Planet Damien

Panel 2. The cat tree now has cats in it, and the front door no longer has a dog door. The narration continues: 'Lately, it's been filling up with cats I don't recognize. I don't know how they keep getting in. We don't have a dog door or anything.'

Panel 3. The cat tree looks slightly different, the cats are gone, and other small details around the room have changed. The narration continues: 'So, we have this cat tree at our house. I don't know how it keeps getting in. We've never had a cat or anything.'

Panel 4. Instead of the room, we see an illustration of several cats walking single-file in a void, weaving around the text of the page and several heaps of pills. The narration continues: 'When I was a kid, I used to be on this medication. Long after I'd stopped taking it, it was revealed to me that one of the potential side-effects was memory issues. For the longest time, I couldn't recall a single thing that had happened to me during the years I was on it.'

Panel 5. We're back in the room from before, only the design of the front door has changed, a table has become a cupboard, the window now has blinds, and the cat tree is gone. Three cats levitate in the air, occupying the positions they were previously in while the cat tree was present. The narration continues: 'So, we've got these cats in our apartment. I don't know why they're arranged like that.'

Panel 6. Several cats gather around a giant human brain in a void. The narration continues: 'Some things came back to me eventually, and I wasn't sure whether I was still missing pieces, whether I'd totally recovered, or whether there was never anything wrong with me in the first place.'

Panel 7. Illustration showing the inside of the cat tree, looking outward, as if we're seeing from a cat's perspective. The narration continues: 'So, there's this room in my house. I don't know how I keep getting in.'

Panel 8. We're back in the room, but the window has moved to a different wall, the cat tree has grown, and a portrait that used to hang on the wall is now gone, among other changes. The narration continues: 'So, I have these trust issues. If I forgot something important, would I even notice?'

Panel 9. The room continues to change, and the cat tree continues to grow. The narration continues: 'I think a lot about how little the human brain is actually understood. So, there's this cat tree in my house.'

Panel 10. The cat tree grows. The narration continues: 'Did you know that the diagnoses for a lot of mental health conditions are practically baseless? There's this cat tree in my house.'

Panel 11. Illustration of a pencil next to several mental health assessment worksheets. The narration continues: 'The doctor essentially gives you a 'What Simpsons Character Are You?' facebook personality quiz, full of statements like 'I often feel bad', and you're expected to rate how relatable these statements are on a scale of one to ten, with no frame of reference for what these numbers actually mean.'

Panel 12 is mostly text, but we see the carpeted insides of a cat tree slowly encroaching in on the words. The narration continues: 'There's no real metric for any of this. What's the 'normal' amount of anxious? What's the 'normal' amount of autistic? What amount of feeling bad is the 'normal' amount of feeling bad? How much of that is my body, and how much of it is my circumstances? Which number do I circle to get them to take me seriously? Which number communicates that something is wrong, but that others probably have it a lot worse? Six? Eight? If I answer nine or ten, will they assume I'm exaggerating? Will I be immediately hospitalized against my will?'

Panel 13. The carpet encroaches further, and the page grows darker. In the light at the end of the tunnel, the narration continues: 'What percentage of my life is a normal percentage to forget? If my mind can't be trusted, how can my answers be trusted?'

Panel 14 shows several posters on the walls of the doctors office, demanding patience to turn off the phone, asking patients to use their phone to scan a qr code to leave a review, advertising services to patience, and demanding that patients 'only have one problem per appointment'. The narration continues: 'When the quiz is over, the doctor decides which Simpsons character you are based on vibes and their own personal biases, and if they think you're a Marge they won't help you. 'Thanks for taking my quiz! You seem totally normal. That'll be one thousand dollars. You can leave it in the trash next to the four hundred forms that I made you fill out and then didn't read. Yeah, the ones that already asked you all the same questions I did.'

