I never got an apology from this scumbag.

The ridiculous thing? My ‘friends’ told me to forgive and forget, and ‘make up’ with the perpetrator. Water under the bridge, making life easy for them. The dumb thing? I did exactly that, just to make my ‘friends’ happy. But he always continued acting like he was somehow the victim, and it felt horrible having to stick around someone who had wronged me in such a vile way without remorse. And what my ‘friends’ did was enable his lousy behaviour. One ‘friend’ told me they let him get away with it, because he never directly hurt them, making it okay for them. Needless to say, I don’t speak to that person anymore.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried at the time, cleaning up the floor covered in spaghetti, while the rest of the school kids in the dining room looked on in glee. Much like Hina, I also cried on some random nights, because I felt really abandoned, and the incident messed me up for a long time. However, I managed to come out stronger, and eventually found the genuine friends I had always wanted. There’s one in particular that comes to mind, that I want to talk about.

End Card

A Heartfelt Message to My Best Friend

Dear Alvin,

I know you sometimes read these Random Curiosity posts. Whether you’ll read this one is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, I just wanted to say, I love you lots and thank you for being my best friend over these past few years!

A lot of people in our secondary school misjudged you, readily dismissing you for being ‘lame’. Not only were they completely wrong, but they utterly failed to see your true worth and value. From the bottom of my heart, I am thankful and blessed to have you as my best friend.

While you may be awkward at times, that does not refute the fact that you’re a truly good person at heart, who holds a deep sense of compassion for your peers. You would stand up for me without any hesitation, and properly listen to me when I needed someone to confide in. As I would do for you as well.

Had I known you prior to the spaghetti incident, I know I wouldn’t have experienced such loneliness. As such, it is my regret we couldn’t have been best friends earlier on during our time at secondary school, since I wish I was there to help with your hardships too. I will always have your back, and if I needed someone to have mine, I’d trust you for time immemorial. I hope we can continue to be best friends, till death do us part.

Yours sincerely,

Zaiden