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#survivors need community where they can choose to talk about or not talk about what happened to them
acepumpkinpatrick · 3 months
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A very important interview I want to talk about is Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta's with Sifr mag.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta is a Palestinian surgeon that came back to Gaza on 9/10/2023 to help and was a first hand witness of the bombing of Al-Ahli Baptist hospitale on the 17th of October.
In the interview Dr. Ghassan says "In choosing the Baptist hospitale, the Israelis chose the hospital with the most international connections. The Baptist hospitale is run by The World council of Churches and it is connected to the Evangelical church in Britain. They chose that hospitale to see how much international dissension & outrage their campaign to destroy the health system in Gaza Strip, will face. In the span of half an hour after the massacre and with the blind acceptance of western media to the Israeli story that is was a misfired Hamas missile, even though the international organizations and media that ran that story did not talk to any survivors, doctors, injured people or their families, that was the international community's message to Israel to go forth with their plan."
"We need to negotiate with the system and not just one tool of the system. If we negotiate the Israelis for just a ceasefire, they will retrieve the tanks and keep the siege. They will retrieve the tanks but the World Bank will withhold the money. The banks will block the donation money that is collected in Bierut or Oman or in other Arab countries from reaching its destination. A regional war will force the system. The system that is America and its tools, WHO, World Bank, IMF or The Red Cross and its agents, be it Israelis or Arab. All these tools you can not negotiate with them unless America felt there's gonna be a regional war. Unfortunately this massacre will not stop unless this war turned into a regional war."
As much as we want fast peace and ceasefire now, these words ring true of the real of a situation that has been going on for 75 years. Right now alot of countries and organizations want to put a bandaid on it in the shape of a ceasefire and move on back to before the 7th of October where Palestinians were being killed in silence. But ironically Israel & the US are actually the ones that are keeping the world from that bandaid. The US government has historically only understood the language of war. If the US doesn't want war it will do everything in its power to not go to war. The thing is, non of the regional countries want to go to war. The region has suffered enough because of the US, Iran & Russia. And the 3 major players (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, & UAE) are in Israel's pocket. That's why what Yemen is doing is so so important. It's affecting their precious economy without going to outright war.
The whole interview is on YT but unfortunately it's untranslated, here's a link:
youtube
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msfcatlover · 9 months
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Reverse!Robins/Titans Timeline
Still trying to pin this down. Not bothering with time intervals, just order of events.
(Gee, can you tell which parts of this team I’m still ironing out, and which ones I’ve put the most thought into?)
Batman: Zero Year
Joker debuts. (Duke’s parents caught in one of the attacks)
Duke starts patrolling/searching for his parents.
After running into Duke several times, Bruce makes Duke his crime-fighting partner to both train & keep an eye on him. Duke chooses the name “Moonbeam.”
Yara Flor becomes Wonder Girl. Bruce & Diana encourage their proteges to become friends, so that they have someone their own age who understands their vigilante problems to talk to.
Connor Hawke reunites with his father, and becomes Marksman (Green Arrow’s first sidekick.) Connor is also encouraged to join this friend group.
(Clark occasionally asks the teens to babysit his son Jon, when the adults are busy.)
Damian shows up in Gotham, making a huge splash & overturning the Batfam status quo. After killing a few criminals, Damian is forbidden from patrolling until he proves himself trustworthy.
(Damian does not join the group, but the others know about him because Duke complains. Damian does become friends with Jon after a little while.)
A ship crashes while the JL is busy. The teens go to investigate it, finding a single survivor who turns out to have speedster powers & complete amnesia. They use the Batcomputer to trace the ship, trying to help their new friend.
Damian sneaks onboard the shuttle the teens “borrow” to follow their trace, still trying to prove himself.
This team finds an illegal alien market and breaks it up, rescuing Pam in the process.
Upon return to Earth, the JL commends the kids for their work. A new team is formed with Yara as their leader, and named the “Teen Titans.” The lineup is:
Wonder Girl (Yara Flor)
Moonbeam (Duke Thomas)
Marksman (Connor Hawke)
Kid Flash (Bartholomew “Tolly” Taurus)
Menagerie (Pamela “Pam” Merlo)
Damian does not get to be part of the team, deemed too young, but he has proven himself enough to officially join Batman & Moonbeam on the streets. He goes by “Shadow.”
Arthur Curry asks if his protege, Kaldur'ahm, can join the Titans. Aqualad is added to the lineup.
Pam’s sister, Sonja, tries to get in contact. Whole arc occurs of Pam struggling with her own transformation and the two of them reuniting.
Chimera (Ra'ut L'lwer) joins the Titans.
Yara’s arc where she’s manipulated by Eros & Hera happens here.
Jon becomes Superboy, and joins the Titans.
Damian joins the Titans.
Tolly’s past comes to light, throwing his relationships with everyone in the community into chaos. The team barely manages to pull themselves together in time to mount a defense and keep him from being punished for the crimes of a life that was not his. 
Tolly still feels the need to pull away from the Titans a little out of guilt over what he’s done (especially to Pam.)
Barry Allen dies, and Tolly becomes the Flash.
Yara is at this point over 20, and feeling out of place at the head of the team. She starts to pull back a bit, trying to figure out where her life is going next.
Cassandra Cain is adopted by Bruce Wayne. Duke is the only one who can train against her, as his precognition lets him just about keep up with her body-reading abilities. They bond, and he introduces her to the team.
Spoiler debuts in Gotham. Batman tells her to go home.
Damian decides to make Spoiler his apprentice.
Anima (Courtney Mason) joins the Titans.
Yara announces she’s officially stepping down as leader of the Titans. Duke steps up, announcing his own change of name to “The Signal,” and officially passing his mantle to his little sister, Cassandra.
Anima & Chimera manage to figure out how to free Pamela from her swarm. Duke’s first official mission as team leader is facilitating this.
Pam leaves the Titans for a normal life with her sister. Many tears are shed.
[I’m just double-checking my current lineup.]
The Signal (Duke Thomas)
Marksman (Connor Hawke)
Aqualad (Jackson Hyde/Kaldur’ahm)
Chimera (Ra'ut L'lwer) 
Superboy (Jonathan Kent/Jon-El)
Shadow (Damian Wayne)
Moonbeam (Cassandra Wayne)
Anima (Courtney Mason)
Steph’s mom goes to rehab. Bruce fosters Steph in the meantime, and this is how she discovers their identities.
Damage (Grant Emerson) joins the Titans as community service, after his powers manifest by going completely haywire.
(Yara decides going by “Wonder Girl” is undermining her attempts to be an independent adult hero. She changes her name to “Diadem.”)
Damian introduces Steph to the team. Spoiler becomes a Titan.
Chimera announces she’s going independent and leaves the team.
Just like in canon, Grant’s trauma catches up with him and he has to step down from hero work. Connor takes Grant under his wing formally and they both leave the team.
Emiko Queen takes Connor’s place on the team, going by the name “Red Arrow.”
Duke is too overwhelmed by being Gotham’s only daytime hero and running the team, as well as feeling guilty for not giving Grant more support. He goes independent, leaving the team.
Jon & Damian step up as co-leaders of the Titans.
Roundhouse (William Wu) & Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) join the Titans.
Anima is stranded in another dimension on a mission with the team, in a dramatic act of self-sacrifice to ensure everyone else can make it home. Everyone is very upset, but they comfort themselves knowing she’s still out there being a hero, just... somewhere else.
After a lot of introspection, Aqualad decides to dedicate himself full-time to his studies & duties in Atlantis, and steps down from the team.
[Double-checking the lineup]
Superboy (Jonathan Kent)
Shadow (Damian Wayne)
Moonbeam (Cassandra Wayne)
Spoiler (Stephanie Brown)
Red Arrow (Emiko Queen)
Roundhouse (William Wu)
Blue Beetle (Jamie Reyes)
Damian & Jon decide to go independant together, becoming Bluhaven’s new superheroes as Nightwing & Flamebird. Damian formally passes his mantle to Steph in private before they announce the change to the team.
Steph & Cass take over as co-leaders.
Steph meets Tim at school, and they become fast friends. After a couple months of being study buddies, they start dating.
Jon introduces his adoptive younger siblings, the Super-Twins, to the team.
Vaporlock (Natasha Irons) joins the team.
Atom (Ray Palmer) is de-aged. He temporarily joins the team until he can recover his memories.
Argent (Antonia Monetti), Static (Virgil Hawkins), & Power Girl (Tanya Spears) join the team.
Atom goes back to normal and leaves.
Cass takes on Tim as her apprentice after catching him following the Bats around Gotham. Steph is a bit thrown by this discovery, but training together only stengthens her & Tim’s relationship.
Until Cass decides Tim’s ready to follow them on patrol (if not fight anyone yet,) and gives Tim the Spoiler mantle without asking, assuming it’s just a placeholder name and not realizing it has any special meaning to Steph.
(This is the beginning of the end, though they don’t realize it yet.)
Steph feels betrayed by the theft of her old identity and it compounds with her initial uneasiness over Tim befriending/dating her without telling her he knew their identities. She tries to put it aside for the good of the city, but can’t.
The sudden rockiness between Steph & Cass bleeds over into the Titans. When the team meets Tim, it becomes clear something about his apprenticeship with Cass is what has lead to the rift, though none of the Bats will clarify.
Emiko introduces her own apprentice, Mia Dearden, the second Marksman.
Steph & Tim have a really nasty breakup.
Steph has the same death she suffered in War Games.
The entire Batfamily are left reeling.
Tim gets fired.
Cass struggles to go on as both Moonbeam & the leader of the Titans, when she’s supposed to be part of a matched set. She ends up quitting both, and the team completely falls apart.
Cass puts together a new costume, made originally from old Batman suits, and gains the street name “Black Bat.” (She didn’t choose it, it was given to her; Batman has the yellow belt & circle, where Cass’s suit has neither. So which Bat is attacking? “The black bat.”)
Tim gives the family until after Steph’s funeral before dropping by (to argue his case, but if that doesn’t work, to pick up his stuff.) He sees Steph’s memorial, and is furious that Bruce would reduce Steph’s legacy to that.
After weeks of arguing, Tim throws on his own version of the Shadow costume (back to Damian’s original black, but the cloak is lined with Steph’s signature purple) and eventually forces his way into the role, refusing to let Steph’s dream die with her.
Damian is incensed by the whole mess that’s happening with Tim. That’s his mantle Tim is taking, and Damian’s still wracked with guilt that Steph died, blaming himself for not training her thoroughly enough. Damian demands that before Tim ever goes out as Shadow, Tim has to go to Bludhaven every weekend to train with Damian. 
The training is absolutely brutal, but Tim refuses to give up. Eventually, Duke finds out about it and goes to ream Damian out for taking things so far (and Jon, for not having already given Damian this same lecture.) Duke essentially tells Damian that Damian’s no better than the people who originally hurt Damian and storms out.