Panel 15. We're back in the room. All windows and furniture are gone, and all that remains is the ever-expanding cat tree, and its ever-expanding population of cats. Even the door has begun to disappear, and the walls and ceiling are slowly turning into carpet. The narration continues: 'So, there's this cat tree in my house. I've spent my entire life pretending to be normal in order to survive, and now I don't know how to turn it off, so now no one believes me when I say there's something wrong with me.'

Panel 16 shows an extremely close-up illustration of a cat's eye, accompanied by a single sentence: 'Did you know that cats tend to hide their symptoms when they're sick?'

Panel 17. We're back in the room, which has completely transformed into carpeting, and the cat tree has expanded to fill the entire room. Cats climb and sit and loaf about all over the room. The narration continues: 'There's a cat tree in my house. I've taken a lot of different medications in my life, for a lot of different reasons. Most of them either did nothing, or made things worse. At least, I think they did. If I was getting better, would I even notice?'

Panel 18 is completely blank, except for a single sentence: 'What are you supposed to do when neither the doctor, nor the patient, nor the treatment can be trusted?'

Somewhere out there, theres a little kid who keeps getting in trouble because he doesn’t understand how to play nicely with the other kids and keeps hurting peoples feelings on accident. He doesn’t know why all the adults are so angry at him all the time. He’s not a bad kid, not on purpose. He doesn’t want to be a bad kid. He’s trying so hard and keeps making everything worse.

Somewhere out there, there’s a teenager getting into fandom spaces for the first time and every time she sees a post about her favorite character, who has trouble with emotions, just like her, it’s always something negative. It’s always a post telling others to stop redeeming them, or mocking them for no reason. She’s old enough to understand that she’s different from other people. She’s old enough to know that despite that, she’s still doing her best to be kind. And she’s old enough to know that the real reason everyone hates her favorite character is because they don’t understand low empathy works. She hates herself because she knows if she ever tells anyone how she feels, she’ll be hated too. It’s a good thing she learned how to pretend. Nobody will abandon her if she says the right things, has the same expressions, uses the proper tone.

Somewhere out there, there’s a young adult who can’t understand emotions. They get annoyed when they hear people crying, they don’t understand romance in books and movies, and they still remember how it felt as a child when they watched their whole family fall apart when a relative died, and they didn’t care. They remember how they didn’t LIKE that their grandmother was gone, but they didn’t linger on it either. It didn’t shatter them the way it shattered their mother. And most of all, they remember how their mother looked at them when she figured it out. How she screamed that they were a monster she couldn’t ever love. They think maybe the world would be better if they weren’t a part of it.

it is not "misguided". it is not "sometimes necessary." it is not "the best they could do with the information they had."

it is cruel to hit children.

even if they did "turn out fine" (which they don't.)

it is cruel to hit children.

to hit a child as "discipline" is to inflict pain on a human being who is much smaller than you, cannot defend themself, and is dependent on you for their survival, simply for the act of displeasing you and not following your orders. most people would find this morally horrifying if it was done to an animal.

it is cruel to hit children.

it teaches nothing except that pleasing you is more important than their well-being, and that violence against less powerful people is an acceptable response to things not going your way.

“Sometimes, I think I’m hard to love.” The girl sits in the floor, back turned to us. “My body doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.”

She stares down at a calendar, head surrounded by question marks. “I forget things.” She walks with a cane, out of breath. “I move slow.” She braces herself leaning down to pick up a pencil from the floor, pain exploding in her back. “It hurts to do things most people do easily.”

“My cat’s body also doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.” The kitty sits, tail curled cutely, head cocked and eyes huge.

“He doesn’t remember things.” The kitty searches for the food bowl that is behind him, question marks around his head. “He’s clumsy.” At the end of a short jump, the kitty crashes headfirst into the ground. “He can’t do things other cats do.” He reaches futilely toward the counter above him, far out of reach.

“And I love him (emphasis) so much.” She picks up the kitty and presses their foreheads together, a heart above them.

srry i was writing a course paper