Ending 7: Dream Come True

do...do people not know being star-crossed is bad?

>thread is from 13 years ago

Artwork by doodly_sheery

“It’s not about the Cheerios.”

This was in reference to a story about a kid flipping the HELL out into a full-blown panic about running out of their favorite cereal. Not a tantrum, not a whine-fest, but an all-hands-on-deck, code-red, world-is-ending blowup.

The kid had originally come from a very unstable situation and experienced food deprivation. The new adoptive parents were stumped, because look at all the other food! You’re safe! We can get the Cheerios tomorrow!

But it wasn’t really about the Cheerios, it was about that first flicker of unease triggering all the old trauma. From the outside, it looked ridiculous. To the trauma-trained reaction of the kid’s brain, it made perfect sense.

Human brains are weird, and we’re all out here trying to survive. Sometimes our brains do this in socially acceptable, convenient ways. But not often.

- A whole family of vampires living within a block or two of his home at some point

- One of his classmate’s parents secretly being a yeti

- One of the nearby rooms in his school keeping a vampiric gerbil as a class pet he’s still working on getting photographic proof of

- Bigfoot once appearing in his garage and using the belt sander

- Being stung by a vampiric bee which caused him to eat large amounts of honey at some point in time

- Whatever else I’m forgetting I’m sure people are gonna bring up in the notes so long as it was offscreen and in the same vein

And like, vampire bees at least were confirmed right after that point to exist, so it’s a plausible claim. The rest though we have literally no hint or tell to go by in determining if Dib is just some kind of magnet for the most insane stuff happening in his town carrying the same curse as Candace from Phineas and Ferb, or if he is genuinely a menace upon society just as off his rocker as everyone claims who happens to nail things like real aliens down in the process. And I really mean you could run this either way because of how nuts the setting itself is. Even Zim gets the occasional ham demon or zombie themed side quest.