Duke tells Tim he doesn’t have to go back the next weekend. Tim shows up anyway. Damian stares blankly for a few seconds, then takes a very confused Tim out for ice cream.
(Damian spends years trying to be better, to make up for what he’s done, but he never manages to get over that double-dose of guilt. He veers hard in the other direction, being incredibly supportive whenever they’re around eachother, but also avoids Tim whenever Damian can justify it to himself, because it just... eats at Damian.)
Tim also pulls the Titans back together. Or, more accurately, he pulls Vaporlock, Marksman, and Blue Beetle back together, before he ends up recruiting... well, basically the Young Justice lineup to be his new team.
Tim’s parents die. Tim tries the whole fake uncle thing, but Damian rats him out.
(Somewhere in there, Tim ends up on Ra’s al Ghul’s radar.)
Jason tries to steal the Batmobile’s tires.
Jason manages to convince the family to let him help. They offer him Moonbeam, but Jason doesn’t want to be Moonbeam. First of all, Jason can’t do any of that weird precog stuff Duke & Cass have going on; second, Jason’s personal hero was always the Shadow with the Crime Alley accent.
Tim gives Jason Spoiler instead (Tim himself thinking Spoiler is a training-wheel mantle, but more importantly, it was Steph’s.)
During a public event, Tim is shot by an assassin who took a contract from Ra’s. Laying in the hospital, Tim all but begs Bruce to go out on patrol and Jason to put on the Shadow costume, not wanting Tim’s injury to be the reason their identities got outed.
Tim’s spine was clipped by the bullet. While he’s not completely paralyzed, he’ll never be able to walk unassisted again, and even with mobility aids, Tim suffers from chronic pain thanks to the nerve damage.
(Tim finds a get well card from Ra’s, inviting Tim for a dip in the Lazarus pit whenever Tim’s ready to admit he “needs” it. Tim borrows Jason’s lighter and burns the note. Only Tim & Jason ever know about it.)
Tim becomes Oracle.
When Jason joins the Titans, it’s assumed he’ll be their new leader, as Shadow and/or Moonbeam have always been one of the leaders of the Titans. He also suffers a lot from the comparison to his predecessors, and with how people perceive the speed at which he took up Tim’s mantle.
Jason does win that place and prove himself as a leader, but it is a rough ride to get there.
[Jason’s Titans lineup]
Inherited from Tim:
Wonder Girl (Cassandra Sandsmark)
Impulse (Bart Allen)
Miss Martian (M’gann M’orzz)
Joined while Jason was Spoiler:
Red Devil (Edward Bloomberg)
Ravager (Rose Wilson)
DC (Daniel Chase)
(Yes, Danny thinks hero names are stupid and only ever used one to fake his own death. But, frankly, Danny used his real name as his spy code name, which makes him mocking everyone else for having hero names just… so goddam insufferable. I’m cutting the middle ground here; it’s not a full-on alias, but it’s not just shouting his real name in a high-stakes/arguably undercover situation.)
Joined under Jason’s leadership:
Beast Boy (Garfield Logan)
Raven (Rachel Roth)
Cyborg (Victor Stone)
Halo (Gabrielle Doe)
Risk (Cody Driscoll)
Redwing (Carrie Levine)
Prester (Jonathan Levine)
(I found a pair of twins I both know & like better than Jade & Obsidian. Seriously, John & Carrie are the best part of the entire Team Titans fiasco, and given we do see some overlap between the timelines, I’ve no idea why they got wiped from reality but fucking Mirage didn’t.)
Steph comes back to life. 
Cue the Lost Days/Red Hood arcs.
Steph does try to scare Jason out of being a hero with the fight at the Tower. She shows up in her Death Mask costume and frames it as a fair duel--“More fair than any other rogue will give you.”--to prove that non-powered (non-ninja) kids like them can only meet a nasty end. The fight doesn’t stay “fair” long, as Steph fights dirty to make her point, and throws both her own history & Jason’s insecurities into his face. Jason adapts, but doesn’t win, eventually left reeling by the reveal of Steph’s identity.
The fight is interrupted by Eddie, who gets back early from an off-planet mission and therefore was not factored into Steph’s contingencies for the other Titans. Steph escapes by first holding Jason in front of her with a knife to his throat, then driving the knife into his thigh, forcing Eddie to choose between going after her and keeping Jason from bleeding out.
Red Devil stays behind to cauterize the wound, and Death Mask gets away.
.
After that, the chronology gets a lot more muddled.
Steph reunites with the family after saving Jason from the Joker.
Bruce takes in Dick after Dick’s parents die, but it’s a very rough transition. Then Bruce dies, leading to the family falling apart all over again, Jason getting the Red Robin (”Bluejay”) arc, Cass becoming Batman, and Dick becoming her Moonbeam.
When Bruce comes back, Bluejay joins the Signal as a daytime hero.
When Bruce can eventually no longer be Batman and Cass steps up again, she’ll offer Jason Black Bat if he wants it. He accepts, and everyone assumes Dick will be Bluejay when Dick graduates from being Moonbeam.
When Dick grows up, his final hero identity will be Robin.
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dukethomas · 4 months
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duke? i know next to nothing about him and i'm curious <3
oh boy oh boy oh boy !!!!!!!! thank you for asking i love talking about duke
one aspect i love about them: i could list a million things rn but how about. this sense of personal responsibility that is both a strength and a vice for him but in a way unique to the "great power comes great responsibility" model of heroics. duke feels like he has this responsibility to better the world, he feels responsible for his loved ones and ppl he deems under his care, but not because he's uniquely special. instead he feels like it's something everyone owes the community. he monologues abt how you can make that choice, to choose to do good or inflict evil. he holds bruce to this personally--confronting him about using his amnesia to ignore his responsibilities as batman. he has the weight of the world on his shoulders and don't get me wrong he isolates himself like crazy and tries to tackle it all alone but it's because he believes this is just what everyone should be doing. he doesn't view himself as particularly special or powerful, this is just his job. his calling !!!
the rest of the answers under the cut bc i talked a lot
one aspect i wish more people understood about them: there's a lot of really obvious answers that i'm going to skip over bc they've been said to death. instead i think i'm going to say i wish ppl understood he's not like. the mentally healthy bat. when he's not doing so hot and crumbling under the weight he has put on his own shoulders he self isolates he gets snappy and bitchy and closed off he gets into fights he gets self destructive. he's allergic to asking for help. and also he is very frequently in a bad place because he's a teenager that's what they do + in comic time he goes through like. a traumatic event every month. his status quo is constantly changing because of the nature of comics but in universe that means the longest, most stable period he's had in a while is, like, the year he spent training with bruce wayne, inflictor of mental illnesses. come on now
one (or more) headcanons i have about this character: i will elaborate on this in a post sometime but i believe his powers are about potential. snyder lore posits that metahumans somehow are created by nth metal. proximity to nth metal sparks duke's powers in a snyder comic, and duke himself is a snyder creation, so i figure this implies duke has a unique connection to nth metal. which is where i believe his meta amplification comes from in batman and the signal, another snyder comic. maybe if i read more of the snyder lore than just the duke parts i'd understand it more.
regardless, this connection to the source of metahumans could mean a million things but in line with the themes in we are robin about choice, i think it indicates great potential in duke. also, in alternate futures for duke--tales from the dark multiverse & urban legends #8-9 outsiders story--his powers have increased substantially in different directions. in the dark multiverse, his first canonical powers are amplified so much he has to actively suppress them or else he. can't see. but also those powers fuel him with one key thing that leads him to be the last survivor of the multiverse, which is his hope. and then in urban legends, future duke is just a badass who is a powerful mage???? which is something duke becomes, once again, to survive the way the world becomes. taking from a canon example, ra's and ishmael are able to invert duke's powers entirely, giving him his umbrakinesis. literally what other meta can this happen to!! anyways, my headcanon is that because of his inherent connection to the source of metahumans, his great power lies in the potential to become whatever he needs to be to keep fighting the good fight. whatever he needs to be to keep trying to make the world better. i think in the canon timeline, where the future will never become desolate, where duke will never become so desperate, he won't need to unlock his full potential, and he wouldn't choose to, because he's not that kind of guy. but the potential simmers under his skin, waiting for when he does need it. when he chooses it.
one character i love seeing them interact with: how do i choose one. i'm going to speed run a bunch of them. cass & duke are genuinely such supportive sibs like they back each other up it's so nice to read!! my besties!!! bruce & duke is interesting in the way duke comes from the era where they start pushing the fanon batfamily more, and so you get a bruce that does seem more supportive, and it really is bruce's healthiest relationship w a mentee bc he 1) positively reinforces duke 2) has never beat him up nor tried to. low low bar. but you can still see. bruce harps on how duke's the future of heroism. how he is going to lead the way, how he's "something different." and he pushes duke, and trains duke personally and assigns him day shift and puts him on the outsiders. and duke feeds into that by insisting the mission IS bruce's responsibility. they make each other worse is what i'm saying. jeff & duke are fun for opposite reasons, because jeff believes in duke just as much but also can intervene and stop duke when needed. just a nice positive relationship with an authority figure for duke it's nice :D
one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more: pipe dream. renee. i have a very self indulgent au draft where duke becomes renee's mentee instead through sheer stubborn force of will and she is so annoyed with him all the time and also after the 5th or 6th time this teenager tracks you down as you work various cases you get a little fond. she'd never say that to him though are you kidding he'd get worse and more annoying. mainline renee and duke could have a fun detective story as well i think as two ppl with very different ways of operating who use their individual strengths to solve the mystery and also throws in juxtaposition of the ways their depressions manifest in there or smth. my other answer that doesn't throw my 2 dc faves together is duke meets anissa and jen pierce i think that could be fun!! jeff introduces them and then regrets it. also i wish damian and duke talked more after robin war the post-robin war dynamic that lives in my brain is great
one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character: going to keep this one short bc i've said so much already. i headcanon the narrows as a large neighborhood in gotham and park row/crime alley as a smaller, really well-known part of that neighborhood, to avoid having 2 worst neighborhoods in gotham. anyways this means jason and duke grew up in the same neighborhood and oh boy do they rip each other a new one for that. half the time their convos are incomprehensible to non-narrows residents bc it's just insults from coming from opposite sides of the neighborhood and those insults are very narrows-specific. jason texts duke during the climax battle in batman and the signal and goes "how tf did you let narrows go to shit your first day. i wouldn't have let this happen. crime alley kids are just built different ig"
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mountain-lion-gremlin · 7 months
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So yes, im coming up on the end of my detox. During this time, ive actually learned a LOT because simply, im not glued to my phone 24/7.
Society pushes this idea that we NEED phones. That without your portable dopamine box you arent cool, or normal, or whatever the hell they choose to say.
Ive found clarity in my life. Ive focused more on my witchcraft and learning the craft itself. Ive danced in the rain and felt the rhythm of the earth, its heart beating beneath my feet. Ive started to learn Finnish even better than before, and my studies on homework have become so much easier because im not as distracted.
