#abuse mentioned

I genuinely think they should all have to be 22 so that they were 18 at the start of their first Olympic cycle (stay in juniors/youth Olympics until then! that's why we have them!)

As a former internationally competitive figure skater (although never professional or an Olympic hopeful), I (even at my level) know intimately how vulnerable they are to abuse or all kinds (as are the adults - this has been widely publicized despite attempts at cover-ups and collusion from officials, coaches, other skaters) as they travel away from home without their caregivers (or with caregivers who are willing to let their children be) trained past the limits of their developing bodies until it changes them irrevocably, to be policed and put on performance diets (normalizing eating disorders). The pressure, physical and psychological, can and has driven even the most resilient adults out of the sport. Don't even get me started on the compulsory heterosexuality, the performance of hyperfeminity, the objectification and sexualization.

I refuse to validate the arguments that children are lighter/more flexible etc - just say you're willing to sacrifice children's (particularly girl's) youth, their bodies and their minds to the altar of sport! Why? So fans and coaches can live vicariously through them? For national pride?

And what might these athletes get for that? Retirement at 20? Lifelong illness (mental and physical) and/or chronic pain from old injuries they were forced to skate through? Returning to education after huge interruptions to their studies (likely being homeschooled) a completely new career or coaching so the cycle continues?

I know many young athletes have gone on to build successful careers in other fields and have fulfilled lives after retirement. But for each one of them, there are so many more struggling and silenced.

Because they are a breath of fucking fresh air after adhering to actual moral obligations in real life.

I'm a good person. I know I am. It's not bragging or trying to convince myself of anything. I know what I am, and people who rake others over the coals for FICTION aren't going to shake that. And I'm sure they find that intimidating as it implies several things they may not be comfortable admitting. Also note: While I like darker endings, I have a very hard time being mean to NPCs when I'm playing as me and not a character I created >XD They really have to have said something that pissed me off or rubbed me the wrong way to get me to react directly toward them. Other than that, it's chaos. I just want to play the bad guy every now and then without having someone trying to preach to the damn choir.

I know right from wrong as I do as much right as possible to minimize hurt and discomfort to myself and those around me as I benefit from that as well. I follow the societal morals that allow for better living. I go out of my way to help people who need it. I am the very thing Astarion would absolutely have a love/hate relationship with because I wasn't there when he needed someone like me. Sure, I am sarcastic and like the darker side of life, being goth and all, but I will never tolerate harm to others when it's within my control. I live by the mantra "Do no harm, take no shit."

I know fantasy from reality. And I know abuse when I see it as I've been through the wringer myself. No, I'm not going to elaborate because it's none of your business. My health stays between me, my confidantes, and health care professionals with my consent. Outside of that, I don't trust anyone with that information. I am not airing my trauma to make others feel better about themselves when it comes to policing entertainment and even if I did, it wouldn't be given a second glance as it, like many other victims who have already voiced their opinions, would be swept under the rug because that opinion doesn't align with what virtue signalers want. "Only survivors can do this-" is disgusting and I see a LOT of it in fandoms, only after they attack random people without "checking" to see if they tick that box. No one is entitled to know or demand that kind of information, anyway. The mindset of having to have endured some sort of abuse to enjoy something is baffling to me and I think it's only an exception to keep people from feeling bad about their actions when they come across that hurdle.

I delve into criminal cases, our history, and human depravity. Real. Life. Cases. I haven't seen it all yet as there's always something new, something so bad that it makes me want to punch the perp in the face, but I've seen a lot of repeating behaviors. "Think about the Children" is a popular one that stems from the Satanic Panic when DnD was in its infancy and considered demonic. It was so bad that they tried to hook it to a teen's death. Then again, with almost all book burnings. It's people putting on a morally righteous facade. Honest-to-goodness gaslighting for control, and I see a lot of it in the tags.

