Now we know what happened with Horned Girl. And it's completely coloring Atsali's view of this.
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Julie, about Wapsi Square wrote:Oh goodness yes. So much paranormal!
And we don't even know for sure that it was what happened with horned girl. That could just be Atsali's understanding of it. Horned girl might have had a lot more issues to deal with, of which non-reciprocated attraction might have only been a small piece. Most likely Atsali has been blaming herself for something that was not even remotely her fault.shadowinthelight wrote:http://wapsisquare.com/comic/something-like-that/
Now we know what happened with Horned Girl. And it's completely coloring Atsali's view of this.
No, not a happy feeling. This answers whether the issue was inside Atsali, or outside. Inside.Dave wrote:Yow.
This could definitely explain why Atsali was so resistant to seeing, hearing, being told, or realizing that Nadette was personally interested in her.
It wasn't cluelessness. It was traumatic armor-plating.
I'd offer a cookie to those who correctly predicted this detail, but under the circumstances I won't. The cookies would probably taste like ashes.
Yeah, that kinda sums it up...DilyV wrote:Aw crap...
And that adds a nasty double-whammy to what he's learned about her Siren powers.Sgt. Howard wrote:Teen suicides tend to have a cascading effect- even those not close to the victim are damaged. Thor very likely has it on the button- Atsali not reciprocating attention might have been a small part of a bigger pile of issues, but Atsali will not see it that way... she certainly sees herself as poison to any girl she wishes to befriend if they take a romantic shine to her...
I had a guy kill himself in my high school. The effect was one of the scariest things I've ever seen. To give you a good baseline, my school was a loud, proud, boisterous and belligerent school. It seemed like half the funding went to the football team alone, and another 45% went to the other sports teams. The cafeteria was usually loud enough to rival a good rock concert, and it approached the loudness of space shuttle launches after some team won some game or another.Sgt. Howard wrote:Teen suicides tend to have a cascading effect- even those not close to the victim are damaged...
.DilyV wrote:Aw crap...
I kinda had the feeling that this was the case... Atsali seemed really guilty after the anti matter incident... I don't think Nadette was turned down by Atsali directly, but was hurt because she knew that Lily would tell Kath and that would put the kybosh on her plans. Nadette was very hurt by it... here: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/more-complicated-2/Sgt. Howard wrote:.DilyV wrote:Aw crap...
NO- THIS emotional vomit is the FIRST STEP to HEALING!!! NOW it comes OUT IN THE OPEN instead of FESTERING deep inside and building the urge to die. Poor Nadette has no clue what is going on, but she will be savvy enough to point her in the right direction and get help
"You can't tell me that!" ... Nadette is going "Wha... what are you talking about?" - she will understand this is a wound that never healed.
Not really likely. From all we've heard, the paranormal orphans were mostly just shuffled out of view until Brandi started working to change things, and that was very very recent. I mean, the orphan kids were only allowed out to go to the library once a month, fer crap's sake. I'm sure that in those bad time "counseling" consisted of someone putting their hand on your shoulder and telling you to "buck up".GlytchMeister wrote:Perhaps she did get counseling and was fine after Hung Girl
I am betting that the brain flooding is not a problem here but something in her mind resisted any counseling she may have gotten, especially if no one else knew about her connection to the deceased. You cannot council someone about a bad thought if you do not know it is in there.GlytchMeister wrote:I get the impression that a big part of Atsali's warped perception of reality just got shattered. She was maintaining some sort of illusion that made her feel better somehow, and losing it has caused her a lot of pain.
For some people, having an illusion broken can itself be a traumatic event.
Another, much more scary thought: usually crazy isn't contagious. But Atsali had a whole civilization of stark-raving-batshit-crazy pumped straight through her mind. What if some of all that insanity rubbed off onto her? Her poor brain was flooded with not just your run-of-the-mill kind of crazy, but fermented, evil crazy.
Perhaps she did get counseling and was fine after Hung Girl, but then she had that whole civilization's worth of fermented-evil craziness forced through her skull, maybe that caused her to re-develop old psychoses... Or it could have caused her to develop new ones about events she wasn't originally damaged by.
Mr. Meadows doesn't strike me as that sort... but he does seem to be one of the ordinary caretakers with however-many kids to take care of, not able to devote a large amount of time to one or two of them, and probably not trained in counseling.Thor wrote:GlytchMeister wrote:I'm sure that in those bad time "counseling" consisted of someone putting their hand on your shoulder and telling you to "buck up".