If it was up to me, i would never go back to being glued to my dopamine box. But...
If anyone who is following me and knows of my Amino, Ive been gone from it for awhile now. I worry that certain rules arent being enforced, or its becoming a hateful place. I left it in the hands of my staff, of course, but i still worry...
But regardless, Ill see if I can get an app that allows me to run mobile apps on my computer. I dont want to go back to using my phone unless i have to.
(Keep reading if you wanna see what I have to say about shapeshifting and stuff. I dont want this post to be eons of scrolling to those who dont want to read about it.)
Now, onto the important stuff that people might be asking me.
"Rio, did you fully m-shift and achieve your goals of shifting???" Well... no. Sadly.
Life has been really hectic, so Ive been focusing on the important, human stuff in my life, and have been struggling with balancing the important, animal stuff in my life. Im not going to lie, its easier to do now than it was before, but I still have to put effort into it.
With p-shifting, well... recently Ive been reading a lot of hate on p-shifting in general, how its wrong, how much actual stigma surrounds it, and im in a ditch when it comes to believing it will actually happen. Ive watered down my beliefs so many times for others online recently, that im questioning that they are true.
I know that they arent true. But, I know for a fact that even if I never p-shift, I will still be happy being who I am. Its a constant itch, and constant scratch to be who I really am, but I honestly believe that even if I never do p-shift, I will never stop being here, being a shifter and being happy.
In the end thats all its really about, seriously. Arent we just trying to be happy with ourselves, our identity, our lives? It hurts to even go a step outside of the shifting community, and see hours and hours of people talking about how horrible it is, how manipulative, how impossible it is. It makes me want to hide again in my little bubble and forget I ever saw it.
But it brings a sort of... clarity I guess? Many people who have never been apart of the community or have even ventured in will say "its impossible to do".
People who have been hurt, or have seen the hurt caused by misinformation and misguidance of shapeshifting will almost always say "p-shifting is manipulative, horrible, the people within it are blah blah blah blah blah...."
People who are apart of it but havent p-shifted will say "Ive seen so many success stories, Ive even seen my own progress with it and im really happy" And people who have shifted... well they either disappear quite quickly, or their stories are lost to deaf ears.
And after years and years of feeling like I have to fight against these people, show how I am, show the truth and understand it all... I feel domesticated by the reality that is always, constantly shoved in my face.
Nobody cares. Im trapped within society and I cant escape. I will never be free. I will never, ever be my animal. I am delusional for even believing it.
vitut.
I know that currently in my life, I am where I am. I cannot change it, because I am not old enough to. I know that I have and must make do with what I have, instead of wishing for things I do not have. Cougars are adaptable, we are survivors and change with our enviornment.
There will ALWAYS be time to be who I am. There will always be chance after chance after chance for me, I just have to grab it.
And ive noticed that I no longer have to force every single m-shift. It feels like just thinking about it, about mountain lions causes a shift. Ive gotten so comfortable in my living situation ive been vocalizing as my animal, jumping around on all fours and feeling like my animal.
Sometimes I worry that Ive become so obsessed with trying to m-shift that Ive forgotten that theres still more beyond it. While writing this post, I feel... excited for my future. I feel like p-shifting can happen to me. I feel like I am almost close to permanently m-shifting.
And let me tell you a little secret about m-shifting.
(There is no trigger for when you permanently m-shift. There is no way to actually know by just reading what others say it feels like. There is no actual way to do it.)
Permanently m-shifting to me, simply feels like a comfortableness with my animal. It feels safe, and okay to be who I am. And personally for me, after years of m-shifting, trust is what has brought me to where I am. (This might not be the case for everyone lol, figure out whats going on with yourself instead of using what I say to be the end all for you and your problems!) I was honestly afraid of my other side. That it was dangerous, wild, would hurt someone. I was also afraid that I would never actually get here and do this, because my mental shifts arent as strong or frequent as others. I was also afraid that it wouldnt work. So, so afraid that I would mess up and fail.
But I've learnt that... I am in control of myself. And being an animal IS myself. I have the control to be safe, and not harm others. We all do. Its an idea that has been presented to us through media, stigma, ableism and society itself. We always talk of people "losing control" or "flying off the handle". Werewolves are seen as beings who will rip your face off if they get mad.
We arent like that, you know that, right? I had to trust that I would be in control of my m-shifts. And even if my control has slipped, (such as when I had an m-flare in the middle of gym class) I was able to quickly recover because it wasnt appropriate at school to start running on all fours and hiding beneath the bleachers.
Ive also learnt that no, you cannot fail while m-shifting. There is no right or wrong way to m-shift. There is no way to fail an m-shift. M-shifting is just allowing yourself to be more animal-like, allowing your animal to be safe and comfortable with itself. Its complicated to explain the connection between our animal selves, and our human selves, but the most basic (not too accurate) way to explain it is that we are each other. You are your animal, and your animal is you. As you m-shift more this makes more sense, and you find your own meaning to what your connection, and your animal's connection is.
Regardless, even if I took breaks. Even if I wasnt dedicated, or spent all of my time m-shifting. I still am getting closer. What matters is the fact that you still care about it, and will do it when you can. Its unrealistic to believe someone could constantly be m-shifting actively, most circumstances make it very hard to do so. (Especially mine. I have divorced houses, 2 AP classes im taking, problematic siblings, responsibilities...)
It feels like learning a new language in a sense. Like, to m-shift is to constantly m-shift. To learn a new language is to constantly immerse yourself in it. Well... we cant really do that, so instead we go with short bursts of doing this, with interspersed passive learning, or attempting to m-shift when we can.
And nobody is barred from m-shifting. Let me let you know. NOBODY IS BARRED FROM M-SHIFTING!! Some people I know feel stuck, like they cannot m-shift. That its only involuntary. Listen. Listen listen listen.
There are many different ways to m-shift. So many!! Lots of people say "I cant meditate, and so ill never m-shift." Thats NOT true. Thats not true. I literally cant meditate lol.
And its not really attempting to voluntarily force a shift using triggers and stuff. I just think about it and try to feel more immersed in my senses, allow my perspective of life to shift more animal-like. AND, m-shifts do NOT have to be large, explosive things that change your whole reality and how you think and you want to crawl on all fours and you feel yourself p-shifting and fur-
Nah nah nah. Most shifts people will experience, at least how i know it, will be small, tiny shifts that you most likely wont notice unless you pay attention to it. Even if you arent trying to m-shift in the moment, even thinking about it may cause you to fall into a light shift. You do not need to have very impactful m-shifts to m-shift.
And I wont lie, my friend @dakotathewolf has helped me a lot, even with the endless ramblings on both ends (lol) I feel like we have both grown as people and understand more because of what we have taught each other.
I hope this helps you, dakota, along with anyone else who needs it.
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Buck probably thinks of himself as Christopher’s “spare dad” (like spare parts) while it’s been clear since The Will Reveal that Eddie views Buck as Christopher’s “second dad”.  Buck’s role in Christopher’s life is defined differently by the two of them because Eddie never verbally specified to Buck in terms that he could understand the way he sees Buck as his equal in their relationship during their conversation at the hospital.  Even though he did tell Buck that he’s Christopher’s legal guardian if anything were to happen to him, it’s likely that Buck heard ‘if something happens to Eddie then and only then can I be Christopher’s dad’. That wasn’t Eddie’s intention but based on Buck’s actions, it’s more than likely what Buck heard. Buck and Eddie communicate in several ways including silently but that day they had a failure to communicate with each other and it was based on both what Eddie said and the way Buck interpreted it.
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Make no mistake, Buck knows that Eddie is the love of his life just like Eddie knows Buck is the love of his life but whenever they need to DTR (define their relationship) they don’t know how to communicate with each other.  Eddie was literally giving Buck his heart and telling Buck that he was in love with him when he told Buck about his will but Buck MISUNDERSTOOD it just like he misunderstood the lessons Thomas, Red and Lev tried to give him before they died.
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Sometimes Buck doesn’t fully understand the things people say to him unless they say what they mean and mean what they say.  So when people talk to him, they must be very specific and use regular words like ‘I’m in love with you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I want us to raise Christopher together as a family’ instead of just saying “If I die you become Christopher’s legal guardian”. While Eddie’s will does make Buck the legal guardian for Christopher if Eddie dies, Buck didn’t understand the underlying meaning of what Eddie was trying to tell him.  Buck put his emphasis on the “if I die” part of Eddie’s statement and that’s why he’s back on that physically reckless BS again.
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In 6x4 “Animal Instincts” Buck reverted to being the physically reckless version of himself because he still believes that everyone else’s lives are more valuable than his since they have families and children waiting for them to return home. In 4x14 “Survivors” he told Bobby that he couldn’t handle it if anyone else got hurt after he risked his life and climbed up a crane with no protection.  Even though Bobby told him that Eddie being shot by a sniper was not his fault, Buck still felt like it should have been him instead of Eddie and he told Eddie that after Eddie woke up from his coma.  Eddie told Buck while he was being discharged from the hospital that he was wrong for thinking he was expendable and that helped to calm Buck for a few months but now it seems like he doesn’t care if he gets hurt.  The only way he got attention from his parents while he was young was whenever he acted reckless and that’s exactly what he’s doing again.  He’s willingly sacrificing himself so that other parents, i.e., Eddie, Chimney, Bobby and Hen can live.
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Buck hopped on a victim’s bicycle in 6x4 to chase the car that had Chimney trapped inside of it with a drunk driver.  Buck was probably thinking that Chimney is the father of his niece Jee-Yun; therefore he needs to live because it didn’t matter what happened to him even though Eddie yelled, “Buck, where the he!! you going?” Eddie doesn’t want Buck to get hurt because he’s been planning for them to be together forever since he changed his will in 3x15 “Eddie Begins”. Buck wants to build a life with Eddie too but he’s scared Eddie will reject him so he’s just choosing to keep things exactly the way that they are instead of running the risk of losing it all.  
With the way things are now, Buck probably doesn’t believe he will ever have a family because everyone he knows already had or currently has one, except for him. The sperm donor situation with Connor is SOMETHING and it’s causing Buck to act impulsively and irrationally because he may see it as his only chance to leave a piece of himself behind even if he wouldn’t be allowed to be in the child’s life.  While he was talking to Connor and Cameron, it was extremely clear that’s not what he wants, to be “a donor, not a dad” but it’s probably all he thinks he can have. Seeing Connor with a wife and learning that he wants to start a family only highlighted for Buck that he doesn’t have a family of his own (he does with Eddie and Christopher).  Buck has an idea of the way his family is “supposed to” look to someone who’s on the outside looking in just like Eddie had the same idea in season 5 before he finally decided to breakup with Ana. Eddie even said it during the breakup conversation, “I thought it would work, I…I did…the idea of us…”.   Well Buck’s having a similar experience now but the show isn’t allowing Buck and Eddie to talk to each other so…it would be helpful for Buck if he and Eddie could communicate with each other in CANON.  
