Capeworld Comics

“He thinks he’s weaker than I am, but he’s not. He just gets discouraged easily. As bad as my nightmares got, they were never the same. Sometimes they were worse than the night before, but sometimes they were better. But Donald’s parents were always the same, day after day, night after night. They were always there. They would always come out with the same triggers. That would wear down even the strongest heart.”

 

–Tanya Abelman, Skychilde

 

“What does it feel like to lose control? It doesn’t feel like anything, that’s the problem. What does it feel like to be asleep?”

 

–Donald Swift

 

“Part of me envies him, because part of me envies anyone that can wake up and walk around. But then I think of something. What if I was awake and I had to take my house with me? Suddenly waking up doesn’t sound like such a great thing now, does it?”

 

–Morgan McGraw, Dream Warden

 

Name: 

 

Donald Swift

 

Supername:

 

LID, Light in Dark

 

Donald chose his supername both to reflect what his “parents” look like when they physically manifest–an orb of light within a bramble of dark razorwires–and his belief that in even the deepest darkness, there is a little light. He also appreciates the dark humor of the acronym being LID, as in “Donald better keep a lid on his parents or we’re all going to die.”

 

He’s found humor helps him cope with his metapathogen.

 

Average Grade:

 

B-

 

Donald is a fairly average student, academic wise, and there’s nothing remarkable about him save that it’s impressive that he’s kept his grades from crashing in light of the burden of his metapathogen.

 

Emergency Response Class:

 

1

 

The nature of Donald’s metapathogen prevents him from advancing higher than 1. The risk of him losing control and either becoming a stationary hazard or worse, a mobile one, is too great for us to be teaching him how to take down bad guys. That being said, his training under Dr. Bell does involve CRS combat both to teach him how to control his parents in a situation where he’s attacked and as part of Dr. Bell’s training strategy of pushing Donald to his limits so he can raise them. Donald is one of those cases where he’s virtually capable of functioning at a higher ERC than we have listed. Given some of the combat sims Dr. Bell has him drill, you could make a strong argument that he can function at ERC 3.

 

Why Donald is ERC 1 mostly comes down to legalities. Say one day Donald is out and about and sees Troublemaker robbing a store. If he intervenes, he’s in trouble whether or not he loses control of his parents. Donald intervening in any circumstance where there’s not an explicit threat to his life or the lives of others will likely get him arrested for criminal negligence. He’s aware that physical conflict can cause him to lose control of his parents. It doesn’t matter if 9 out of 10 times in CRS he can control his parents. The only thing that matters in the eyes of the law is the 1 time out of 10 where he can’t. This means that Donald would be criminally negligent if everything goes right. If something goes wrong, if his parents slip his control and hurt someone, he would be responsible for that.

 

The first rule of emergency response is that you don’t make an emergency worse through your response, and it’s a sad fact that in any given conflict Donald stands a chance of making an emergency worse. Maybe one day that’ll change, but that day won’t be coming soon, and until it does Donald remains ERC 1 certified.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Night Club.

 

Night Club is a great class for Donald. If his TIMS training under Dr. Bell teaches him control, then Night Club teaches Donald how to put that control towards productive ends. Under the supervision of Mr. Neiros, Donald works with Night Club to explore the dreamworlds and aid dreamers as they venture nightly through the Astral.

 

How a dreamer appears in the dreamworlds can indicate a great deal about who they are. People with a great deal of proprioception such as dancers, gymnasts, and martial artists, tend to have dreamforms that look similar to their waking bodies. Donald appears virtually identical to how he appears in the waking world as a result of his disciplined training under Dr. Bell. He knows his body and how his body moves through space. Proprioception is something you work very hard at developing when one bad tumble can lead to you having one very, very bad day.

 

Donald’s parents are always manifested within the Astral. The Astral is, after all, the natural home of thoughtforms. Though they constantly hover around Donald’s dreamform, they are much easier for Donald to control than in the waking world. This is because his parents feel Donald is “closer” to them in the Astral and are thus calmer. In the Astral, there is no Odylic gap, and Donald can command his parents to move away from him over great “distances” without them becoming the least bit irritated as they still feel close to Donald.

