Poem: "Transpeciation"
Oct. 12th, 2017 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem came out of the October 3, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from redsixwing, ng_moonmoth, elinox, siliconshaman, YM, and rix_scaedu. It also fills the "experiments by evil scientists" square on my 6-16-17 card for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo fest, and the "severed limbs / body parts" square in my 10-1-17 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. It belongs to the Officer Pink thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.
WARNING: This poem contains imagery that may disturb many readers. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers and also triggers. It features Turq's memories of mad science torture in captivity and other hardships after his escape. This includes graphic child harm, imprisonment, acute and chronic pain, terror and helplessness, graphic torture, graphic medical details, Dr. Carl Bernhardt (because Bernhardt is always a warning), Nazi-esque practices, body horror and dysphoria, unwilling transformation, depersonalization and derealization, alienation from human identity, traumatic bonding, forced separation, attachment damage, implied murder(s), mental decompensation, memory loss, traumatic restraint, traumatic manifestation of teleporting, inadvertent maiming (and possible death), extreme gore, vomiting, living feral, extreme sensory changes, disorientation and fascination, hunger, scavenging, theft, begging, self-hate, shame and guilt, pranks, teleportation trauma, offensive use of superpowers, nightmares, confusion, and other mayhem. This poem relates major parts of the storyline, but essentially expands on things already nutshelled elsewhere, so you could probably skip it without losing too much context. Please consider your tastes and headspace before deciding whether this is something you want to read.
"Transpeciation"
Dru doesn't know how long
he's been imprisoned here.
All he knows is that it hurts,
it always hurts, and it hurts worse
whenever the white coats come for him.
The needles hurt, and the drugs
burn through his body like liquid fire,
but the box. The box is the worst.
They put him in the box and
the colorful lights come on,
baking away everything in
his awareness except pain.
No matter how hard he fights,
he can never escape the white coats.
It's the doctor who terrifies him the most,
the one with the beady black eyes
like a weasel toying with its prey.
He smiles, thin and sharp,
as his pushes his instruments
deeper into Dru's body.
*skip*
Then the changes begin,
and every day Dru feels
less and less like himself.
His hair turns from
brown to blue.
He starts healing faster,
which would be fantastic,
except the white coats notice
and hurt him more to see
how much he can heal.
Dru can heal a lot.
He wishes he couldn't.
Strange energy sparks and
fizzes within his skin. His own body
betrays him, hurting him even when
the white coats leave him alone.
He hates it. He hates everything.
He hates being alive. But he can't
hold onto the feelings; like everything else,
they melt and slip through his fingers.
His body tears itself apart and
puts itself back together again,
but it's wrong now, it's wrong and
he doesn't understand why or how
or what to do about any of it.
He staggers around on four paws,
and everything looks strange and
all the smells are overwhelming
and the sounds move somehow.
The white coats are excited.
The mad scientist is ecstatic.
The boy is just terrified.
He's not really Dru anymore,
but he doesn't know what he is.
*skip*
It's not so bad when
they let the cohort
come together.
Being with others who
share the same experiences
helps the one who was Dru
feel like a part of something.
They're changing too,
the ones who have survived --
he knows that too many have not --
but they're all different.
Darian is black-and-white now.
Lina is yellow touched with peach.
The girl who doesn't talk much
so they nicknamed her Coral
is actually turning pink.
Everyone else has
their own colors, too,
their own strange shapes.
There is something soothing
about being together and
helping each other cope with
all the stress, but it never lasts.
The white coats always pull them apart.
*skip*
Darian is gone.
He got away, somehow.
That's a good thing.
Coral is gone, and
that's not a good thing.
He's pretty sure she's dead.
He doesn't know where Lina is,
he just hasn't seen her recently.
The others come and go.
He doesn't know where he is
or what's happening or anything.
*skip*
His mind is coming apart
under all the stress.
He knows it, and
he can feel it happening,
but he can't stop it.
His memory stutters
and blurs, losing track of
where when what he is.
What they do to him.
What they make him
do to himself. It's all
so horrible. It all hurts.
Sometimes his body forgets
how to put itself back together
the right way, and that
hurts even more.
*skip*
They're holding him down again.
They're holding him down, because
they're probing for nerves this time,
and it hurts, it hurts so much that
not even the straps can hold him.
So they tighten the straps,
and their big hands pin him
against the metal table that feels
so cold against his skin, like ice,
like he'll never be warm again.
He writhes under their hands, and
they lean over him, pressing harder.
He wishes with every cell of his body
that he could be somewhere else,
anywhere else in the world --
-- and then -- and then --
-- his body shreds itself
out of the straps and shackles,
tearing pain at wrists and ankles --
-- dissolution, disorientation, darkness.
*skip*
He comes to in a forest.
It is dim but not wholly dark.
There is blood all over him.
Some of it is his own. His arms
look like he ripped himself loose
from a barbed-wire fence.
They're still bleeding.
Some of it is not his.
He is covered in everything
that was touching him: the straps,
part of the metal table under him,
and ... pieces. People pieces.
Hand. Whole arms.
Fingers scattered around
like fat white worms.
Chunks of flesh that
he can't even identify.
Part of a face.
He heaves in the dry leaves,
throwing up until nothing
comes out but spit.
He doesn't know where he is,
but he knows he can't stay here.
He forces himself to his feet
and staggers deeper into
the darkening forest.
*skip*
He lives in the woods
as long as he can.
He's not very good at it,
never had anyone to teach him
how to hunt or fish or which plants
he can eat without getting sick.
He is determined to learn
his new shapes, though,
the dog-fox-wolf thing and
the ferret and the deer.
He can feel others creeping
beneath his skin, too.
He likes the caney best,
so that's how he spends
the majority of his time.
The colors look different,
some blurred into each other
and some new ones that make patterns
in flowers he has never seen before.
He learns that the sounds shift
when he twists his big triangular ears.
And the smells. The smells.
It's like a symphony. He can sit
on top of a hill and let the wind tell him
everything that's happening for
miles in every direction.
He doesn't know why roadkill
sometimes smells beautiful
to him but it does. It does.
He's not human anymore, and
that hurts, but it doesn't just hurt
now that he's out of the lab and
nobody's torturing him anymore.
It's not always terrible.
There are moments of peace,
glimpses of pleasure.
*skip*
When hunger drives him
into the towns, he learns
how to scavenge and steal.
He doesn't want to, but he has to.
He becomes a good scrounge
and a poor beggar and
a terrible thief.
He hates himself
a little more every time
he does something wrong
just so he can survive.
*skip*
The boy who was Dru is
uncomfortable in crowds now,
but he can't keep hiding
in the forest forever.
People look at his blue hair
and nickname him Turq.