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Buck should already know that he can build a life with Eddie because Thomas already told him how it worked for him and Mitchell. Thomas was the first person to tell Buck that he could love any person he wants to and build a life with them. Buck and Eddie were both on the scene of that call in 2x8 “Buck Actually” but Buck was the one who talked to Thomas; therefore he received the assignment of “You don’t find it son, you make it”.  Then Buck met Red in 3x16 “The One That Got Away” and he told Buck that it’s ok to be the firefighting hero and save lives but he warned him when he said, “don’t neglect having your own”.  He was trying to tell Buck to build a life for himself while he was working so that he wouldn’t end up like he did, dying alone with regrets. Then Buck talked with Lev in 6x2 “Crash and Learn” and Lev told him how he had spent the last 40 years of his life doing everything he was “supposed to do, marriage, kids, big house, fancy cars and weekends at the shore” but the most important part of what he said was it all ended up being a blur for him because he could barely remember any of it.  He finally understood right before he died that he could have been happy a long time ago if he had chosen to live his life the way he wanted to instead of the way everyone else said he was supposed to.  That’s one of many of Buck’s problems because he spends too much time trying to live his life for others instead of for himself.  He’s not happy and he keeps looking past the life and family he wants even though it’s right in front of him (Eddie and Christopher).
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Buck is already a DAD to Christopher and he’s practically Eddie’s HUSBAND because he gets to be himself when he’s with Eddie.  He’s relaxed, confident and most importantly he’s HAPPY whenever they’re together. He’s comfortable in his own skin and he doesn’t look like he’s pretending the way he did in his previous relationships.  Buck and Eddie move seamlessly whenever they’re around each other and they both understand one of their top priorities is to take care of Christopher.  They love each other and will do anything to keep the other one safe.  Buck listens to Eddie and Eddie takes care of Buck.  They understand their relationship is give and take instead of one of them always giving while the other just takes.  That was one of the problems they’ve both had in their previous relationships.
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Buck told Maddie in 3x11 “Seize the Day”, “This is Eddie’s house, I’m not really a guest” and his statement was very true.  He’s at home when he’s there with them and he’s confident in his role within their family dynamic.  His statement to his sister was proof that he knows who he wants to spend the rest of his life with and his actions every time Eddie almost died are further proof of that too but Buck’s issue is he doesn’t want to lose Eddie so he’d rather keep things exactly the way they are even though he could have it all if he confesses his love for Eddie and their family.
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For Buck and Eddie to become a romantic couple, it’s very likely that Eddie will have to be the one to confess his love to Buck first and the reason for that is Buck believes that his and Eddie’s current relationship and the time he gets to spend with Eddie and Christopher is all he’ll ever get.  He’s chosen to accept that for what it is and it’s unlikely that he’ll ever question Eddie about it. Therefore Eddie will have to take Christopher’s advice that he gave him in 5x11 “Outside Looking In” and be brave.  He will have to explain to Buck how he’s been in love with him for years but he was too scared to tell him since he didn’t want to risk everything they’ve already built together.  Additionally he will have to tell Buck again that he’s not expendable and explain why that’s true so that Buck will stop risking his life and understand that just like the rest of the 118, he has a family that needs him to come home too.  If Buck believes he can only be a father to Christopher if Eddie is dead, i.e., be “his spare dad”, then he would rather sacrifice himself so that Eddie can live because he wants the three of them to be a family together.  Buck has two fears, one is losing Eddie and the second one is being left behind so if he does lose Eddie, then he believes he will automatically be left behind because Eddie is the only person that he wants to build a life with so they can be happy together.  Eddie thought he took care of Buck’s fear about being left behind and not having a family when he named Buck to be Christopher’s legal guardian in his will.  He wants them to have each other but none of them, including Eddie want to live a life without the other two. Buck is so scared of losing Eddie that he’s willingly sacrificing his happiness to keep things the way that they are between them.  That means Eddie will have to initiate the conversation especially since he’s comfortable and confident in his own actions now that he’s been in therapy for several months. Will it take Buck being in the hospital due to a life-threatening injury for Eddie to finally confess his love to Buck?  Who knows but Buck’s recent actions illustrate how he is headed towards a breakdown and Eddie should be there to help him pick up the pieces just like Buck was there for him in 5x13 “Fear-O-Phobia”. They’re in love with each other but they’re both too scared to be the first one to confess, so someone will have to make the first move and it shouldn’t take another near-death experience for that to happen.  But it appears that’s the direction the show could be going in before they make them a CANON couple.
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suck-a-egg · 1 year
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A possible au that has been entertaining the hell out of me for months but everytime I try to post it, I forget it immediately.
long story short: Domino survives, they go into hiding until after order 66. This is going to be hard to explain so stick with me
After Rishi, it turns out that Droidbate was more or less stunned but left behind by the others. He has a weird feeling and decides to stick back. He gets out of the building in time to watch Cutup get eaten by the eel and the flair go up and the other three make their way to the "inspectors" and sees Rex kill the eel. He runs and cuts Cutup, haha, out of the eel's stomach because I dont understand how stomach acid works and I don't care to know.
Newly released Cutup and confused as fuck Droidbate, now watch as Hevy sacrifices himself and they bust into the old station and find him burnt up. Listen, if Echo can survive an explosion so can Hevy. They somehow got him stable, don't know how and don't really care.
After Fives and Echo leave with Rex and Cody they get in contact with the "survivors" and give them a comm channel to contact them on and they all talk regularly. The twins give the comm channel to 99 the morning of the invasion but he never gets to use it.
After the citadel, Echo still gets blown up there's literally no way of stopping it, the comm channel goes silent until Umbara where Fives just wants an outsiders opinion and starts talking to them again.
When Fives finds out about the chips, Fox shoots Fives in the shoulder instead of the chest and one of the Corrie guards patches him up. Fives, understanding that if he stays with the GAR then he will be killed, contacts Domino and is smuggled off the planet and back to their little base that they made in a corner of Rishi (Kamino doesn't really pay attention to the moon anymore). Rex doesn't know where Fives; went he just knows he's alive and has no way of communicating with him.
Fast forward towards the end of the war, Rex and the bad batch find Echo caught in the wires on Skako Minor. Rex tries his hardest to try to somehow get in contact with Fives but he's just left at a lot of dead ends. He tells Echo about Fives to a certain degree. He basically just tells him that he went AWOL and doesnt even try to explain the chips or anything. But Echo, being one of the one only people to know about the comm channel, just calls Fives one day and has him explain it.
Domino, now knowing that Echo is alive, tries to convince him to leave the GAR and come with them. But since Echo is not done fighting yet, he chooses to go with the Bad Batch. But Domino makes him agree that if he's ever in trouble or needs help that he will contact them but once he does they will take him "home" to be with them.
Hunter figures out that Echo knows some type of squad outside of the ones that he has personally met because he hears a little bit of their conversation due to his senses. But he chooses to not say anything.
Order 66 still happens and the events of season 1 of the Bad Batch still happens.
After the fall of Kamino, Rex contacts the Batch asking them to go on a mission with him and they somehow end up captured (Omega included). The group that captured them are allies with the Techno Union and they easily figured out who and what Echo was and are trying to take him back to Wambor. The captors for some reason didn't take their equipment, so Echo, now panicking, contacts Hevy specifically, because he's the least likely to freak out, and asks for help. The batch has no idea who he's talking to but Rex has an idea after he hears Hevy's voice.
Rex starts to basically interrogate Echo, asking how long he had known, who was alive, why he kept it a secret. Echo breaks down because he doesn't want his older brother to be mad at him but he also wants to keep his other brothers safe and away from the war.
Wambor shows up an hour before Domino does and they have already taken Echo and hooked him back into a computer and have him completely out of it.
Domino busts in and Hevy and Droidbait find Rex and the rest of the Batch. They let them out of their cell and start asking them where Echo is but get cut off by Fives and Cutup on the comm line telling them that they had found the final Domino. Everyone rushes over and finds Fives cradling Echo to his chest while trying to calm him down. Fives ends up carrying him out of the prison and back on to the ship that they somehow commandeered.
They get poor echo back on the ship and after some questioning from Rex, they take the Batch back to the marauder but when they try to get off of Domino's ship, Echo doesn't go with them and chaos ensues.
You didn't see this, E
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inkyflowercrowns · 11 months
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I would be interested, what's the concepts behind the crossover?
(Realizing its more an AU then a Crossover, as crossover implies both sets of characters from both sides exist, but im just,, putting the rain world characters in the slime rancher world lol.) Please note this is a rough concept and subject to change. I rearrange some elements to make things work. Read more cause oh boy I wrote alot.
In the first Slime Rancher game, you play as Beatrix, a young rancher who set outs out for an adventure literally light years away from earth. As you progress through the game, you get little hints of story from both your mail and the notes left by Hobson. As well as occasionally getting communications/requests from other NPCs. I take that base concept and kind of,, mix it around a bit. I want all the iterators to be on the same planet so to speak. (I am unsure of the npcs are,, actually on the planet somewhere or on Earth/elsewhere). So each of the Main 7 Iterators from Rain World are filling in for various NPCs,, loosely. As well as Slugcats just being there because why not lol.
I technically add another NPC to the list so instead of the normal 5ish people you get to talk to and help out, its 6. I will note here that: All relationships are going to be left open for interpretation. I will be attempting to not really attach any specific labels to any of them so everyone can interpret those as they will.
NSH in place of Viktor Moon in place of Thora Wind (and Gourmand) in place of Ogden UI in place of Mochi Survivor, Monk and Nightcat in place of BOb Suns as Casey (technically) SoS in the place of Hobson (also technically) and of course, Pebbles as Beatrix. (and all slugcats are with respective owners give or take.) Story goes: SoS owned the ranch. Went on their adventures, interacting with the characters and having some life-thinking to do. Leaving behind journal-entry like notes everywhere across the range. Ultimately, Sliver decided to uproot and settle somewhere quieter, and sold the Ranch to Moon. Now Moon tried to convince her dearest baby brother Pebbles to come with her, after all, most of their friends had gone to the 'far far range' already. (All characters knew each other on earth before slowly, one by one, moving out light years away.) He ultimately declined. Now Moon has a similar experience to SoS. Went on her adventures, interacting with the characters and keeping in touch with Pebbles best she can. Befriending Ruffles. Adding her own notes on top of SoS's original ones. She grows close with Sliver over this time and chooses to follow that same path, leaving the ranch to settle elsewhere, with Sliver and Saint. Its really, years afterwards, and many a pestering from Moon, for Pebbles to cave and take ownership of the ranch. (Pebbles has alot of issues tm. College dropout, everyone they care about is literal light years away, illness :), the usual) Moving out to the ranch to take over where Moon left off. Bringing Artificer (emotional support slugcat) along for the ride. Except there are two things wrong with this: 1) He doesn't tell anyone this, and Moon just happens to forget this information and 2) The ranch has been left in disrepair. So the events following that realization is just about how the game goes usually. Pebbles fixes the ranch, ranches some slimes, helps out his (bewildered*) friends and family, reads the little notes left by Sliver and Moon, basically has a little adventure where he softens and heals a little bit. *One by one, as they contact the 'brand new rancher!', get a little spooked that its Pebbles who answers them. It's a funny haha "Hello! Welcome to the Far Fa- Pebbles?!" every time. With the exception of Moon.