 

Donald loves Night Club and goes to bed every night looking forward to it. Not only does it let him help others and turn his curse into a gift, but it gives him a moment of freedom where controlling his parents is, if not easy, than certainly easier than when he’s awake.

 

Contact Education:

 

TIMS.

 

Donald has been enrolled in TIMS (telepathic institutionalization and medical services) since he was a young child in 2014. He’s lived a good chunk of his life in a secure room in the Mainline City TIMS Center. It was only halfway through his freshman year at Martin’s that his doctors decided he could leave the TIMS Center and get a dorm on campus.

 

Donald still makes regular checkups with TIMS to ensure everything is going okay, and Dr. Judy Bell, who is both a Martin’s teacher and a TIMS psychiatric therapist, drills with Donald every other day as his contact education.

 

Does training under Dr. Bell count as contact education? Are we cheating by using a Martin’s teacher?

 

In a pragmatic sense, Dr. Bell certainly counts. Personal training under Dr. Bell is exactly what Donald needs, and it’s not exactly easy to find contacts for students that have several warning stickers attached to their paperwork.

 

In the sense that the purpose of the contact education program is to get students to learn outside the educational field, an argument can be made that we are cheating. But when we consider how well Dr. Bell’s tutoring synergizes with Night Club, we really have no choice but to cheat a little.

 

Regardless, what ultimately matters is Dr. Jefferson’s signature, and she’s signed off on it.

 

Dr. Bell knows exactly what Donald goes through with his parents. She’s been bound to a thoughtform of fear named Mad Mary since she was a girl. She’s spent her life losing control, fighting for control, mastering control, and now teaching control to others. She’s been where Donald is now and promises that one day he will be where she is. She is an excellent role model for Donald and is living proof that peace with his thoughtforms is attainable.

 

Dr. Bell works with some of the most desperate thoughtform possessions on the planet. Often, she’s all that stands between them and spinal implants. She gets results by pushing her students to their limits. She tires out her students so that their thoughtforms become tired. It is a rule of being possessed that thoughtforms rely on the very minds that they try to control. If their host is exhausted, they are exhausted. When both host and thoughtform are tired, Dr. Bell works with her student to get him or her to develop control over their weakened thoughtform. Controlling a thoughtform while exhausted builds up a student’s mental fortitude while increasing their ability to influence their thoughtform.

 

Dr. Bell methods are intense, but they do work. She’s made a career out of saving PK kids from spinal implants. A casual glance at Donald’s record shows the efficacy of her methods. When Donald was first placed in TIMS, any physical jostling would cause his parents to manifest, and once they manifested they would expand indefinitely until contained by an outside force, often in the form of a superhero response. Now it takes more than a bump to make Donald’s parents come out against his will, and when they do come out, he knows how to contain them to a given area.

 

If you’ve ever seen Donald lose control of his parents, you’ve seen how he is during the episode. He goes catatonic, becomes unresponsive, floats into the air, his mom surrounds him, and then his dad surrounds his mom and anything or anyone that approaches Donald gets sliced up. It looks like Donald is peacefully sleeping inside his mother during an episode, but that’s not what he’s doing. Dr. Bell has trained Donald, like all her students, to manage the situation whenever he goes through an episode. He’s not sleeping during an episode, he’s concentrating on keeping his parents from expanding. This is why whenever he has an episode, his parents expand to about the size of a room instead of a city.

 

Metapathogen:

 

Thoughtform possession.

 

The 2014 Interway Bombing

 

Thoughtform possession is one of the most difficult metapathogens to deal with. Imagine sharing room in your mind with an animal, an animal whose instincts and appetites will drag you around by the soul. Donald has the misfortune of having two animals inside him–two thoughtforms of love.

 

Love is often thought of as a positive, uplifting thing. It can be. Certainly, it can be. But love can also be possessive. Love can be tyrannical. Love can be a tight fist around freedom and self-determination. To love a man like one would love a child is an abomination.

 

TIMs recognizes a division in the possessed. There are the solely telepathic, the STs, the ones whose thoughtforms stay in their minds, and then there are the psychokinetic, the PKs, the ones whose thoughtforms physically manifest.

 

Imagine a womb that will keep you warm and safe within its walls–forever. You will never see anything besides light. You will never feel anything besides warmth.