He thinks about the Turk
and it makes him smile
even though he hasn't
played chess in ages, so
he doesn't correct them.
He can't be Dru anymore,
but he can be this Turq.
*skip*
He meets Ansel and
plays pranks on him, but
then it stops being funny.
They tangle by Briarwood Park and
the transformation goes so far wrong
that it leaves Turq coughing up his lungs.
Ansel tries to help, but it's not that simple,
and then Turq shocks him senseless
to escape the threat of confinement.
The shame of it burns into him
worse than the coughing did.
To his amazement, Ansel is
still speaking with him afterwards.
They meet in the park and Turq explains
a little bit about his horrible past.
Turq doesn't know why
the cop is so sympathetic,
but it helps, and that's why
he can't keep away.
*skip*
No matter how bad it gets,
Ansel sticks with him.
He brings Turq food and
clothes, invites him to sleep
in the gazebo, and shows him
the resources around town.
Life gets a little less unbearable.
*skip*
Everything is different.
Nothing will ever be the same.
Turq wanders through the world
with his body tearing itself apart
and putting itself back together,
with his mind in ribbons and
leaking memories half the time
and nightmares the other half.
He doesn't know who he is now, or
what he is, or what it means.
He doesn't know why
this has happened to him
or how to handle it.
All he knows is that
everything is different,
and it hurts, it always hurts,
but it hurts less when he isn't human.
* * *
Notes:
Turq (Drustan Moreau) -- He has pale skin and hazel eyes with hints of blue, green, and gray. His hair was originally brown, but is turning turquoise from the top down. His eyebrows, beard, and mustache are still brown. His ears are pierced. He is slim and muscular with a heart-shaped face. He is left-handed. Drustan is Scorpio with Pisces as a moon sign. His heritage includes Welsh, French, and German. Following incidents of child abuse and neglect, he grew up in the foster care system, so he had no real family support for years. The results of that have not been very good.
When Drustan reached the Liáng family, he finally found a comfortable home. This lasted until Mingxia's baby was born with severe medical problems, and Family Services dispersed the foster children to other locations. Drustan suffered through several bad placements, sometimes running away from them. Then his last foster parents sold him while pretending that he had run away again.
As a result, Drustan fell prey to a mad scientist whose disturbing experiments gave him superpowers. The body horror from his ordeal has left him full of dread and melancholy, making it difficult for him to connect with people. He also gets anxious about being tied up, locked in, or confined in any other way. That has given him a nasty set of striationary marks, more than once.
Turq has worked as a supervillain; he is a capable thief and a useful distraction, but iffy in a real fight. Most often he uses the shapeshifting, although his neural blast allows him to disorient people or shock them unconscious depending how much force he puts into it. He does his best to conceal the drawbacks of his superpowers, because he doesn't want anyone to take advantage of him. He is fatalistic about injuries and sometimes resistant to help. His cape name is a double tap. It's short for turquoise, in reference to his hair. It also touches on the Turk chess machine, which in Terramagne was not a hoax but an early gizmo.
Currently Turq lives in Bluehill, Missouri where he often interacts with Officer Pink (Ansel Nicholson). It has taken a lot of work, but Turq is starting to move back toward everyday society. He has also reconnected with the Liáng family, although that's an emotional roller-coaster of its own. His new support networking is helping him overcome the trauma he has survived.
Origin: Mad science torture. The supervillain Carl Bernhardt locked Drustan in a strange metal chamber and bombarded him with mysterious energies that caused his body to warp. He escaped when he finally manifested teleportation. Turq has since worked as a henchman for hire.
Uniform: Street clothes. He prefers clothes with stripes, spots, or other patterns because they hide bloodstains better. Usually he wears dark or neutral colors, but he also likes the blue-to-green range.
Qualities: Good (+2) Adaptable, Good (+2) Chess Player, Good (+2) Comforting When Fuzzy, Good (+2) Fast, Good (+2) Finding and Fixing Things, Good (+2) Supervillain Henchman
Poor (-2) Body Horror
Powers: Average (0) Teleporting, Average (0) Neural Blast, Average (0) Regeneration, Average (0) Shapeshifting
His alternate forms include caney, deer, and ferret. In caney form he has a violet gland with a pronounced floral scent, which is less intense but still present in his other shapes.
Vulnerability: Turq has difficulty controlling his superpowers. Shapeshifting screws up his body in ways that leave him coughing and vomiting blood afterwards. However, he can heal the damage -- anything that doesn't kill him instantly probably can't kill him at all. Teleporting can leave him disoriented and twitching from misconnected nerves, or scrambled inside, or all of the above. He actually travels by disintegrating and then reintegrating somewhere else, rather than by blinking from one place to another the way most teleporters do.
Motivation: Get through the day without screaming too much.
See pictures of Turq as a child and as a teen.
Carl Bernhardt -- He has fair skin, beady black eyes, and short black hair that is going gray and receding at the hairline. His ancestors moved from Germany to Argentina during World War II, carrying on less-than-ethical scientific research. When people objected to that, his parents moved from Argentina to America to escape the heat. In high school, Carl studied Spanish and went to Argentina with his classmates, wanting to visit some of his relatives there. Upon discovering that some of them were still in the family business of shadowy experiments, he decided to stay and get involved himself. His personal interest developed into studying superpowers, connecting with the family background through his desire to replicate superpowers as a way of furthering evolution. Eventually his research led to him fleeing from Argentina and bouncing around several other countries. Wanted by various authorities, he is currently back in America.
As a psychopath, Carl excels at manipulating people for his own ends, and feels no empathy or remorse. He disregards laws, morals, and the rights of others. He views the whole world as a lab and everything in it as materials for his experiments. However, Carl also fakes being normal well enough to fool almost everyone except for his hapless captives. He is calm, logical, and organized in his plans. Most people take him for a respectable scientist and tend to do whatever he wants. But anyone who has dealt with psychopaths or narcissists gets a bonus for recognizing him -- you can see it in his creepy, soulless eyes if you know what to look for. The problem is that nobody else will believe you when you try to warn them about how dangerous he is.
His experiments have produced a number of substances, gizmos, super-gizmos, and even a few people that Carl has sold for exorbitant prices. Turq is one of the few to survive and escape. That's an example of the skill level: a lot of theoretical knowledge, some equipment, but in live subjects the results are often fatal and even when they're not fatal there are significant flaws. This irritates Carl to no end, and sometimes makes his buyers unhappy too. But that's okay: he can always kill them if they complain.
Origin: Eugenics. The family has spent decades dabbling in everything from breeding programs to genetic engineering in hopes of improving the human race, and occasionally they take personal advantage of techniques that seem promising.
Uniform: Usually a business suit or lab wear.