Now the deal with Suns. Since I technically rewrote it to where Suns is already on the range, I needed a reason for why they would only speak to Pebbles via mail. My solution to this is that their little communications thing is broken, and all the side things you do for the other NPCs is Pebbles helping them out in return for parts to help Suns fix it. Fun part is: no one bothers to tell Suns that its Pebbles who took over the ranch in the end, and Suns goes the entire time unaware they are talking to him. Up until its fixed, anyway. I havn't finished the second game yet! So who knows on that front, but thats the?? general concept for an au?? Long and confusing probably, but I've had brain rot over this au for a solid 3ish days now. The au is meant to be,, more silly. Laid back, fun. Just the rain world characters in the world of slime rancher. While I will probably touch on some topics (Pebbles is at the ranch for healing tm after all) its generally just,, a soft type story. No heavy-heavy angst outside of some mixed feelings and accidental confessions. To end this, though: I find it funny that I put Pebbles in a universe where jumping into the ocean kills you.
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proshiphasfailed · 8 days
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Honestly as someone who used to consider themself "pro-para" I just wanted to share my thoughts? No need to share if you don't want to though.
On a surface level, I get why some want the groups to be connected. As a proshipper, I think people have the right to read and write what they want. If someone is reading/writing something because of a paraphilia, I don't really mind that. You can't exactly read someone's mind as for why they choose to enjoy something.
The issue is that pro-para spaces DO enable abuse and abusers. There are pro-para people who are anti-contact, but, unfortunately, WAY too many people in the community are either pro-contact (for paraphilias that cannot be acted on consensually) or at least okay with pro-cs. Minors are often accepted into the community. I don't know if I'd call it "grooming" exactly because I don't like to misuse that term, but it's certainly taking in minors that are vulnerable (often ones who have experienced trauma and may or may not actually have a paraphilia in the first place) and letting them talk about sexual things and trauma with online adults. That's not safe.
In theory, yes, I don't think someone is defined by their thoughts as long as they don't act on them, but, if nothing else, it gives proshippers a bad name to be tied to a community that has such genuine problems. Many people are already under the mistaken assumption that "proshipper" equals "pedophile" and it ultimately gets kind of hard to refute that when actual pedophiles are insisting that being a pedo and being pro-ship do go hand in hand.
The issue with minors is really bad, there is a lot of overlap with SH/ED spaces and I would say at least 30% of the people in the community are minors. And many paraphiles defend this because “kids can be paraphiles too”, if that is the case is the answer to that an unregulated, sexually charged, community full of people eager to exploit them? What are they doing to protect the minors in their community? Because it seems like they just roll their eyes and go “well I wanted to fuck dogs when I was 10 so I don’t see the problem.”
I am a survivor of grooming from predators on the internet as a child as are a lot of the minors in this space. I was able to get away from abusers and recognize the ideas they were putting into my head were wrong, and not end up as a “big 3” paraphile. I recognize that that won’t be the case for everyone who goes through that unfortunately, but I think going directly from being abused into a space where the ideas you got from the confusion of your abuse are encouraged is not giving someone the chance to have a recovery remotely close to that. The child can unpack their feelings when theyre older, they don’t need to be told what happened to them was sexy.
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thegeminisage · 11 months
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4, 5, 6 for choose violence, any fandom, and 23 for spn!
4. what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?
oh man it's just anytime someone says some bullshit about ace people. i was friends with two different people on here for years. one bad post and they got blocked with no further communication about it. like it's not hard to be normal about ace people, except apparently it is?? cmon.
5. worst discord server and why
the server i joined right after nov 5. speaking of blocking people i blocked like 90% of those guys because they were just generally so fucking unpleasant to be around. if you can see this while logged in i'm not talking about you, you're wonderful <3 if you're only seeing it because you're logged out you need to find some meaning in your life or something. get well. whatever.
6. which ship fans are the most annoying?
(cw inc*st) it's actually the anti-w*ncest people. do they count as shippers? i really hate to start a debate about this on my blog again but like. i'm usually fairly neutral about ship discourse or whatever when it involves two !!! consenting !!! ADULTS !!!, and for the record i don't do w*ncest, but i remember so specifically this trend where people would put "w*ncest shippers dni!" banners on their posts, and then when actual survivors were like "we don't like those banners because it reminds of us of the whole thing multiple times daily and no one tags for them," and everyone continued to use the banners bc it wasn't about protecting survivors, it was about virtue signaling. those people specifically fucking suck. also the people who made a blocklist and had on it people who had shipped it a LITERAL decade ago, as if tastes and personal growth cannot possibly happen in ten years. like i understand that it's well meaning but that is a witch hunt, it's not protecting anyone. please get offline for awhile.
23. ship you’ve unwillingly come around to
awww it's samwena. i still like them better as buds bc i strongly prefer saileen but i have come around to it mostly because of his mommy issues. their goodbye in s15 was something i genuinely enjoyed, i really loved their relationship all the way through and i think it would be hilarious if crowley was crushing on sam only to then have sam fuck his mom <3
[ASK MEME]
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themuselesswriter · 7 months
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Guys I’m wheezing, I asked chatgpt to write me a Supernanny x Otto family episode and it’s hilarious so y’all need to read it 😹 I did it twice, cause I was having a lot of fun! And can we just appreciate how AI got Troy right? Like, they are all talking about improvement and Troy is like "I just wanna be free" xD Anyyyyhoo, enjoy! Lemme know who to do next!
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Supernanny's Intervention - Bringing Hope to the Otto Family
[Episode begins with Supernanny Jo Frost driving up to the Otto family's residence. She steps out of her car and walks up to the front door, ready to make a difference.]
Supernanny Jo Frost (to the camera): Today, I'm heading to the Otto family, where the challenges go beyond just parenting. It's about survival in a world gone mad.
[Supernanny rings the doorbell. Tracy Otto, looking tired and stressed, opens the door.]
Tracy Otto: Hi, you must be Supernanny. I'm Tracy.
Supernanny Jo Frost: Hello, Tracy. Nice to meet you. I've heard you've been through a lot. May I come in?
[They enter the living room where Jeremiah Otto is sitting.]
Jeremiah Otto: Who's this?
Supernanny Jo Frost: I'm Supernanny Jo Frost, and I'm here to help your family. Can we talk?
[They sit down together.]
Supernanny Jo Frost: Tracy, Jeremiah, I've heard about the challenges you've faced since the world changed. But despite the circumstances, it's important to ensure your family's well-being. I understand it's not easy, but we need to address some issues.
Tracy Otto: We're doing the best we can, considering.
Supernanny Jo Frost: I'm sure you are, Tracy. But the boys, Jake and Troy, they need guidance, structure, and a safe environment. Jake's had to grow up too fast, and Troy, he's been on the brink.
Jeremiah Otto: We're survivors here. We're teaching them to survive.
Supernanny Jo Frost: I get it, but surviving isn't enough. We need to thrive, especially for the boys. Jake's been through trauma, and Troy's been neglected. They need a supportive home, not just a survival camp.
Tracy Otto: We've been through so much. We can't be the parents we used to be.
Supernanny Jo Frost: Tracy, I know it's tough, but it's time to heal. It's time to address the abuse and neglect that's been happening here. It's time to make a change.
[Supernanny talks with Jake and Troy, learning about their struggles.]
Supernanny Jo Frost: (to Jake and Troy) You both deserve a better life. You deserve safety, love, and a chance to be kids. And you, Jeremiah, need to stop perpetuating the cycle of abuse.
Jeremiah Otto: (defensive) You don't understand what it's like out there.
Supernanny Jo Frost: I understand that the world has changed, but your family can change too. It starts with acknowledging the issues and working together.
[Supernanny works with the family to create a plan for healing and growth.]
Supernanny Jo Frost: (to the camera) Over the next few weeks, we're going to rebuild this family. It's not going to be easy, but it's necessary for their survival as a family unit.
[The episode shows the Otto family going through counseling, learning communication skills, and creating a nurturing environment.]
Tracy Otto: (teary-eyed) I want my boys to have a chance at a real life.
Jeremiah Otto: I know I've made mistakes. It's time to change that.
[The episode ends with a heartwarming moment where the Otto family comes together for a family meal.]
Supernanny Jo Frost: (to the camera) Change is possible, even in the most challenging circumstances. It's about choosing to be better, for ourselves and for the ones we love.
[Supernanny leaves the Otto family with resources and support to continue their journey towards healing and growth.]
Supernanny Jo Frost: (to the camera) It's a long road ahead, but with dedication and love, this family can overcome even the darkest challenges.
-------------------------------------------
Supernanny: Reclaiming Hope
Narrator: On this episode of Supernanny, Jo Frost visits the Otto family from Fear the Walking Dad, a family battling not only zombies but their own internal struggles. With Jeremiah's abusive behavior, Tracy's dependence on alcohol, and the emotional scars carried by Jake and Troy, can Jo guide them towards a better future?
[Opening scene]
Narrator: In a world dominated by the undead, the Otto family fights battles within their own home.
[Jo Frost's arrival]
Jo: Hi, I'm Jo Frost. I've come to help you rebuild your family. Let's find a way to create a healthier and happier life for all of you.
[Meeting the family]
Jeremiah: Our world has turned upside down. I've tried to keep us safe, but it's taken a toll on our family.
Tracy: (tearfully) I don't know how to cope anymore.
Jake: I've had to be the parent for too long.
Troy: (holding back tears) This place is suffocating.
Jo: I'm here to support you all in making positive changes. Let's work together.
[Addressing Jeremiah's abuse]
Jo: (firmly) Jeremiah, your anger is hurting your family. We need to find healthier ways to communicate and resolve conflicts.
Jeremiah: It's a tough world out there. I need to be tough too.
Jo: Toughness doesn't have to mean aggression. Let's learn how to create a safer environment for everyone.
[Dealing with Tracy's alcoholism]
Jo: (sitting with Tracy) Tracy, alcohol won't make the pain go away. It's time to face your struggles and seek healthier ways to cope.
Tracy: I know I need help, but I don't know where to start.
Jo: We'll take it step by step. Your family needs you to be present and sober.
[Supporting the children]
Jo: (speaking with Jake) Jake, you've taken on too much responsibility. Let's work on restoring your role as a son.
Jake: It's been overwhelming, but I miss being just a kid.
Jo: (speaking with Troy) Troy, you deserve a life free from fear. Let's help you find your own path.
Troy: I want out of here so badly.
[Healing and rebuilding]
Jo: We're going to focus on open communication and building trust. Your family needs to work as a team to overcome the challenges ahead.
