Names are important, more important than people realize. They determine destiny. Doubt it? Who is more likely to get a doctoral degree, Katherine or Tiffani? Who is more likely to get that job at a Fortune 500 company, Tarence or Thomas? Which one is the beauty, Linnea Elise or Gertrude Jane? If you name a child Oswald, what kind of life do you imagine he will have? Which one is more likely to be empty-headed and promiscuous, Heidi or Ruth? Especially if she has big breasts…

Back when Heidi Ruth Lester hadn't yet dropped her first name, she went through seven bra refittings in her last year of middle school, starting out as a 32A and winding up a 38D, with more growth still to come. Her breasts brought with them a host of problems: she had to give up gymnastics, live with back-aches, learned to shake baby powder down her bra to deal with sweat and chafing and stave off heat rashes.

Worse were the social aspects: Girls glared and boys stared. Both said things. (here comes Heidi the milkmaid who doesn't need a cow!/ hey do you work at Gerber? how about some baby food over here?) Grown men made remarks that she really didn't like, (nice tits can I take a shit on them?), and some of them started grabbing at her body as if she were a stuffed animal in a toy store, there for anyone to stroke and fondle. She stopped wearing any top that dipped below the collarbones, never looked anyone in the eye, quit brushing her hair at all, gave up deodorant. That kept them from wanting to get closer.

Nothing truly bad happened to her. She was never raped or molested. She was just made unhappy and self-conscious. Nothing she couldn't handle.

Then she started high school and fell in love with Brian, who didn't notice her, in the grand tradition of all high-school first loves. She started fixing herself up again, standing up straight and tall (the spurt in height also started around then), smiling at people. Brian noticed. He asked her to the movies, and she accepted. Her parents didn't want her to date until she turned sixteen, so she had to lie and sneak to do it.

Deceiving her folks made her feel guilty and a little sick, but going on a date, a real just-the-two-of-them-date made her happier than she had ever known anything could, until she realized that when he put his arm around her shoulders, his hand kept landing on her breast. She asked him to stop, it was making her uncomfortable. Why did you think I asked you out, anyway? You're really an ugly girl, but with tits like those, everybody knows you're easy. She gave him a bloody nose more by accident than design, ran to the theatre lobby, called her mom. It was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do— asking for help, admitting what she had done, telling her mom why she needed a ride home right now.

Her mom came and got her. They talked about it, she cried, her mother forgave her, signed her up for self-defense classes and took her shopping. She started wearing dark colors and minimizer bras, refused to answer to Heidi, kept on getting taller. Her hips widened, her curves grew even more pronounced, her butt grew more prominent. She took up swimming as exercise, because running entailed too much painful bouncing. When she did better than Brian on all the finals, he started a rumor that she was blowing teachers in exchange for grades. That time she broke his nose on purpose.

The next year she was six feet tall, weighed a hundred and seventy pounds and was still growing. Men didn't harass her nearly as much anymore. A woman who was as big as (or bigger than) they were was too daunting. At school they started calling her 'Ruthless', a play on her name. She told herself she didn't care. Then she met Kyle, who didn't look at her like she was a very big piece of steak or a freak assembled in some mad scientist's lab. He was nice. He liked music and reading. He asked her out, and although he fell short in some ways, like, well, being kind of short and having really bad acne, she said yes. They dated, and it wasn't until after they had sex that he told her he thought he was gay.

She did not date again until college. Instead she read, volunteered at the library, helping the youngest children learn to read, and realized that little children were wonderful. They didn't care if you were now over six feet tall and big with it, because all adults were bigger and taller than they were. They didn't care if you weren't pretty. If they loved you they hugged you enthusiastically and innocently. That decided her career path; early childhood education, reading specialist. She set out to get a Master of Arts in Reading.

Her second boyfriend was also coming to grips with his sexuality. Clearly her gaydar was broken.

When she got her Master's, she was six foot one and a half. Her measurements were 42DD, 39 inch waist, 48 inch hips. Her driver's license said she weighed two hundred pounds, but the Department of Motor Vehicles just put down whatever people chose to write in.

At that point Ruth hadn't been on a date in three years, despite her rare and wonderful smile, despite her kindness, patience, and warmth and that she made delicious chicken with dumplings as light as feathers from scratch.

Her friends decided to hold an intervention. She wasn't plain, they told her. She wasn't manly. She wasn't too big. Okay, she was big, but swimming had given her good muscle definition in her arms and legs, and any of them would die to have her figure, soft round tummy and all. She was gorgeous and some day, somebody was going to come along and recognize her for the goddess she was. She just needed a makeover and to dress more attractively. Whisking her off to a salon, they had the hairdresser give her coppery highlights and lowlights, trim and shape it flatteringly. Next, make-up, then a mani-pedi. Finally, since it was Halloween, they went to a costume store, where they all got dressed for a fantastic party.