Qualities: Master (+6) Psychopath, Expert (+4) I Can Kill You in So Many Ways, Expert (+4) Master's Degree in Biology, Good (+2) Dexterity, Good (+2) Knowledge of Superpowers, Good (+2) Wealth
Poor (-2) Wanted by the Authorities
Powers: Expert (+4) Super-Intellect, Good (+2) Super-Gizmology
Motivation: To learn everything about superpowers.
Nebuly (Darian Cormac) -- He has pale skin and gray eyes. His hair is short and white on the sides of his head, while the top has a row of long black dreadlocks. His body hair is patched and swirled in black, brown, and white. He is tall and strong. He has a stretched lobe tunnel and upper lobe piercing in each ear. He has bridge, both nostril, and septum piercings in his nose. He has a labret, snakebites, and two pairs of corner piercings in his lower lip. Nebuly uses the occasional pain from piercings to break through the numbness of depression and remind him to take good care of himself.
Darian grew up in a happy, healthy family until he and his parents were attacked by human traffickers when Darian was 10. His parents fought ferociously to protect him, and managed to kill at least one of the attackers. Due to all the blood spilled, Darian suspects that his parents were also killed, and doesn't really want to find out the truth. He is about 21 now.
Origin: Mad science torture. The supervillain Carl Bernhardt locked Darian in a strange metal chamber and bombarded her with mysterious energies that caused his body to warp. He escaped when he finally manifested Vaporous Form. Now he works as a rennie and occasionally as a hacker.
Uniform: Street clothes. He usually wears black. Sometimes he lightens up with white, gray, or brown. Rarely he wears brighter colors like blue or purple. He also has some medieval garb.
Qualities: Good (+2) Fortitude, Good (+2) Leader, Good (+2) Hacker, Good (+2) Historical Re-enactment, Good (+2) Tall
Poor (-2) Depression
Powers: Good (+2) Cryptid Shifter
In Nebuly's case, the metapower of Cryptid Shifter and variable enhancements to vision. Good (+2) Control Electricity (Signature Stunts: Average EMP, Average Lightning Bolt, Average Neural Disruption), Good (+2) Regeneration, Good (+2) Shapeshifting, Good (+2) Vaporous Form (Signature Stunt: Average Liquid Form), Average (0) Merle, and Average (0) True Sight. His alternate forms include myrstag, liger, blue tricolor merle border collie, western spotted skunk, black-and-white tegu lizard, and snowy owl. His night vision is Average in lizard form; Good in human, myrstag, and dog forms; Expert in skunk and liger forms; and Master in owl form. The myrstag's distinctive musky scent carries over into other forms, but only the skunk's is strong enough to function as a bioweapon.
Motivation: To put his life back together.
Heraldry defines nebuly as a wavering line meant to resemble clouds. It comes from the Latin word nebula referring to a mist, vapor, or cloud. See pictures of a line nebuly and a shield emblazoned Barry nebuly of nine azure and argent.
The myrstag form has sharp antlers for defense, a heavy coat which sheds rain, hooved paws for walking on soft ground, and the ability to digest almost anything. The outer guard hairs are coarse and wiry; the middle hairs are silky; and the woolly undercoat is soft. In Swedish, myr means a bog, moor, or wetland. Caribou and reindeer have large cloven hooves which help them walk over marshy ground or swim through open water; the myrstag enjoys similar features.
Saffron (Lina Craddock) -- She has bisque skin, luminous turquoise eyes, and long straight yellow hair streaked with peach. Her body hair varies between peach and yellow too; in the picture you can see that her eyebrows are kind of a dark peach color and she's using heavy eye makeup to cover the yellow lashes. Her heritage includes Welsh, Scottish, French, and Arabic. She pronounces her surname "KRATH-ock" while everyone else says "KRAD-ock." Following incidents of child sexual abuse and abandonment, she grew up in the foster care system, so she has no real family support. The results of that have not been very good. She is about 17 years old.
One time when Lina ran away from her foster parents, she fell prey to human traffickers. That got her into prostitution. Eventually they sold her to a mad scientist whose disturbing experiments gave her superpowers. A lifelong pattern of victimization and revictimization has left her with disorganized attachment and serious boundary issues, making it difficult for her to connect with people. Lina carries herself like a victim. Sometimes she lets people violate boundaries that she doesn't even realize she should have, while other times she pushes them away in a panic. She also tends to "fade" under stress, as the dissociation reflexively activates her Phasing. She has been mistaken for a ghost, more than once.
Saffron's abilities lend themselves well to the underworld. Her Neural Manipulation leans more toward pleasure than pain, although she can deliver an unpleasant jolt if distressed. Her skill with pillow talk means that she knows what's going on around her, and can sometimes tease out secrets that people don't intend to share. She can Phase away from trouble if cornered, and also tends to use it for stealing things.
Origin: Mad science torture. The supervillain Carl Bernhardt locked Lina in a strange metal chamber and bombarded her with mysterious energies that caused his body to warp. She escaped when she finally manifested Phasing. Now she works as a prostitute and occasionally as a thief.
Uniform: Street clothes. Often she wears dark or neutral colors to hide her body. When hooking, she dresses to display her assets, usually in warm tones. She is particularly fond of shot silk with yellow/pink or yellow/orange combinations.
Qualities: Good (+2) Agility, Good (+2) Pillow Talk, Good (+2) Poker Player, Good (+2) Prostitute, Good (+2) Versatile
Poor (-2) Boundary Issues
Powers: Average (0) Cryptid Shifter
In Saffron's case, the metapower of Cryptid Shifter includes Average (0) Neural Manipulation, Average (0) Phase, Average (0) Regeneration, Average (0) Shapeshifting, Average (0) Yellow Hair, and variable enhancements to vision.
Her alternate forms include felydd, horse, rabbit, squirrel, flame-colored tanager, and albino lavender ball python. The felydd has a catlike body, paws with retractable claws, and a long fluffy tail like a snow leopard. The coat is mostly shades of yellow and peach with darker leopard spots plus a white ruff, belly, and tail tip. The yellow eyes are slitted like a cat's, but the face looks more like a fennec fox with a tiny muzzle, although the enormous ears are set on top of the head instead of the sides. In felydd form, Saffron has musk glands with a pronounced musky-spicy scent, which is less intense but still present in her other shapes. It is not quite a superpower unto itself, but it definitely contributes to her sex appeal. She has the ultraviolet vision that sometimes comes with exotic colors, plus enhanced night vision which is Average in human form and Good in felydd form.