[Breakthrough]
Jeremiah: (apologizing) I know I've been too hard on you all.
Tracy: (hugging Jeremiah) We can't let anger tear us apart.
Jake: (tearfully) I want to be a brother again, not a father figure.
Troy: (finding his voice) I want to find my own way in this world.
[Family activities]
Jo: Today, we're going to have fun as a family. Strengthening your bonds through positive experiences.
[Final thoughts]
Jo: The Otto family has been through hell, but they're making strides towards healing and unity. Remember, there's always hope for a better future.
[Closing scene]
Narrator: With Jo's guidance, the Otto family is on a journey to rebuild their lives. As they face both the living and the dead, they're learning that their greatest strength lies in their ability to support and love each other.
4 notes · View notes
The Doctor.
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Here. Some warm drinks.
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...
*Taichi enters the Foundation meeting room in the Tower, with a cup of warm tea for Seiko. He hands it to her and she drinks it with a smile.
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So how have things gone down here?
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We unfortunately haven’t made much progress. The lead researcher just went to grab 404 and Saihara, but Seiko hasn’t said so much as a word to us.
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I see...Well, I did just contact Chihiro to inform him of everything that’s happened, including your safe arrival back and the sudden appearance of Ms Kimura.
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Hehe...Mr Nidai certainly sounded excited in the background.
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...
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Nekomaru’s been keeping Branch 4 afloat while you’ve been gone Seiko. I think he should get an award once you have the chance to meet with him again.
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Hmph...No pressure.
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That’s not what I meant!
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Yeah, I know, I’m just fucking with you...
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I see that Ms Asahina decided not to join us...
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Hina said she would stick around, but...since she decided to quit Future Foundation, she’s choosing not to join these meetings.
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So it’s official...Hina really did quit?
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No. She has yet to sign any resignation documents...However, that’s simply because we haven’t found the time or place to.
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Still, if she’s not in the mood to participate, I won’t force her to.
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...
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You know you could...like...say something...right?
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...
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Has she lost her voice by any chance?
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Even if she’d lost her voice, we’d still be able to get a bit out of her.
*Byakuya sits down on a chair opposite her, everyone watching.
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I’ll go easy on you of course, but I hope you know we need to ask you a lot of questions. 
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...
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Feel free to take your time with them, but we need to know...How did you escape Zetsubou’s base...and do you know where it is...
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What’s the status of the other kidnapped people should you know it? Do you know anything about what Zetsubou are planning?
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Jeez Togami. Ain’t that a lot right out of the gate.
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Well to be fair, he did give a warning.
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I...
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Hm?
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I...want to...tell...but...I...don’t...know if...if I can...
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What do you mean by that?
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And why are you speaking so slowly?
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Kamu...kura...the...pill...he...
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Pill? What pill!? Spit it out!
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I...he...Gh...
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GHLEARGH!
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!!!???
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SEIKO!?
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WHAT THE HELL!?
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!!?
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!!?
*Had Seiko not been wearing her mask, she would have vomited blood all over Byakuya. As it stands, she loses her strength and collapses to the floor.
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I...spoke too...EUARGH!
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What happened!? 
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Seiko, are you ok!?
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Stop! STOP TALKING!
*Rei suddenly rushes over to Seiko. Everyone goes silent thinking she’s speaking to them as a collective, but she crouches down and moves Seiko’s body in an interesting way. Within a few moments, Seiko’s breathing returns to normal and her face regains what little color it has.
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...Thanks...
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Stop...talking...!
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...
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What...the hell was that!?
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Rei...is it really the same thing?
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Hm...It seems so...the circumstances seem different, but there’s no doubt it’s the same affliction. Kimura...Did Uchui Kamukura do this to you?
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...
*Seiko nods.
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Was it using a machine?
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...
*Seiko shakes her head.
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I see...
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Hold on a second, we need to take a few steps back!
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Mekaru...What just happened to her!? Do you know?
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It seems to me this was the cost of Seiko Kimura’s freedom.
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To make a long story short, Uchui Kamukura has taken...or rather limited...Seiko Kimura’s ability to communicate with us. Should she try she’ll feel nauseous and...well you saw for yourself what happened.
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But why...!? And HOW?
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And more to the point, how do you know about all of this?
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...Because I’ve seen it in action before...During my own Killing Game.
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The Kibougamine Gakuen?
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How much to you all know about that Killing Game specifically?
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Information on the Kibougamine Killing Game is mainly in the hands of the Kisaragi Foundation. Most of what Future Foundation knows is limited to three things.
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First, Tsurugi Kinjo, Teruya Otori, and yourself, Rei Mekaru, were the only three survivors.
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Second...The mastermind of the Killing Game was the Ultimate Maid, Akane Taira, and Utsuro, the boy with the power of Divine Luck.
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And third and finally, the Killing Game itself was a ploy by Junko Enoshima in preperation for the “First” Mutual Killing Game between the 78th Class at Hope’s Peak.
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Yes, that’s all accurate. But since it wasn’t broadcasted like the other Killing Game’s, a lot of things happened during it that don’t really get talked about.
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One such thing was a situation involving Mikako Kurokawa, who now works with us in Kisaragi Foundation, and her adoptive brother, Yamato Kisaragi.
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As Munakata stated, the Killing Game was hosted as a test for Yasuke Matsuda’s memory erasure technique’s that he used to erase the academy memories of the 78th Class. Before he used it then, he tried it on us.
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However, Yamato had found out about Utsuro and Taira’s plan in advance, and had prepared a countermeasure in case anything went wrong. One such countermeasure, was the MRD.
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“MRD?” What’s that?
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It stands for Memory Retention Device. And as the name implies, using it completely blocked the effects of Matsuda’s brainwashing. Allowing those who used it to retain their memories of before the Killing Game.
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This came at a cost however. Say, most of you have met Kako before, right? What was your first impression of her?
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Well...She has a gloomy and sketchy appearance, but she seems to mean well. 
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Well, before the Killing Game, Kako was a confident and defiant spirit. She wasn't afraid to speak up against anything that was wrong and always had a strong sense of justice and hope.
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But thanks to the MRD, that changed. The machine had some side effects that severely altered both Kako and Yamato’s personalities, and not only that...
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They also both suffered from afflictions that made it difficult to communicate with us, hence why neither could tell us the truth. In Mikako’s case, if she tried to communicate at length with us, it would result in massive migraines and brain damage...
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Damage so severe that in the end...it basically killed her.
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Wait...so you’re saying that Seiko-!?
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...
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I doubt Kamukura has recreated the machine, but there’s a highly probably chance that he’s used another method to recreate the effects.
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On top of migraines being caused by speaking, it also makes sign language and writing on paper impossible. And it hurts your body to try in equally terrible ways.
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Basically, Kamukura has rendered Dr Kimura’s speaking skills useless.
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...Uchui...
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Damn that albino motherfucker...! How could he DO something like this!?
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Actually Leon...not that I’m trying to defend Kamukura or anything but...I think he might have actually saved Seiko’s life with this method.
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What? What do you mean?
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Put yourself in Zetsubou’s shoes for a brief moment. You’ve finished using Seiko for what you need her for, and there’s no reason to keep her around any more.
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But if you let her go free, there’s nothing stopping her from running back to her friends here at the Future Foundation, and telling them everything she knows about Zetsubou’s secret plans, and the location of their secret base. In that situation, what would you do?
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Well...I’d probably either keep her locked up forever or...
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Or KILL her...
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And I’m willing to bet that Shirogane was going to do exactly one of those two things.
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Seiko might not be able to spill the beans about Zetsubou, but at least she’s ALIVE and SAFE. Right?
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Yeah, you’ve got a point.
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Yeah...and on top of that, there actually is some good news.
*Everyone looks at Setsuka.
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Oh yeah? What’s that? 
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Kisaragi Foundation were able to salvage Yamato’s old machine after the end of the Killing Game. We destroyed it, but before we did, we ran some tests on it’s properties.
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And we found a cure to the affliction it causes.
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...!?
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So assuming Seiko’s affliction is along the same lines, we can help her!?
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...Yes.
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What’s the catch?
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Huh?
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The way you said that sounds sus. You hesitated for a second there. The good news is that we can cure Seiko, so what’s the bad news that comes with it?
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Hmph...You’re annoyingly perceptive...But yes, unfortunately, there is a catch.
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It’s not just being perceptive. We just can’t have nice things come to us for free like...EVER.
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Sad as it is to say, Kurafto is right...All of our victory’s lately always come at a cost...Chances are we’ll need to work for this one.
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Alright. The catch is that even though we know there’s a cure, neither Setsuka, nor myself, nor any key member of the Kisaragi Foundation can actually FASHION said cure...
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Except for one person.
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Who?
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Dr Hikaru Ando.
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...!
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Makoto: That name sounds familiar...
Taichi: Yes, it would do. I’m sure everyone is aware of it by this point, but before his escape, Nagito Komaeda confessed that Organization Zetsubou had ressurected Kanata Inori, the Ultimate Surgeon, as part of their plan to mass-produce Ultimate Hope’s.
Setsuka: Hikaru Kanata’s father. He adopted her after he saved her from a car crash that also killed her birth parents.
Rei: And then there’s the real problem...Dr Ando has been missing for 7 years now.
Sayaka: 7 years!? What happened?
Setsuka: I don’t know. But ever since you brought me back to life, it’s the primary case Tsun-Tsun has me working on. Ando just up and disappeared one day, and what’s more, the Kisaragi AI that used to manage the Foundation went with him.
Leon: Kisaragi AI?
Kyoko: Yamato Kisaragi made an Alter Ego of himself, and just like Chihiro’s Alter Ego, it came to be the CPU for most of the Kisaragi Foundation’s network.
Yoruko: How does something like that just go MISSING all of a sudden?
Rei: We don’t know, but it’s made life a hell of a lot harder for us at the Kisaragi Foundation. Hence why we’re searching for both the doctor and the AI.
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So if we want to cure Seiko and defeat Zetsubou, our first order of business will be tracking down Dr Ando. 
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Our connections are limited, but we’ll make use of any we do have to crack down on the search.
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We also have Yuki and his Whitecloak companion searching. They’ll bring whatever info from the streets they find right back to us.
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So what do we do for now then?
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Hm...It might be worth going out and getting Ms Kimura some painkillers and headache medicine. We can’t cure her affliction, but we can certainly settle it.
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...
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Got it. Since she’s out and about, I’ll grab Hina, and we can go together.