 

Imagine a razor that will eviscerate anything that threatens you–or anything that seems to threaten you. Your eternal safety is guaranteed by a whirlwind briarpatch with the soul of Cerberus. There will never be another. There will never even be the presence of another. There will only be you and your loyal razor.

 

Donald has both. And they love him with, quite literally, their entire being.

 

They are his “mother” and his “father.” They are his “parents,” and they came for Donald when his human parents were killed in the 2014 Interway bombing.

 

Donald’s parents were Richard and Jennie-Lyn Swift. Like many parents, they would take their child on walks through the Interway to see all the strangeness and wonder of an interconnected multiverse. Donald remembers the Nazarth bay being his favorite. It had pools of water that sang while women with jet black skin played silver stringed instruments.

 

In August of 2014, a group of supervillains known as the Praetorians attempted to smuggle a universe-killing bomb through the Interway into Universe 161. The Praetorians were an assemblage of universe-conquering despots who believed that through their combined resources they could create one who was a greater conqueror than even they, one who would conquer the entire multiverse. The bomb was part of their plan to create a super-conqueror. They wanted to destroy Universe 161 and use the resulting energies released by the exploding universe crashing against the Cosmic Core to empower an android body–their super-conqueror god-king.

 

Their plan went awry. They were discovered by Universe 161’s premier superteam Justice 8. A fight broke out and the bomb was activated. With his telepathic might, Mr. Stranger, leader of Justice 8, was able to muffle most of the explosion. The explosion was further muffled by the Interway’s apocalypse shields. Compared to the intended infinity-shattering explosion, only the faintest trace of energy was released, a percentage that was a 1 after a decimal point and a countless number of zeroes.

 

In the grand scheme of things, Justice 8 had saved the day. A supernova had been reduced to a sparkler.

 

But that was cold comfort to anyone caught in that sparkler.

 

“The world didn’t end.” Mr. Stranger said, “Except for those caught in the blast.”

 

Great, cataclysmic trauma tends to produce a few superhumans among the multitude of dead, a handful plucked from death by the mysteries of the hyperkeimenon. Donald wasn’t the only superhuman created by the 2014 bombing. Alys Baker, for instance, became a quasimorph made out of sand.

 

Donald doesn’t remember anything about the bombing. Whenever he’s telepathically guided back through his memories to the date, he loses control of his parents. Dr. Bell uses this to Donald’s advantage by inducing episodes so Donald can learn how to mitigate the damage his parents cause when they slip his control, and Donald can induce an episode at will by thinking back to the day. 

 

Keep that in mind if you, for whatever reason, suddenly need a tiny sun with rings made of barbed wire.

 

Mom and Dad

 

Donald’s love for his parents must have echoed across the Astral, for Astral beings answered it. To fulfill the gap left in his heart left by his parents’ passing, thoughtforms of love entered his soul. He calls them his parents, though he notes that often they’re more like two aggressive attack dogs with very frail leashes.

 

His “mother” is a glowing orb of light that surrounds Donald like a womb. Virtually impenetrable, the light also heals and invigorates Donald. “I’ve never been sick.” he notes, “I’ve never so much as had a cold in my life. I don’t know what sickness feels like because momma bugzapper kills anything infectious. That sounds nice until you realize that this means I have the natural immunity of a newborn. If I’m ever separated from mom, I’m probably a dead man walking without medical intervention.” When Donald manifests his mother under his control, he can use it as a shield to protect others and heal them with its light. “It’s like a placenta shared by twins.” he said, “Sounds gross, but it feels good. Fair warning though, you’ll never be able to take a warm shower without thinking of mom.”

 

His “father” is a collection of black tendrils coated in razors similar to barbed wire that surround Donald like a briar patch. These tendrils are very dangerous and can cut at the molecular level. When Donald manifests his father under his control, he can make the razors vanish and use it as a rope to safely pick up objects and people from a distance.

 

When Donald’s parents slip his control, he enters a catatonic state while his mother manifests around him and his father manifests around his mother. In this state, the two thoughtforms are completely focused on protecting Donald. His father spins like a whirlwind and obliterates anyone that gets close, and anyone that gets by him evaporates in the heat of the mother which is like that of a star. The mother’s light no longer heals anyone besides Donald.