Look, I know people care or think they do, but you really have to step back and ask yourself if you're doing more harm than good when you try policing fiction. You may be hurting yourself as well as others for picking fights that have no real merit to gain. Unwarranted stress has killed people before. In a time where mental health is being touted to be something to be aware of, are you really doing what's best for you and those around you? I'm being legit here cuz all I'm gleaning from what I've witnessed is misery loves company. Learn to pick your battles and you might find you're happier in life.

No one is going to get hurt or arrested for liking dark fiction. Your beef isn't with fiction, and it shouldn't be. You can't police what people like to destress with for their fiction.

Look at horror and thriller movies and their fans. A very minute section is the cause of grief. I know cases where antis have been the issue and brought harm to others. You'd be surprised at how few cases there are of people going too far with fantasy. They dwarf in comparison to other cases. Stuff like the Slender Man incident may be well known, but they aren't common at all and even then, mental health should be at the forefront of cases like that, not the fiction. It's like people blaming Judas Priest for teen suicides back in 1985 without taking into consideration the pair's mental health. Fiction may not have helped, but there were underlying, untreated conditions that should have been dealt with otherwise. Either way, it's not the business of random people who truly don't care on the internet to worry about when they have their own life to live or they may miss their own red flags. That's the business of the person and those in their lives.

No one can be punished for thoughts as they are impossible to prove without some form of action, and it's stupid to try. That is not what makes a bad person. What makes a bad person is their actions in real life. You can tell a lot about a person with how they treat people, especially people they don't agree with or view as their "enemy". Telling someone KYS is... well, I worry for these kinds of people in general cuz if they're THAT unhappy and hateful to wish that on someone they don't know, something's wrong in their life that they need to figure out and address for their own sake. Happy people don't wish death on one another. Remember what I said about missing their own red flags?

She does it to like, everyone, from cis people to yes, other trans people and other trans women. By this logic Lily's own account should be discredited because she also misgenders people and doesn't really give a shit about it and also wishes death upon them openly and without any remorse even if that person has just like, said her pokemon opinions are shit. She's said truly vile shit about people who are just like "these opinions are bad and you should feel bad".

Crimes in Context:

Trigger warning for the whole story, since it's pretty much just spousal abuse, and we're going to cover that (briefly) here.

We have previously covered the inability to divorce in Victorian England, where you could practically separate, and be legally divorced under very specific circumstances, but it took an act of parliament to be allowed to remarry, and it was therefore de-facto impossible for many women to leave abusive husbands or to support themselves at the same level after leaving one. Reasons for a divorce to be granted included adultery and extreme cruelty. Yes, extreme cruelty. The bar for proving that to ecclesiastical court and being alive at the same time would be a high and thin one. (Historically: not being able to leave abusive husbands is a factor in MANY historical poisonings. This is not confined to the 1800's or 1900's either - Giulia Tofana, whose wikipedia entry is weirdly short, was famous, posthumously, for providing poisons to women seeking to end their marriages.) Reading between the lines of Jim Benson's tale, we have a more unreliable than usual narrator. Everything he says is through the lens of "she made me do it" which is both a very common pattern of abusers telling their story and prevents his final letter from being the good-faith explanation of events that we often see in other dead, dying, or condemned criminals in this series. The events are also not reconstruct-able by anyone else besides Sarah, and we have no knowledge of whether or not she ever recovers. He never has proof of anything he says regarding Sarah's feelings or what she may have said to Mary, and the only proof he has of Alec and Mary's affair is the custom that a married woman would likely NOT be going on a day trip to New Brighton alone with a male platonic friend.

(Its possible that Mary was not having an affair with Alec or even considering it, but Mary would have been well aware that absolutely nobody would have taken her word that nothing was going on - so I tend to think that either she was having an affair with Alec or she was engineering a plausible reason, i.e. her adultery, to leave her husband. She had two elder sisters with the means to live independently, if she tired of Jim's drinking and jealousy, she had some options.) We especially don't have evidence that Sarah loved Jim - at best, we have an awkward exchange where Jim interpreted a lessening of formality as love (or lust) and Sarah awkwardly backing out of the situation. It's equally ambiguous whether Sarah was attempting to put more distance between the two of them or if she genuinely felt vindictive about unreciprocated feelings. Whether Mary's suspicion had more do do with Jim's violent words and history of drinking than anything Sarah said, or if Sarah took it upon herself to, belatedly, vet her baby sister's husband's character. Hell, she could have been nitpicking their financial arrangements and Jim's career progression. In effect, we don't know anything about this case, and that, more than the gruesome clues and the murder, may have been why it was left out of the story collections for so long.