10 notes · View notes
okcat · 7 months
Text
this is cringe fail don't read srsly esp irls..
ignore me bc im on my period and emotional and hysterical but anyhoo. met my bf's family and they're so wonderful and kind and accepting that it made me emo now bc my family will never, ever be like that. overheard my mom talking to my aunt about how an as/sy/ria/n priest would never bless an interfaith marriage and like im not even gonna marry my bf or anything like that our relationship is still new so ik it's stupid to be upset over stuff that maybe probably doesn't matter but it's like. okay. I'm not even religious like that so idc what ppl think but I still wanna get married in an as/sy/r/ia/n church bc it's important to me Culturally at least. but it sucks that if my partner doesn't meet all these qualifications, then it's just not realistic to. also living with this guilt of being part of an extremely endangered ethnicity and not like. keeping within my own community or whatever. I'm sure other indigenous people understand the feeling of almost... betrayal even tho 1) it just isn't 2) I can do whatever I want and don't have an obligation to "keep my ethnicity alive" cuz I'm just a person who didn't choose to be born into this and I just wanna be happy like any other human being on this earth. but the fucked up part is no matter how strongly I believe that, I STILL feel guilt. I still think about how we're survivors of and fighters against genocide and feel guilty because I'll probably further contribute to the dwindling numbers of our people. but IT DOESNT MATTER BECAUSE I don't even want kids so it's fucked anyway also it doesn't matter how ~pure~ someone is?? That's like... dangerous ideology. What matters is keeping the CULTURE alive and u can do that without being closed-off to others and overproctective... I get it I understand the trauma from generations of genocide and continued erasure but idk I wish I could do something as simple as introduce a partner to my family and not have all hell break loose because that act has Implications. But like I said I'm not getting married or having kids but it's like man can I at least have the Option to do that with someone not from my ethnicity without my entire family and probably community disowning me and shunning me bc despite all the dumb shit I Love Who I Am and Where I Come From but. Idk I don't fit in and never will and it sucks and it's stressful to live with and and and
I just need to get help or something cuz simply just liking someone shouldn't send me into a fit of despair it's not that deep like... imma blame the hormones tho. lemme go take a tylenol *casts spell of forget you ever read this upon you*
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my-mt-heart · 2 years
Note
Spitballing here. Yesterday I'd realized while on Discord that as romantic & wonderful as Caryl ridding off into the sunset on the bike is, it's a bit unrealistic("Hold your horses", you say, "It's a fucking zombie show. Suspension of disbelief is key"). I know, I know. Part of me feels like a lot of us have been a little on the nose about this. But hear me out. I mean that as in,
1) the question of fueling the bike(are they going to just be willing to abandon it somewhere?) comes into play. They'd have to settle down & farm large amounts of produce to make enough biofuel, reliably & long term. Even if they were to take a jeep, there's only so much room for fuel, which then takes up room for other supplies.
2) housing, long term, becomes an issue. We know these two can live anywhere. We've seen them survive in tents, barns, caves, prisons, shacks, etc. But tents & tarps take up space. Hoofing it with gear or toting it on a bike is cumbersome. Logistics aside, just because they CAN survive out there, doesn't mean they should have to JUST survive. They've struggled for so long that it doesn't necessarily make sense to me that they'd willingly choose to just barely make it. Which leads me to...
3) Neither have ever been 100% comfortable within the "real world"(post-Fall civilization) because they were both in constant states of personal change & growth, & these places have always been someone else's idea of what life should look like. After over a decade of growth, both individually & as a pair, they've become totally different people, evolving from the outlaw & the mouse to survivors, to broken shells pushing people away, to reluctant leaders dealing with the past, & finally pillars of the community, mirroring eachother the whole way. They & viewers, I feel, are owed something by going on that journey together. Their tandem struggles with self-worth, I don't think, have only served to establish their relationship with eachother & their family over the years. There has to be some kind of acknowledgement of, "you're both better at all of this that anyone, you've been around since the beginning, you KNOW how to do this" with them both finally accepting that they're not only worthy of love, praise, & recognition from themselves, their family, & eachother... But from a world that's working to reestablish itself.
Where am I going with all this? I see the idea of them "running away together" as just that; still running. I think they're BOTH done running. But I think that they're capable of leaving without running. There's been interviews, I believe that say that the intention is to not have it appear as them leaving forever or cutting ties with TF. I believe it's entirely possible that, after all of this, and all of their growth, that when the Commonwealth settles into new leadership(I suspect Mercer, as well) that there's sure to still be plans for expansion & goodwill missions. And I'm obviously not talking about in Lance's way of showing up with an entire fucking army behind him. Both Carol & Daryl have seemed to be happiest & find the most self-worth when they were entrusted to be diplomatic. Carol said in Consumed essentially that the person she'd always wanted to be was who she was at the prison. Daryl was absolutely in his element when he partnered with Aaron to be a scout. And we know that both of them can clock someone & their intentions from a mile away. If the Commonwealth were to want to create an outreach program or need a trusted, boots-on-the-ground source of know-how in establishing (not taking over/colonizing) a successful community, these two, together would be the most logical choice.
This leaves room for them to still have resources available to them so they're not constantly struggling/facing hardships (they've suffered enough, dammit, & the tone of the spinoff is supposed to be different), while ensuring there's still room for conflict, while also acknowledging how far they've both come. They have a future & maybe it's really helping to recreate the world, but better, together.
So what do you think? Can you see them tooling around the country on the Commonwealth's dime helping other people find themselves? Or do you think this is insane 8am ramblings? This was so long lmao. Sorry 💕
I'm just impressed you have this much brain power at 8am haha Let's start with the logistical issues. I totally hear you and wonder the same. Regardless of why Daryl and Carol are out on the open road, it might make a few good plot points to see how they go about finding more fuel or water or whatever when those things aren't readily available. But as far as the writers are concerned, frankly I think it's just about what you already mentioned 1) suspension of disbelief and 2) the knowledge that Daryl and Carol are two of the most resourceful characters on the show and they know how to take care of themselves.
As for the other part of your question, yes I can see them traveling around the country on the CW's dime as a way to honor their growth as characters and symbolically keep them attached to their family and if that's what we're getting then cool. At the heart of it, Daryl and Carol are still just looking for happiness together. That's what I care about. At the same time, I think freeing them from obligations might be a big part of that. It doesn't mean they're regressing. It doesn't mean they don't love their family. It doesn't mean they aren't coming back. They just need some space and freedom to be themselves, to not have to take care of anybody else for a change, to not have to be part of any system. I know it gives some people anxiety to think they're leaving everything behind. I don't see it that way. The only reason they're able to get on that bike is because they know they aren't needed. Everybody they love will be safe and thriving by the time they leave. I like to think of their adventure as a honeymoon even if it's not a literal one.
14 notes · View notes
cryptidnearby · 5 months
Text
Wednesday in the Rain
I am having some feelings in regards to homelessness, depression and other possibly troubling topics. Proceed under the cut if you wish, but choose your peace first.
This is simply my safe vent.
When I say I have the stressy depressy friends.
The weather was moderately cooling down, but we still had that space in the mid day that was warm, or only needed a light jacket. Today was a sudden drop, both in temperature, and in the view of daylight. It was the kind of day that makes my bones feel like they're creaking.
I work for a homeless shelter specifically for adults, singles or couples/pets. We also get a steady stream of regular visitors coming in for free supplies and a hot meal and to pick up any mail they may have waiting for them. One of these regulars was distraught and elevated. He was complaining of a bad tension headache and I gave him some coffee. My coworkers inform me that this regular is on the "grab and go" list, they love to remind me "we are not a day center" too, so I approach this regular and tell him what my coworkers told me, as I'm putting on my jacket and leading the way. "but we can step outside and talk if you need it." He agreed, and we took a stroll around the parking lot to toss an old box and out toward the sidewalk, all the way he is expressing his fears, his depression. His health is failing, he feels forgotten because he is homeless. This is a very real, very painful feeling, that I know all too well.
Reminding myself in these moments, that I too am in recovery from my homelessness and the life saving surgery I had back in April of this year. I walk with a cane still. I have bad survivor's guilt, that I am here in a soft bed, with blankets, connected to the internet and stimulation, and he's just 3 miles away, somewhere in the dark and the cold and the rain. It's twisted me up inside so bad. I was in conversation with him for some time, or mostly it was me allowing him to take up space. He talked about his grandfather and how "He was the coolest old guy you could meet." I instantly was reminded of my grandfather and his passing. I find myself sinking into that strange feeling, like a bit nauseated and also close to weeping.
At the end of our conversation, it was raining, very hard. He assured he me would be okay and hugged me and I trailed my way back into the lobby where my coworker's energy was completely different. I told them he just needed to be able to vent, be heard. He's having a bad day. They responded "Everyday is a bad day for him." I was confused by this response. Could it be... because he is homeless? Because he walks multiple miles per day in shoes that are too small? Because he's 57 and pushing a damn shopping cart full of everything he owns and selling cigarettes and cans wasn't exactly the fucking plan???
I don't know how these people do this job, at all. It's demented.
Housed people have the privilege of their private moments being private. So when they see an unhoused person, behaving in some way that isn't appealing, they, inaccurately, assume that the unhoused person is going to be this every day of their lives.
The idea that the elderly people in greyscale and high contrast laying on broken down boxes have vivid inner and outer lives, they have past lives and families and friends. They find ways to be rich that aren't beautiful and ultimately, they want a place where they're allowed to exist.
Stop demanding that people should have to earn the right to exist. They are real people out there, and tonight they're very fucking cold. I will keep doing this job, as long as I'm able, because I'm lined up to replace those being cruel. That's why I was chosen, to represent the community that needs help, to advocate for them, to show them a way out. And I am healing, while I am doing all that, both mentally and physically. Today marks the beginning of my second month of mood tracking. The winter is bringing itself through, my mental state is likely to sink.
Rest is needed.
Goodnight.
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kurt-wagner-official · 5 months
Text
Post: 93: XF issues 12-16
While Warren grapples with the thought of losing his wings, which he sees as a fate worse than death, Jean sees her sister, Sara, on TV speaking out as an advocate for mutants. Fearing she's putting a target on her back, and with her telepathy still not working since her return, Jean decides to go see her in person for the first time in years. Hank and Bobby have their hands full with all their new Morlock guests, and become even busier when they get a call from Boom-Boom reporting the Vanisher. When they show up, though, she has a change of heart, warning Vanisher and leaving Hank and Bobby with two mutant criminals to track down. They eventually track down Boom-Boom in their X-Terminator uniforms and explain the situation to her. She agrees to come back with them. Over in Cleveland, Apocalypse recruits his next mutant, a girl named Autumn who can turn food into dust. Back in New York, Scott, trying to avoid dealing with his own missing family, goes with Jean to her sister's house, where they find a message from an anonymous mutant hater and a bomb that destroys the building. There was no sign of Sara or Jean's parents, so they think they must have escaped, but it makes Scott realize that Maddie's disappearance may be more than relationship problems. When he walked out on his family, he left them as an open target to anyone who wanted to get to him, and that realization makes him put away both his pride and his shame and head to Alaska. In this issue, X-Factor really started to grow into what its members intended- a safe haven for mutants in need. The irony is that they did this because they believed Xavier's school could no longer provide that, but the X-Men think the same thing about them. If the two teams would just talk to each other, they could reunite not only their own family but also the Morlock survivors, both groups of whom believe everyone else died. And soon, Scott will learn that that same reluctance to communicate has torn apart his own family.