Vulnerability: Saffron has difficulty controlling her superpowers. Shapeshifting screws up her body in ways that can leave her disoriented and shaking afterwards. Sometimes she has problems remaining solid, and other times she loses bits of her body or gets foreign objects embedded inside her. However, she can heal the damage -- anything that doesn't kill her instantly probably can't kill her at all. Phasing can leave her confused and twitching from misconnected nerves, or scrambled inside, or all of the above.
Motivation: To feel safe. She has an unfortunate habit of pursuing this goal by clinging to a protector, and she often chooses bad ones.
A civet is a catlike animal which produces a strong musk once used in perfumery. The smell has been described as musky, fecal, and animalic; when diluted it becomes very sensual. Currently synthetic civet musk is preferred instead; T-America has much better production values than L-America in replicating animal fragrances. The felydd produces a musky-spicy scent similar to civet.
In Gaelic, felydd can be translated as "fancy" or "saucy" although pinning down references is difficult. The name is pronounced "FEL-ith." It also riffs on felid, a general term for cats or catlike creatures.
* * *
(Some of these links are appalling.)
The mad scientist is a common trope in entertainment, but also disturbingly real. Mad scientists frighten people because they distort the quest for knowledge as a solution to problems, and instead cause problems. They use cruel methods toward unethical ends. Another creepy factor is that genius and madness really are related. Although most "mad scientists" depicted in entertainment are actually just mad engineers, Carl Bernhardt does use scientific methods such as experimental groups and control groups. In fact, Turq started out as control before falling into a later experiment.
(These links are awful too.)
Research on human subjects requires careful attention to ethics, lest if fall into unethical areas of human experimentation. What happened to Turq and his cohort extends into the realm of medical torture. This kind of abuse has deep historic roots. Motivations range from morbid curiosity to outright power-tripping, but the Nazis were particularly known for their maniacal pursuit of human perfection.
(These links are intense.)
PTSD comes from traumatic experiences, and among its most potent causes is a sense of helplessness. Ongoing trauma is particularly devastating.
Such experiences can cause symptoms such as touch aversion and skin hunger -- sometimes at the same time. Medical abuse can also raise issues over painful or conflicted touch. Supportive friends and family can help with the healing process. Understand how to reconnect with your body after trauma.
(Some of these links are upsetting.)
Traumatic bonding refers to close human connections formed under stressful circumstances, most often used in regard to unhealthy bonds between abuser and victim. However, shared trauma and pain generally encourage bonding, and that context can impair the quality of the connection in ways that would benefit from healing. This happens often during disasters and war. While debriefing immediately after trauma tends not to help, and belongs to a list of therapies that can cause harm, some survivors nonetheless have found it appealing even though it produced no measurable reduction in the rate of PTSD development. This may be due to their greater affinity for talk therapy, in which case the intervention was simply mistimed; or it may be a near-miss where what they needed was social bonding and the offered intervention was as close as they could get. Another factor is oxytocin, which the body produces during some painful experiences (such as childbirth) but also during pleasant ones (such as sex) and which facilitates bonding. You can see this connection between Turq and his cohort comforting each other, then later with Ansel comforting Turq. A secure bond can help heal the damage of earlier bonds which were harmful or were hopeful but impaired by traumatic context. It also supports the process of naming and describing what happened, binding the memories with words to hold them in place so they don't drift around and cause problems.
(Some of these links are difficult too.)
Nightmares are a common symptom of PTSD. There are various treatments for PTSD nightmares and advice for health workers. People debate whether or not it's acceptable for adults to seek comfort after a nightmare, so most of the advice relates to children's nightmares. Understand how to cope with flashbacks and deal with nightmares.
Friends and family help people overcome challenges. These and other resilience factors can reduce the chance that a traumatic experience will develop into PTSD. Notice that Turq is becoming less skittish and more inclined to seek help when he gets upset. Understand how to support and comfort a friend during a crisis, or how to reach out when you need support.
(More awful links.)
Child abuse and neglect tend to cause emotional trauma. The effects can include guilt, shame, and self-hate. This can pose particular complications for male survivors. Turq had some of this baggage even before his kidnapping, and it only got worse from the mad science torture. An essential step in healing involves placing the blame where it belongs, on the perpetrator. Cultivating self-compassion can also help to heal the shame, overcome the guilt, and relieve the self-hate of childhood trauma. Friends and family can help this process.
Attachment is a way of describing different patterns of relationship between children and their caregivers, but applies to adult relationships also. Here child maltreatment causes damage to the bonding mechanisms. There are ways to nurture healthy bonds in people with attachment disorders. When it comes to attachment, Turq is a palimpsest, because he has layers of bad treatment, a very strong family connection, a lot more mistreatment, and how has supportive friends. So his reactions often fluctuate.
Removal from the home necessarily causes trauma, because losing a parent is the worst thing that can happen to a child. This often causes attachment issues or disorders. Another way to look at this is connection disruption, rather than attachment disorder: not something wrong with the survivor, but something wrong with what happened to them. Foster care disrupts attachment in ways that cause loss and grief effects. Disordered attachment appears on a spectrum from secure attachment to insecure but organized forms of attachment, disorganized attachment, secure base distortions, and non-attachment disorders at the far end. Parents of fostered or adopted children can help repair this damage.
PTSD of Abandonment has a particular flavor of its own, marked by a sense of being "damaged goods" and fear of hurting others. Here are some resources on abandonment and ideas on how to help people who feel abandoned.
redsixwing, ng_moonmoth, elinox, siliconshaman, YM, and rix_scaedu. It also fills the "experiments by evil scientists" square on my 6-16-17 card for the hc_bingo fest, and the "severed limbs / body parts" square in my 10-1-17 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. It belongs to the Officer Pink thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.WARNING: This poem contains imagery that may disturb many readers. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers and also triggers. It features Turq's memories of mad science torture in captivity and other hardships after his escape. This includes graphic child harm, imprisonment, acute and chronic pain, terror and helplessness, graphic torture, graphic medical details, Dr. Carl Bernhardt (because Bernhardt is always a warning), Nazi-esque practices, body horror and dysphoria, unwilling transformation, depersonalization and derealization, alienation from human identity, traumatic bonding, forced separation, attachment damage, implied murder(s), mental decompensation, memory loss, traumatic restraint, traumatic manifestation of teleporting, inadvertent maiming (and possible death), extreme gore, vomiting, living feral, extreme sensory changes, disorientation and fascination, hunger, scavenging, theft, begging, self-hate, shame and guilt, pranks, teleportation trauma, offensive use of superpowers, nightmares, confusion, and other mayhem. This poem relates major parts of the storyline, but essentially expands on things already nutshelled elsewhere, so you could probably skip it without losing too much context. Please consider your tastes and headspace before deciding whether this is something you want to read.
"Transpeciation"
Dru doesn't know how long
he's been imprisoned here.