Why else wasn't it included in collections?

It depends! If ya go based off AlainaPrana Fresh origin comic on DA. I'd assume probably really bad, but I'm not sure how canon that still is because it was never finished, but she did mention the original story concept was by CQ.

So going off what was made! and my own ideas of where it could've gone!

in scenario A, I think his childhood was in a lab mostly, I'd assumed that the human have expectations, Fresh was their experiment in some way, so it wouldn't be that far fetched that they might run harmful tests on him, regardless of them being alive and feeling pain, and perhaps having some acknowledge of existence? the human would probably want more acknowledge about him regardless if they knew Fresh was a parasite at that point.

And Fresh first instinct from feeling pain would probably be fear of death, so In my opinion Fresh you know, would react to those badly and perhaps attack the human in self-defense. So say than the human dies or Fresh takes them as their first host,

Okay but now what? Fresh is new to the world and 'killed' the only other alive thing he knew? They're a strange unique creature, everyone who come across him would be scared, and Fresh would probably immediately get attacked out of fear of the unknown.

And Fresh doesn't have any one to teach them anything, so as CQ mentioned in this post.

Fresh is very naive, probably easily used. which is in my opinion is also implied here-

So It'll make sense that they would start to emulate others behavior to protect himself partly because he learned the hard way to never trust anyone.

But you could go back to the comic with another idea- scenario B, The human did seem really excited about Fresh gaining consciousness, So maybe they acted as a parent figure, and it actually was nice for awhile.

Like maybe they taught him anything they thought would be important for a parasite, (which goes along with him not knowing about sex/love, the human may had thought- why would parasites need to know bout that when they reproduce asexually) but maybe still by instinct from some incident the human died/was used as a host, which brings us back to scenario A ideas.

And you then scenario C, maybe it was a mix of of both the other scenarios.

All three scenarios could also work with why Fresh thinks their better than everyone else, scenario A Fresh only saw the worst in others, and scenario B The human might've acted like they themselves were smarter than others being a scientist and all.

Short answer! I think it was spent in a lab with a human that run experiments on them until the human died/was used as a host, then Fresh had to learned everything in life the hard way from there.

For anyone new, House Of Broken Cards is a story I have.... yet to actually draw out. I'll start making the comic soon I promise. (lie)

Here's them if they were in Psychonauts lmaoo-

I've changed their backstories either slightly or majorly to fit in with the Psychonauts universe instead of the HOBC universe lol-

Starting with Mark. He and C.C. never got into the house fire that killed their mom, instead they had a bad encounter with a psychic and that's what killed her. C.C. ended up with a really fucked up arm, and Mark was pretty much unscathed except for some guilt due to not being able to save their mom.

Lukas, instead of meeting them due to The Forces in HOBC, met Mark at their shared office job. Lukas came out to Mark about the emotional and physical abuse he was going through at his home, and Mark managed to scrape up enough money to provide Lukas a safe space in Mark and C.C.'s shared home. Before you ask, I made Lukas look like Loboto for a reason (symbolism purposes lol). In this, he was still adopted by his abusive parents, but now instead of the abuse being because they see Lukas as just a 'devil child', they see him as such due to his psychic abilities.

Elliot and Eliza are probably the least changed. Other than outfits and hair styles, the twins are still the same as before. They found out they were psychic when they found out being able to communicate with your twin using your mind WASN'T in fact normal.

Mark is not psychic, but C.C. is, and his specialty is Pyrokinesis. Lukas is psychic and his specialty is Telekinesis.