 

There are only a few people that can approach Donald during an episode. These people are so familiar to Donald and so dear to his heart that his parents essentially recognize them as extensions of Donald. His parents are, in fact, incapable of harming them. 

 

These people are his Night Club teacher Mr. Neiros, his TIMS psychiatric therapist Dr. Bell, and his lifelong friend Tanya Abelman.                      

 

TIMS and Tanya

 

After his first manifestation of his parents nearly did to the Interway what the Praetorians’ bomb failed to do, Donald was placed in a secured room in Mainline City’s TIMS center where he was monitored and observed. TIMS knows how to handle children, many TIMS employees have stories similar to Donald’s, and experts were sent in to talk and interact with him. Donald clung to their company like a drowning man to driftwood. He still remembers those doctors and psychiatrists from the early years. He keeps in touch with them to this day, and every Christmas sends them cards. They’re proud of him and the progress he’s made.

 

But as good as it is to have confident, trustworthy adults to rely on when you’re a scared, frightened child, nothing beats a peer. Nothing beats someone your own age who’s going through the same mess.

 

Tanya was Donald’s peer. She was, and still is, his closest friend. Tanya didn’t have a thoughtform, but she did have a difficult metapathogen. Every night, she would have a vivid dream, and every morning, she would awake with a barely-controlled “power” based on her dreams.

 

Tanya and Donald encouraged each other through their stay at TIMS, and Tanya’s parents became like Donald’s uncle and aunt. They both knew what it was like to endure tests and experimental treatments and feel the hours creep while they waited for wall-size scanners to finish their work. They both shared the fear that they would never improve. They shared that fear together, and together they overcame that fear.

 

They drew strength from each other, and grew stronger from each other.

 

They also discovered and bonded over a mutual love for films. They became huge filmheads while at TIMS. There wasn’t much to do while they were being scanned or waiting to see how they reacted to new medication, so they watched movies, and they got picky over what movies they watched. If they were going to spend so much time watching movies, they wanted to make sure they saw the good ones. They cleared lists of greatest-of-all-time films, weird films, obscure films, and cult classic films. They knocked out the National Film Registry. Tanya’s favorite films include Rebel Without a Cause, Hell’s Angels, and The Dawn Patrol. Donald’s favorite films include City Lights, The Cocoanuts, and The Big Sleep.

 

As they got older, their lots in life became different, and it threatened to push the two apart. 

 

Tanya developed a stronger control over her powers and did it faster than Donald. She was a huge success story for TIMS. Mr. Neiros taught her how to always dream of flying no matter what nightmare she encountered. She would always be able to fly in her dreams no matter their contents, and she would always wake up with the power to fly fully under her control. This made her more confident, and she became a powerful and skillful superhuman. Whatever extra “power” she woke up with, she would have her flight power to help get it under control. She joined Martin’s Flight Club and quickly became its captain. She made the cover of the current edition of the Martin’s introductory textbook Power and Responsibility. She got to work with scientists aboard the Ivan Sanderson Research Base up in the thermosphere studying aerofauna.

 

He got to reduce the diameter of his parents.

 

Tanya soon had much more to do than spend time watching movies with Donald. They hung out less. She left him behind. She felt guilty about them growing apart, and he felt guilty about making her feel guilty. He felt like a burden holding Tanya back from her potential, and Tanya felt as if she contributed to his feelings of uselessness by her success.

 

When Tanya was fully discharged from TIMS, she wanted to stay in the program for Donald. But he told her to go. He wanted her to live her life to the fullest.

 

But if that wasn’t dramatic enough, they’re now dating.

 

It really was only a matter of time. Some teachers assumed they already were dating just by how they interacted.

 

Donald and Martin’s

 

Halfway through his freshman year at Martin’s, Donald was cleared to move out of TIMS and into a dorm. He appreciated the change of scenery. Joyous Harbor is a very pretty town.

 

Seeing how popular she was and how popular Donald wasn’t, Tanya suggested he start a film club. It was something she wanted to start herself but never had the time for between all her classes and hosting it would be a great way for him to introduce himself to his fellow students and make friends. 