Stephen Lang's Master Mold from way back when was destroyed by Bobby and Warren in a Hulk issue, according to the text boxes in this one. The wreckage fell down to Earth and landed in the ocean near Alaska, where it's stayed until now, when a random fish bites some pipe and jump starts its system, which makes no sense but is a very funny way to resurrect a villain. Scott is also headed to Alaska, and says his goodbyes to his teammates. Jean actually kisses him goodbye and wishes him luck patching things up with his wife, which seems like a weird way to do it. She goes back up to Warren, who finds out he's being subpoenaed for defrauding his investors by secretly backing X-Factor. The X-Factor hoax is hanging by a thread, and once he testifies, his secret will be out and the whole company is going down. He wonders if he'd be better off dead. As the situation worsens, Hank calls Scott to ask him to come back and help, but Scott refuses, and good for him. He's finally choosing Maddie over X-Factor, even though he already went through this whole character arc before he married her, but whatever, I'm over it. Unfortunately, every record of Maddie is gone. Every friend they had in Anchorage either died a mysterious death or moved away, including Scott's grandparents, who sold the company Maddie had been working for. Scott starts to have a breakdown, hallucination Maddie and his son. He becomes convinced that the Phoenix is hiding them, and starts optic blasting the hallucinations away until he finds his son's rattle hidden behind the radiator. He knows they were real and vows to find them. But a few miles away, the Master Mold has picked up his trail and is coming for him. And in a nearby lake, some cops find the decomposing body of a woman with red hair.
Scott sits in the wreckage of his house clutching the baby rattle until some cops show up and arrest him. He's still having hallucinations, now of Xavier, who disapproves of the mess his life has become. But Scott renounces Xavier for turning him into a soldier and giving him a mission that he's destroyed his life for. He gives up and goes with the cops, but Master Mold catches up and attacks them all. His programming is damaged and he's registering everyone alive as a mutant, and Scott as a leader of mutants and a priority target. Scott leaps into action, even as he bitterly thinks about how he's only following the programming Xavier put into him He keeps blasting away at the robot, and it keeps crawling back, until eventually it blasts an oil tanker that blows up in its face. Scott is pulled from the wreckage by one of the cops that arrested him, who tells him he's free to go. Back in New York, the doctors declare Warren incompetent to take care of himself and start the amputation without his permission. This is one of my favorite Scott stories. He's lashed out at Xavier's treatment of him before, but never so forcefully. And he's right; Xavier took in a boy without a family and gave him one, but along with that he put the weight of mutantkind on his shoulders. Xavier did finally begin to learn from those mistakes when he took in the New Mutants, and when Scott retired from the X-Men he supported him. But that couldn't erase the trauma Scott endured in his childhood, and once Xavier left, all Scott had left of him were the memories of the first lessons he taught him. The Master Mold is a reflection of Scott. It's been through hell and fallen back on its most basic programming. As Scott rips off more and more pieces of the machine, it never wavers, continuing to come after Scott with single minded determination. And Scott has done the same thing to himself, digging himself further and further into the holes he finds himself in because digging is what the professor taught him to do. The story seems to be leading to a take off the visor moment where Scott unleashes all his pain on the sentinel, but instead its Master Mold who strikes his own finishing blow. It's the same ending Scott is headed towards, but at the same time, the fact that Scott doesn't cut everything loose at once is a sign that maybe he can change. He's had tunnel vision for most of his life, but he's finally seeing his childhood from multiple angles, and maybe he can find a way to live besides bottling everything up and then letting it all out when he finds one target for his anger. Simonson can't undo the damage Layton did to Scott's character, but with this issue she's found a way to turn it from character assassination to the foundation for a new direction for Scott to grow in.
When Warren wakes up from his surgery and sees his wings missing, he breaks down and starts screaming. In Alaska, Scott's new cop friend shows him the body they found that they suspect is Maddie, and, after the glimmer of hope for Scott being able to change, his tunnel vision is back- but this time directed at whoever hurt Maddie. Of course, we know it's not Maddie, because she showed up unconscious in a hospital in an Uncanny issue a while back. Incidentally, that was almost a year ago in publishing time, and it's weird that they started dangling that thread so early, but maybe the plans changed when Layton left. Anyway, Scott calls his team to tell them he's staying to find Maddie's killer, and refuses their requests for him to come back for Warren's sake. With X-Factor inching closer and closer to destruction, Masque and most of the Morlocks decide to return to the Alley to rebuild their home. Masque mocks X-Factor for trying to fit in with humans, but Caliban steps in and refuses to let him hurt them. Skids decides to stay behind to be with Rusty and learn about her powers. Meanwhile, Scott visits Maddie's grave and tells her he loves her and he'll avenge her, and his hallucination of her returns and mocks him for chasing revenge while his best friend is dying. Scott snaps out of it and runs for the airport to get back home. But once again, he's too late. Warren sneaks out of the hospital and heads for the airport, where he gets in his private plane, determined to fly one more time. Scott is in the airport when the others arrive and they all chase after Warren, just in time to see his plane explode over the ocean. Warren's story over the course of this book has been heartbreaking. Before X-Factor he had a good life; one of the only mutants to be accepted as a hero and celebrity, super rich, amazing powers. But like Scott, he got sucked back into the mission, and it broke him. But unlike Scott, who's been broken over and over again, Warren wasn't able to survive this trauma.
As this book goes on, the biggest trend seems to be that everybody's a foil for Scott. So far we've had Rusty with out of control powers, Master Mold with tunnel vision, Warren with the trauma, and in this issue Skids. This is not a complaint at all, because Scott is my favorite character in the book, and Simonson is good at balancing things so this isn't taking away from the other leads. In a training session, Rusty accidentally breaks Skids necklace, prompting a flashback to her mother giving it to her and her father abusing them both. She runs off toward the Morlock tunnels, and Rusty runs after her. Jean wonders if they should follow, and Scott tells her that Skids is like him as a kid, and just as Jean was the first person to get him to open up, Rusty may be able to help Skids. He catches up to her, and she lashes out at him. Jean has been trying to teach her to lower her force field, but she doesn't want to be vulnerable or human, which is maybe the most straightforward mutant power metaphor yet. Suddenly Masque shows up. Although Erg has taken leadership of the Morlocks and forbidden Masque from transforming people, he still hasn't gotten over the massacre and is going crazier than before. He tries to transform Rusty, but Skids stops him, and seeing what a life of isolation can lead to, she decides to go back. Rusty sees a story in the newspaper about the woman he burned being transferred to another hospital. He learns that X-Factor has been paying her medical bills but since the Warren fiasco they may not be able to afford it much longer. He decides to fix it himself. He sneaks into the hospital with the help of Skids, Boom-Boom, and Artie. The woman, Emma, is surprised to see him, but then thankful, because the whole experience helped her find religion. But Rusty is determined, and he convinces her to come see Masque, who repairs her burn scars. But to Skids's horror, the deal Rusty made means Masque gets to destroy Rusty's face now. She steps in, but she's unable to hurt Masque due to her force field. She then has another flashback to the moment her power manifested. Her father knocked her mother down and cracked her skull and then started beating Skids when the forcefield came up. Her father ran off, but it was too late to save her mother. Her last wish was for Skids to take the necklace and run, which she did, but with her field she had to leave behind some beads that she couldn't pick up. In the present, it gives her the revelation she needs to turn off her field for the first time and start beating up Masque. Rusty joins in, and they coerce Masque into fixing Rusty's face so he can breathe again. But as he runs off, he also undoes the work he did on Emma, leaving her with the scars she had to begin with. She tells Rusty and Skids that this too was a sign from God, and her new purpose is to go bring religion to the Morlocks. I liked this issue. I do think it was a weird choice to do an issue with barely any of the leads right after Warren's death. And also the whole thing with Emma was kinda bizarre. But the X-Factor kids needed some fleshing out as characters beyond just what they represent to the adults, and this story did a good job making them all feel distinct. Rusty has kinda been getting annoying doing the same spiel every issue but he got to learn and heal in this one. And Skids has been pretty bland until now but she has a really good backstory and now makes a lot more sense. I do think they should have put one issue of the leads mourning before the jump to another cast, but I like that at least some characters are able to move past their trauma. It keeps hope alive while X-Factor themselves get a whole bunch of new trauma in the upcoming stories.
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lunasvillage · 1 year
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What Happens When No One Helps
Domestic abuse is not a comfortable topic. Sometimes it is hard to know what someone is going through behind closed doors. Other times people see the abuse but aren’t sure what to do or how to help. Then there are the times where it just feels easier for people to turn a blind eye or just pretend they don't see domestic abuse happening around them. They convince themselves that it’s not their business and they shouldn't get involved. But when you choose not to help a domestic violence victim, the consequences can be deadly. These are some of the things that a bystander’s decision to NOT help can lead to.
The first and most obvious result is that the victim will likely continue to experience abuse. Domestic violence can and will escalate if left unchecked, and victims may suffer physical, emotional, and psychological harm as a result. If no one intervenes, the victim may remain trapped in a cycle of abuse.
The victim may feel isolated and unsupported: Victims of domestic violence usually already feel ashamed or embarrassed about their situation and may not have anyone to turn to for help. If no one reaches out to them, or worse if someone actively ignores it, they may feel even more alone and unsupported, which makes it harder for them to find the courage to leave their abusive partner.
The abuser may feel emboldened and more powerful and untouchable. This makes an already dangerous situation even more dangerous. If the abuser believes that their behavior is going unnoticed or unpunished, they may become even more aggressive and controlling. This can put the victim at even greater risk of harm.
Domestic violence may continue in future relationships: If the victim is not provided with the support and resources when they need to leave their abuser, even if they manage to make it out of this relationship, they are much more likely to experience abuse again in future relationships.
The victim may suffer long-term health consequences: Domestic violence can cause physical injuries, such as broken bones and bruises, but it also leads to many long-term health problems, such as chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. If the victim does not receive help, these health problems may worsen over time. The consequences of this can affect not only the victim, but their friends, their family, and the most innocent victims, their children.
In short, failing to help a domestic violence victim can have serious and lasting consequences for both the victim and the community as a whole. It's important to take action if you suspect someone is experiencing domestic violence. However, It’s also important to remember that you have to think about your own safety as well. Confronting an abuser directly may lead to them lashing out at you or retaliating against the victim. Talking to the victim privately is the first step. Encourage them to begin developing a safety plan. Even if they aren't yet ready to leave, helping them come up with a plan to stay safe and to know who to call can help them on the path to getting out. Help connect them to resources such as shelters, counselors, and advocates who can get them all the help they need and break the cycle of abuse that is plaguing our society. 
These are some resources that can be useful for victims or those who are trying to help victims.
National Domestic Violence hotline 
800-799-7233
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
National Resource Center on Domestic Violence
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