All he knows is that it hurts,
it always hurts, and it hurts worse
whenever the white coats come for him.
The needles hurt, and the drugs
burn through his body like liquid fire,
but the box. The box is the worst.
They put him in the box and
the colorful lights come on,
baking away everything in
his awareness except pain.
No matter how hard he fights,
he can never escape the white coats.
It's the doctor who terrifies him the most,
the one with the beady black eyes
like a weasel toying with its prey.
He smiles, thin and sharp,
as his pushes his instruments
deeper into Dru's body.
*skip*
Then the changes begin,
and every day Dru feels
less and less like himself.
His hair turns from
brown to blue.
He starts healing faster,
which would be fantastic,
except the white coats notice
and hurt him more to see
how much he can heal.
Dru can heal a lot.
He wishes he couldn't.
Strange energy sparks and
fizzes within his skin. His own body
betrays him, hurting him even when
the white coats leave him alone.
He hates it. He hates everything.
He hates being alive. But he can't
hold onto the feelings; like everything else,
they melt and slip through his fingers.
His body tears itself apart and
puts itself back together again,
but it's wrong now, it's wrong and
he doesn't understand why or how
or what to do about any of it.
He staggers around on four paws,
and everything looks strange and
all the smells are overwhelming
and the sounds move somehow.
The white coats are excited.
The mad scientist is ecstatic.
The boy is just terrified.
He's not really Dru anymore,
but he doesn't know what he is.
*skip*
It's not so bad when
they let the cohort
come together.
Being with others who
share the same experiences
helps the one who was Dru
feel like a part of something.
They're changing too,
the ones who have survived --
he knows that too many have not --
but they're all different.
Darian is black-and-white now.
Lina is yellow touched with peach.
The girl who doesn't talk much
so they nicknamed her Coral
is actually turning pink.
Everyone else has
their own colors, too,
their own strange shapes.
There is something soothing
about being together and
helping each other cope with
all the stress, but it never lasts.
The white coats always pull them apart.
*skip*
Darian is gone.
He got away, somehow.
That's a good thing.
Coral is gone, and
that's not a good thing.
He's pretty sure she's dead.
He doesn't know where Lina is,
he just hasn't seen her recently.
The others come and go.
He doesn't know where he is
or what's happening or anything.
*skip*
His mind is coming apart
under all the stress.
He knows it, and
he can feel it happening,
but he can't stop it.
His memory stutters
and blurs, losing track of
where when what he is.
What they do to him.
What they make him
do to himself. It's all
so horrible. It all hurts.
Sometimes his body forgets
how to put itself back together
the right way, and that
hurts even more.
*skip*
They're holding him down again.
They're holding him down, because
they're probing for nerves this time,
and it hurts, it hurts so much that
not even the straps can hold him.
So they tighten the straps,
and their big hands pin him
against the metal table that feels
so cold against his skin, like ice,
like he'll never be warm again.
He writhes under their hands, and
they lean over him, pressing harder.
He wishes with every cell of his body
that he could be somewhere else,
anywhere else in the world --
-- and then -- and then --
-- his body shreds itself
out of the straps and shackles,
tearing pain at wrists and ankles --
-- dissolution, disorientation, darkness.
*skip*
He comes to in a forest.
It is dim but not wholly dark.
There is blood all over him.
Some of it is his own. His arms
look like he ripped himself loose
from a barbed-wire fence.
They're still bleeding.
Some of it is not his.
He is covered in everything
that was touching him: the straps,
part of the metal table under him,
and ... pieces. People pieces.
Hand. Whole arms.
Fingers scattered around
like fat white worms.
Chunks of flesh that
he can't even identify.
Part of a face.
He heaves in the dry leaves,
throwing up until nothing
comes out but spit.
He doesn't know where he is,
but he knows he can't stay here.
He forces himself to his feet
and staggers deeper into
the darkening forest.
*skip*
He lives in the woods
as long as he can.
He's not very good at it,
never had anyone to teach him
how to hunt or fish or which plants
he can eat without getting sick.
He is determined to learn
his new shapes, though,
the dog-fox-wolf thing and
the ferret and the deer.
He can feel others creeping
beneath his skin, too.
He likes the caney best,
so that's how he spends
the majority of his time.
The colors look different,
some blurred into each other
and some new ones that make patterns
in flowers he has never seen before.
He learns that the sounds shift
when he twists his big triangular ears.
And the smells. The smells.
It's like a symphony. He can sit
on top of a hill and let the wind tell him
everything that's happening for
miles in every direction.
He doesn't know why roadkill
sometimes smells beautiful
to him but it does. It does.
He's not human anymore, and
that hurts, but it doesn't just hurt
now that he's out of the lab and
nobody's torturing him anymore.
It's not always terrible.
There are moments of peace,
glimpses of pleasure.
*skip*
When hunger drives him
into the towns, he learns
how to scavenge and steal.
He doesn't want to, but he has to.
He becomes a good scrounge
and a poor beggar and
a terrible thief.
He hates himself
a little more every time
he does something wrong
just so he can survive.
*skip*
The boy who was Dru is
uncomfortable in crowds now,
but he can't keep hiding
in the forest forever.
People look at his blue hair
and nickname him Turq.
He thinks about the Turk
and it makes him smile
even though he hasn't
played chess in ages, so
he doesn't correct them.
He can't be Dru anymore,
but he can be this Turq.
*skip*
He meets Ansel and
plays pranks on him, but
then it stops being funny.
They tangle by Briarwood Park and
the transformation goes so far wrong
that it leaves Turq coughing up his lungs.
Ansel tries to help, but it's not that simple,
and then Turq shocks him senseless
to escape the threat of confinement.
The shame of it burns into him
worse than the coughing did.
To his amazement, Ansel is
still speaking with him afterwards.
They meet in the park and Turq explains
a little bit about his horrible past.
Turq doesn't know why
the cop is so sympathetic,
but it helps, and that's why
he can't keep away.
*skip*
No matter how bad it gets,
Ansel sticks with him.
He brings Turq food and
clothes, invites him to sleep
in the gazebo, and shows him
the resources around town.
Life gets a little less unbearable.
*skip*
Everything is different.
Nothing will ever be the same.
Turq wanders through the world
with his body tearing itself apart
and putting itself back together,
with his mind in ribbons and
leaking memories half the time
and nightmares the other half.
He doesn't know who he is now, or
what he is, or what it means.
He doesn't know why
this has happened to him
or how to handle it.
All he knows is that
everything is different,
and it hurts, it always hurts,
but it hurts less when he isn't human.