 

At first, Donald balked at the idea, but eventually came around to it. Hosting a film club wasn’t as demanding as he thought it would be. He just had to get up, introduce the film, answer a few questions, then he could just sit down for two hours or so (he always showed his films with extra shorts and cartoons, and would collaborate with Bill to make sure he made the authentic movie palace experience) and maybe comment here and there with bits of film trivia. 

 

His film club was a huge success, not only for the school but for himself. He had no idea how to approach people in the halls, but now people approached him. “Hey Donald, great movie last Friday! I had no idea there was a third Creature from the Black Lagoon movie!”

 

He made friends–lots of friends.

 

As mentioned before, Tanya and Donald are now dating. Apparently, they wanted to date a long time ago but couldn’t get over the initial hurdle. Tanya was worried that they would be risking their friendship, and Donald was worried that Tanya only wanted to date him out of pity. She is, after all, only one of three people that can hug him without risk. It was typical teenage “I’m afraid of risking my emotions on how well I understand my feelings and my partner’s feelings” stuff, and they got over it.

 

Let’s hope they stay over it. The breakup would probably be messy. They would both cry. But still, even if it happens, I’m confident they can work past it. They’ve helped each other get through worse than teenage heartbreak.

 

Behavior:

 

Good

 

From a young age Donald’s entire life became focused on his parents. They are the sun of his inner universe. They’ve determined where he lives, who he sees, what he does, and how he behaves. Donald’s episodes are his largest and most obvious problems, but there are subtle issues with Donald’s behavior worth commenting on.

 

In a very real sense, Donald’s episodes are not his fault, they’re the fault of circumstance and two parasitic thoughtforms that will not and cannot untangle themselves. That’s factored into his behavior evaluation. And yet, the sad fact remains, we cannot give him exemplary behavior even with all the work he puts into controlling his parents. I’m sure we all remember how he lost control during the crysaloid infestation of the omnimover system. He’s shown a lot of progress since then. He helped Night Club defeat the Dream Sultan and he helped defeat Heartbreaker when he and Antipathy attacked the Johnny Winter’s on the boardwalk, but these triumphs aside, Donald hasn’t gone a single year without an episode. Hopefully, one day, he’ll be able to go the rest of his life without an episode. But realistically speaking, that day isn’t going to come soon.

 

The subtle issues with Donald’s behavior stem from him externalizing his locus of control. As has been previously stated, a great deal of Donald’s life was determined by his parents. Because much of his life wasn’t his choosing, he underestimates how much control he actually has. This has given him an inferiority complex towards his peers. He feels himself a burden and avoids interacting with them. He is easily discouraged by setbacks. Following the crysaloid incident, Dr. Bell noticed a steep decline in his CRS performance.

 

Tanya has always served as a source of encouragement for Donald, but also a source of anxiety. Isn’t that true of all our dearest loved ones? Donald has always felt inadequate in light of her success, and of all the people he fears being a burden to, Tanya is the one he fears being a burden to the most. But recently, with a little encouragement from their teachers, Tanya and Donald went from being friends to being girlfriend and boyfriend.

 

Oh dear.

 

Obvious worries about the volatility of teenage relationships aside, their romance seems to be bringing out the best in both of them. Donald feels responsible for something other than his own stability, and the responsibility is empowering him to be bold. Rumor has it that he’s even thinking about entering the Ishinomori tournament to prove to himself that he can control his parents under highly stressful conditions.

 

Appearance:

 

Donald wears a lot of jumpsuits and never wears loose-fitting clothing. Coats and capes can cause him to trip, and sudden falls can trigger his parents. His jumpsuits usually show his support for TIMS by incorporating their logo, a silhouette of a winged character often mistaken for an angel but who is in fact one of the furies from the Oresteia. TIMS sees the story as a metaphor for overcoming thoughtform possession. The furies are like Orestes’ thoughtforms. They hound him, they torment him, and there’s nothing he can do about it. It is only through the intervention of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, that they’re brought under control and their power placed under the service of justice.

Donald’s hair became pure white immediately following the 2014 Interway bombing through a phenomena known as canites subita or Marie Antoinette syndrome. The stress of losing his parents and being claimed by his “parents” damaged the roots of his hair preventing them from ever producing melanin. He could have his hair repaired, but he’s rejected any offers. “It came with my parents.” he said, “As long as I have them, I don’t want to change my hair color.”