At the party, she met Evan. He was six-three, about seven years older than she was, never married, no kids. His midriff was still fairly lean, his hair was going silver at the temples in a very distinguished way, and most importantly, he wasn't gay. A year and a half later, they got engaged, and a year after that, married. She wanted to go to Italy on their honeymoon. He wanted to go to Disneyland (they had been there together three times already.) She didn't want to be a Bridezilla, so to Disneyland they went. An unfortunate precedence, perhaps. Certainly a warning sign.

About six years later, six months before she entered Arkham City, she had settled into a reasonably content and happy life with Evan. Maybe the sex wasn't all that she had hoped for, plus he had lost some hair and his stomach was no longer lean (she was quite a good cook,) but still, they were together, they were happy, and her career, their savings and their prospects were at the point where she could plan to take a year off and have a baby. Waiting any longer could mean having fertility issues.

With all that happily fermenting in her head, one day she went to pick up Evan's repaired laptop, felled by a very unpleasant virus, and her life came crashing down.

It would be easier if it were child pornography, she thought. Not better, obviously. Just easier. Child pornography is evil. You can fight evil. Or if it were just gay porn, I've coped with that revelation before. Twice. But this… How do you even dignify this by calling it a fetish? The once corrupted, now cleaned files were evidence of…of…Well, technically copyright violation is a crime, but he isn't the one who originally committed it.

An employee in the shop snickered, and was shushed by a co-worker. "Don't be a douche. She didn't know."

That snapped her out of it. "Right," She closed the laptop. "Clearly it's working again now. How much do I owe you?" She could not get out of there fast enough.

At home, Ruth went through his closet, his bedside table, finding more evidence, which she piled on the dining room table. She did not make dinner. Instead she made a pot of her favorite tea, sat down and drank it very slowly. When a key turned in the lock, she got up and walked deliberately to the foyer.

"Hey there, hon," Evan smiled at her. "I don't smell anything. Do you want to go out to ea—?"

"Do you remember what I was wearing when we first met?" she interrupted.

"Yes," his smile broadened. "You were wearing a Jessica Rabbit costume, purple gloves and all. You were the hottest—."

"Yes, yes, I know. It was very flattering. Of course, I was under the impression it was me you were attracted to. It comes as a very unhappy surprise to learn it was who, or what I was dressed like. Toon porn?! Your laptop was full of toon porn! Mickey Mouse doing things with Minnie, Donald, and Daisy Duck that….And don't try to tell me the virus installed it all because I checked the download history. We haven't had any kind of sex at all in over a year, and yes, I know you had the flu on our anniversary, but that was two months ago. We haven't had intercourse in three years! And I was feeling guilty because I bought a vibrator and used it when you weren't home!"

"Ruth, I—."

"I stopped trying to interest you in sex because I didn't want to make you feel inadequate when the Viagra and Cialis didn't work! And—and—you know I have body image issues. I thought it was me! Then I find selfies of you…where and how did you even get a My Little Pony that size?!"

"But I do love you!" he pleaded. "I have never had sex with another person. Not once! This all is—it's just for fun—."

"It's a fetish!" She stopped for a moment, breathing hard. He kept on talking, trying to explain, defend, reassure, gabble gabble in her ears. "We're getting a divorce," she said. "Not because you have a toon fetish, but because in the nearly ten years that I have known you, you never trusted me enough to tell me what your kink was. I had to find out in the service department of Office Goods.

"You know something? If you'd told me, nine years ago, eight years ago, hell, even five years ago, that your idea of mood music was the Animanics theme, and you'd really like me to dress up… I wouldn't have had any problem with it. I might even have gotten into it, because it was something we were doing together. But now? I am not about to have a family with a man who watches cartoons for fap material. Every time the TV went on and you sat down with the kids, I'd be creeped out. We can do this the civilized way, which is to separate and live apart for eighteen months. Or we can do this the nasty way, and not only does the court hear all about it—your mother does too."

Separating was easy. Living with the decision, as right as it was, was not. The next six months were brutal emotionally. Aliens could have landed, and she would not have noticed, much less a super-prison being built in the heart of the city. But when she did notice, she spent one long sleepless night writing an article in which she explained why it was wrong, citing examples from history and from recent news. It was impassioned, well-reasoned, persuasive, compassionate, intelligently written—and before twenty-four hours had passed since she posted it on line, she was under arrest.

A/N: I faithfully promise the next chapter will include the Penguin and inflict no more toon related trauma on my readers. Speaking of whom—a very big thank you to SwordStitcher, Tevinter, and Bat-Teen28.