* * *
Notes:
Turq (Drustan Moreau) -- He has pale skin and hazel eyes with hints of blue, green, and gray. His hair was originally brown, but is turning turquoise from the top down. His eyebrows, beard, and mustache are still brown. His ears are pierced. He is slim and muscular with a heart-shaped face. He is left-handed. Drustan is Scorpio with Pisces as a moon sign. His heritage includes Welsh, French, and German. Following incidents of child abuse and neglect, he grew up in the foster care system, so he had no real family support for years. The results of that have not been very good.
When Drustan reached the Liáng family, he finally found a comfortable home. This lasted until Mingxia's baby was born with severe medical problems, and Family Services dispersed the foster children to other locations. Drustan suffered through several bad placements, sometimes running away from them. Then his last foster parents sold him while pretending that he had run away again.
As a result, Drustan fell prey to a mad scientist whose disturbing experiments gave him superpowers. The body horror from his ordeal has left him full of dread and melancholy, making it difficult for him to connect with people. He also gets anxious about being tied up, locked in, or confined in any other way. That has given him a nasty set of striationary marks, more than once.
Turq has worked as a supervillain; he is a capable thief and a useful distraction, but iffy in a real fight. Most often he uses the shapeshifting, although his neural blast allows him to disorient people or shock them unconscious depending how much force he puts into it. He does his best to conceal the drawbacks of his superpowers, because he doesn't want anyone to take advantage of him. He is fatalistic about injuries and sometimes resistant to help. His cape name is a double tap. It's short for turquoise, in reference to his hair. It also touches on the Turk chess machine, which in Terramagne was not a hoax but an early gizmo.
Currently Turq lives in Bluehill, Missouri where he often interacts with Officer Pink (Ansel Nicholson). It has taken a lot of work, but Turq is starting to move back toward everyday society. He has also reconnected with the Liáng family, although that's an emotional roller-coaster of its own. His new support networking is helping him overcome the trauma he has survived.
Origin: Mad science torture. The supervillain Carl Bernhardt locked Drustan in a strange metal chamber and bombarded him with mysterious energies that caused his body to warp. He escaped when he finally manifested teleportation. Turq has since worked as a henchman for hire.
Uniform: Street clothes. He prefers clothes with stripes, spots, or other patterns because they hide bloodstains better. Usually he wears dark or neutral colors, but he also likes the blue-to-green range.
Qualities: Good (+2) Adaptable, Good (+2) Chess Player, Good (+2) Comforting When Fuzzy, Good (+2) Fast, Good (+2) Finding and Fixing Things, Good (+2) Supervillain Henchman
Poor (-2) Body Horror
Powers: Average (0) Teleporting, Average (0) Neural Blast, Average (0) Regeneration, Average (0) Shapeshifting
His alternate forms include caney, deer, and ferret. In caney form he has a violet gland with a pronounced floral scent, which is less intense but still present in his other shapes.
Vulnerability: Turq has difficulty controlling his superpowers. Shapeshifting screws up his body in ways that leave him coughing and vomiting blood afterwards. However, he can heal the damage -- anything that doesn't kill him instantly probably can't kill him at all. Teleporting can leave him disoriented and twitching from misconnected nerves, or scrambled inside, or all of the above. He actually travels by disintegrating and then reintegrating somewhere else, rather than by blinking from one place to another the way most teleporters do.
Motivation: Get through the day without screaming too much.
See pictures of Turq as a child and as a teen.
Carl Bernhardt -- He has fair skin, beady black eyes, and short black hair that is going gray and receding at the hairline. His ancestors moved from Germany to Argentina during World War II, carrying on less-than-ethical scientific research. When people objected to that, his parents moved from Argentina to America to escape the heat. In high school, Carl studied Spanish and went to Argentina with his classmates, wanting to visit some of his relatives there. Upon discovering that some of them were still in the family business of shadowy experiments, he decided to stay and get involved himself. His personal interest developed into studying superpowers, connecting with the family background through his desire to replicate superpowers as a way of furthering evolution. Eventually his research led to him fleeing from Argentina and bouncing around several other countries. Wanted by various authorities, he is currently back in America.
As a psychopath, Carl excels at manipulating people for his own ends, and feels no empathy or remorse. He disregards laws, morals, and the rights of others. He views the whole world as a lab and everything in it as materials for his experiments. However, Carl also fakes being normal well enough to fool almost everyone except for his hapless captives. He is calm, logical, and organized in his plans. Most people take him for a respectable scientist and tend to do whatever he wants. But anyone who has dealt with psychopaths or narcissists gets a bonus for recognizing him -- you can see it in his creepy, soulless eyes if you know what to look for. The problem is that nobody else will believe you when you try to warn them about how dangerous he is.
His experiments have produced a number of substances, gizmos, super-gizmos, and even a few people that Carl has sold for exorbitant prices. Turq is one of the few to survive and escape. That's an example of the skill level: a lot of theoretical knowledge, some equipment, but in live subjects the results are often fatal and even when they're not fatal there are significant flaws. This irritates Carl to no end, and sometimes makes his buyers unhappy too. But that's okay: he can always kill them if they complain.
Origin: Eugenics. The family has spent decades dabbling in everything from breeding programs to genetic engineering in hopes of improving the human race, and occasionally they take personal advantage of techniques that seem promising.
Uniform: Usually a business suit or lab wear.
Qualities: Master (+6) Psychopath, Expert (+4) I Can Kill You in So Many Ways, Expert (+4) Master's Degree in Biology, Good (+2) Dexterity, Good (+2) Knowledge of Superpowers, Good (+2) Wealth
Poor (-2) Wanted by the Authorities
Powers: Expert (+4) Super-Intellect, Good (+2) Super-Gizmology
Motivation: To learn everything about superpowers.
Nebuly (Darian Cormac) -- He has pale skin and gray eyes. His hair is short and white on the sides of his head, while the top has a row of long black dreadlocks. His body hair is patched and swirled in black, brown, and white. He is tall and strong. He has a stretched lobe tunnel and upper lobe piercing in each ear. He has bridge, both nostril, and septum piercings in his nose. He has a labret, snakebites, and two pairs of corner piercings in his lower lip. Nebuly uses the occasional pain from piercings to break through the numbness of depression and remind him to take good care of himself.
Darian grew up in a happy, healthy family until he and his parents were attacked by human traffickers when Darian was 10. His parents fought ferociously to protect him, and managed to kill at least one of the attackers. Due to all the blood spilled, Darian suspects that his parents were also killed, and doesn't really want to find out the truth. He is about 21 now.
Origin: Mad science torture. The supervillain Carl Bernhardt locked Darian in a strange metal chamber and bombarded her with mysterious energies that caused his body to warp. He escaped when he finally manifested Vaporous Form. Now he works as a rennie and occasionally as a hacker.
Uniform: Street clothes. He usually wears black. Sometimes he lightens up with white, gray, or brown. Rarely he wears brighter colors like blue or purple. He also has some medieval garb.
Qualities: Good (+2) Fortitude, Good (+2) Leader, Good (+2) Hacker, Good (+2) Historical Re-enactment, Good (+2) Tall
Poor (-2) Depression
Powers: Good (+2) Cryptid Shifter
In Nebuly's case, the metapower of Cryptid Shifter and variable enhancements to vision. Good (+2) Control Electricity (Signature Stunts: Average EMP, Average Lightning Bolt, Average Neural Disruption), Good (+2) Regeneration, Good (+2) Shapeshifting, Good (+2) Vaporous Form (Signature Stunt: Average Liquid Form), Average (0) Merle, and Average (0) True Sight. His alternate forms include myrstag, liger, blue tricolor merle border collie, western spotted skunk, black-and-white tegu lizard, and snowy owl. His night vision is Average in lizard form; Good in human, myrstag, and dog forms; Expert in skunk and liger forms; and Master in owl form. The myrstag's distinctive musky scent carries over into other forms, but only the skunk's is strong enough to function as a bioweapon.
Motivation: To put his life back together.
Heraldry defines nebuly as a wavering line meant to resemble clouds. It comes from the Latin word nebula referring to a mist, vapor, or cloud. See pictures of a line nebuly and a shield emblazoned Barry nebuly of nine azure and argent.
The myrstag form has sharp antlers for defense, a heavy coat which sheds rain, hooved paws for walking on soft ground, and the ability to digest almost anything. The outer guard hairs are coarse and wiry; the middle hairs are silky; and the woolly undercoat is soft. In Swedish, myr means a bog, moor, or wetland. Caribou and reindeer have large cloven hooves which help them walk over marshy ground or swim through open water; the myrstag enjoys similar features.
Saffron (Lina Craddock) -- She has bisque skin, luminous turquoise eyes, and long straight yellow hair streaked with peach. Her body hair varies between peach and yellow too; in the picture you can see that her eyebrows are kind of a dark peach color and she's using heavy eye makeup to cover the yellow lashes. Her heritage includes Welsh, Scottish, French, and Arabic. She pronounces her surname "KRATH-ock" while everyone else says "KRAD-ock." Following incidents of child sexual abuse and abandonment, she grew up in the foster care system, so she has no real family support. The results of that have not been very good. She is about 17 years old.
One time when Lina ran away from her foster parents, she fell prey to human traffickers. That got her into prostitution. Eventually they sold her to a mad scientist whose disturbing experiments gave her superpowers. A lifelong pattern of victimization and revictimization has left her with disorganized attachment and serious boundary issues, making it difficult for her to connect with people. Lina carries herself like a victim. Sometimes she lets people violate boundaries that she doesn't even realize she should have, while other times she pushes them away in a panic. She also tends to "fade" under stress, as the dissociation reflexively activates her Phasing. She has been mistaken for a ghost, more than once.
Saffron's abilities lend themselves well to the underworld. Her Neural Manipulation leans more toward pleasure than pain, although she can deliver an unpleasant jolt if distressed. Her skill with pillow talk means that she knows what's going on around her, and can sometimes tease out secrets that people don't intend to share. She can Phase away from trouble if cornered, and also tends to use it for stealing things.
Origin: Mad science torture. The supervillain Carl Bernhardt locked Lina in a strange metal chamber and bombarded her with mysterious energies that caused his body to warp. She escaped when she finally manifested Phasing. Now she works as a prostitute and occasionally as a thief.
Uniform: Street clothes. Often she wears dark or neutral colors to hide her body. When hooking, she dresses to display her assets, usually in warm tones. She is particularly fond of shot silk with yellow/pink or yellow/orange combinations.
Qualities: Good (+2) Agility, Good (+2) Pillow Talk, Good (+2) Poker Player, Good (+2) Prostitute, Good (+2) Versatile
Poor (-2) Boundary Issues
Powers: Average (0) Cryptid Shifter
In Saffron's case, the metapower of Cryptid Shifter includes Average (0) Neural Manipulation, Average (0) Phase, Average (0) Regeneration, Average (0) Shapeshifting, Average (0) Yellow Hair, and variable enhancements to vision.
Her alternate forms include felydd, horse, rabbit, squirrel, flame-colored tanager, and albino lavender ball python. The felydd has a catlike body, paws with retractable claws, and a long fluffy tail like a snow leopard. The coat is mostly shades of yellow and peach with darker leopard spots plus a white ruff, belly, and tail tip. The yellow eyes are slitted like a cat's, but the face looks more like a fennec fox with a tiny muzzle, although the enormous ears are set on top of the head instead of the sides. In felydd form, Saffron has musk glands with a pronounced musky-spicy scent, which is less intense but still present in her other shapes. It is not quite a superpower unto itself, but it definitely contributes to her sex appeal. She has the ultraviolet vision that sometimes comes with exotic colors, plus enhanced night vision which is Average in human form and Good in felydd form.
Vulnerability: Saffron has difficulty controlling her superpowers. Shapeshifting screws up her body in ways that can leave her disoriented and shaking afterwards. Sometimes she has problems remaining solid, and other times she loses bits of her body or gets foreign objects embedded inside her. However, she can heal the damage -- anything that doesn't kill her instantly probably can't kill her at all. Phasing can leave her confused and twitching from misconnected nerves, or scrambled inside, or all of the above.
Motivation: To feel safe. She has an unfortunate habit of pursuing this goal by clinging to a protector, and she often chooses bad ones.
A civet is a catlike animal which produces a strong musk once used in perfumery. The smell has been described as musky, fecal, and animalic; when diluted it becomes very sensual. Currently synthetic civet musk is preferred instead; T-America has much better production values than L-America in replicating animal fragrances. The felydd produces a musky-spicy scent similar to civet.
In Gaelic, felydd can be translated as "fancy" or "saucy" although pinning down references is difficult. The name is pronounced "FEL-ith." It also riffs on felid, a general term for cats or catlike creatures.
* * *
(Some of these links are appalling.)
The mad scientist is a common trope in entertainment, but also disturbingly real. Mad scientists frighten people because they distort the quest for knowledge as a solution to problems, and instead cause problems. They use cruel methods toward unethical ends. Another creepy factor is that genius and madness really are related. Although most "mad scientists" depicted in entertainment are actually just mad engineers, Carl Bernhardt does use scientific methods such as experimental groups and control groups. In fact, Turq started out as control before falling into a later experiment.
(These links are awful too.)
Research on human subjects requires careful attention to ethics, lest if fall into unethical areas of human experimentation. What happened to Turq and his cohort extends into the realm of medical torture. This kind of abuse has deep historic roots. Motivations range from morbid curiosity to outright power-tripping, but the Nazis were particularly known for their maniacal pursuit of human perfection.
(These links are intense.)
PTSD comes from traumatic experiences, and among its most potent causes is a sense of helplessness. Ongoing trauma is particularly devastating.
Such experiences can cause symptoms such as touch aversion and skin hunger -- sometimes at the same time. Medical abuse can also raise issues over painful or conflicted touch. Supportive friends and family can help with the healing process. Understand how to reconnect with your body after trauma.
(Some of these links are upsetting.)
Traumatic bonding refers to close human connections formed under stressful circumstances, most often used in regard to unhealthy bonds between abuser and victim. However, shared trauma and pain generally encourage bonding, and that context can impair the quality of the connection in ways that would benefit from healing. This happens often during disasters and war. While debriefing immediately after trauma tends not to help, and belongs to a list of therapies that can cause harm, some survivors nonetheless have found it appealing even though it produced no measurable reduction in the rate of PTSD development. This may be due to their greater affinity for talk therapy, in which case the intervention was simply mistimed; or it may be a near-miss where what they needed was social bonding and the offered intervention was as close as they could get. Another factor is oxytocin, which the body produces during some painful experiences (such as childbirth) but also during pleasant ones (such as sex) and which facilitates bonding. You can see this connection between Turq and his cohort comforting each other, then later with Ansel comforting Turq. A secure bond can help heal the damage of earlier bonds which were harmful or were hopeful but impaired by traumatic context. It also supports the process of naming and describing what happened, binding the memories with words to hold them in place so they don't drift around and cause problems.
(Some of these links are difficult too.)
Nightmares are a common symptom of PTSD. There are various treatments for PTSD nightmares and advice for health workers. People debate whether or not it's acceptable for adults to seek comfort after a nightmare, so most of the advice relates to children's nightmares. Understand how to cope with flashbacks and deal with nightmares.
Friends and family help people overcome challenges. These and other resilience factors can reduce the chance that a traumatic experience will develop into PTSD. Notice that Turq is becoming less skittish and more inclined to seek help when he gets upset. Understand how to support and comfort a friend during a crisis, or how to reach out when you need support.
(More awful links.)
Child abuse and neglect tend to cause emotional trauma. The effects can include guilt, shame, and self-hate. This can pose particular complications for male survivors. Turq had some of this baggage even before his kidnapping, and it only got worse from the mad science torture. An essential step in healing involves placing the blame where it belongs, on the perpetrator. Cultivating self-compassion can also help to heal the shame, overcome the guilt, and relieve the self-hate of childhood trauma. Friends and family can help this process.
Attachment is a way of describing different patterns of relationship between children and their caregivers, but applies to adult relationships also. Here child maltreatment causes damage to the bonding mechanisms. There are ways to nurture healthy bonds in people with attachment disorders. When it comes to attachment, Turq is a palimpsest, because he has layers of bad treatment, a very strong family connection, a lot more mistreatment, and how has supportive friends. So his reactions often fluctuate.
Removal from the home necessarily causes trauma, because losing a parent is the worst thing that can happen to a child. This often causes attachment issues or disorders. Another way to look at this is connection disruption, rather than attachment disorder: not something wrong with the survivor, but something wrong with what happened to them. Foster care disrupts attachment in ways that cause loss and grief effects. Disordered attachment appears on a spectrum from secure attachment to insecure but organized forms of attachment, disorganized attachment, secure base distortions, and non-attachment disorders at the far end. Parents of fostered or adopted children can help repair this damage.
PTSD of Abandonment has a particular flavor of its own, marked by a sense of being "damaged goods" and fear of hurting others. Here are some resources on abandonment and ideas on how to help people who feel abandoned.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-13 04:01 am (UTC)-Rocket
Thank you!
Date: 2017-10-13 04:11 am (UTC)Yay! If you want to know more about him, read the Officer Pink storyline. He first appears in "The Individual's Own Reason."
>> Ha. Poor Turk sounds like me, but in reverse, and I don't shape-shift. But body horror? Yep. I sure do know a fair share about that little can of worms. <<
:( I'm sorry to hear that. Nobody should have to go through that kind of torment.
>> Good job, Ysabet.<<
*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-13 04:13 am (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2017-10-13 04:22 am (UTC)So very true.
>> but trust Ansel to bring him safe to the other side... <<
Ansel seems to be getting very good at that.
>> and Ysabet to bring *us* safely home. <<
Thanks for the vote of confidence. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-13 07:01 am (UTC)- MD
Fixed!
Date: 2017-10-13 07:10 am (UTC)Re: Fixed!
Date: 2017-10-13 08:21 am (UTC)For future reference, this journal and across_space_and_time are fine to list under credits as long as the relevant person's name is attached, if they give one. Ex, "YM through antisocialite_forum" or "Rook from across_space_and_time" both work.
>> He hates himself
a little more every time
he does something wrong
just so he can survive. <<
I think I know someone who could relate to that. :( He was here a couple days ago but won't be back for a while, so I'll have to leave a message linking to this.
It's neat to see into Turq's thought processes. I like it when authors let you see from a character's perspective. The time skips were great for pacing, the variation in detail and length too, and after finishing the poem they really... punctuate? How the time has passed by. The first section was hard to get through but it was useful background, and I remember enough of the other poems to fill in how things have changed for Turq since.
It's reminding me of something another person said - the same guy I mentioned above - about seeing everything through the lens of trauma. There's still that detailed backdrop coloring everything, but the good experiences after start to balance it (in Turq's case).
- MD
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-13 08:50 pm (UTC)You're Welcome
Date: 2017-10-13 09:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-01 05:55 pm (UTC)Poor Turq. So glad that things are improving for him. Yes, it's a bloody long and difficult journey, but he has help and he's well on his way travelling it.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-26 01:47 pm (UTC)I'm so glad that Turq has found Ansel and Nebuly has Amergin and Marjoram. I just hope that Lina/Saffron makes her way to Ansel and Turq or someone else who is safe.
Continuing onto the next poem :)
~Angel
Thoughts
Date: 2020-05-26 07:05 pm (UTC)Yeah, it explains a lot about how he got so wrecked. :(
>> and he's lost so many of his cohort to that mad, evil man that I hope he doesn't have to face his tormentor ever again. Poor Coral, I just hope she's resting in peace now.<<
There's more about these points, but considerably later in the thread.
>> I'm so glad that Turq has found Ansel and Nebuly has Amergin and Marjoram.<<
Yeah, they need all the help they can get.
>> I just hope that Lina/Saffron makes her way to Ansel and Turq or someone else who is safe.<<
I know of at least one.