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occasionalsnippets · 7 months ago

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Hmmm vague sort of batfam & fem(?) reader idea in broad strokes and probably incorrect lore and characterization.

Thinking of titling it something like “my brother’s father” or “my brother’s brothers” or “my brother’s father (and brothers and sisters and family and-)”

It’s a little something like this:

You are the first born child of Jack and Janet Drake and you are 3 years old when they tell you you’re going to have a little brother. He’s small and round and so very tiny when you first meet him. You barely process anything your parents tell you beyond the fact that his name is Timothy Jackson Drake. You’re an older sibling now and you’re ecstatic about it even if your parents mumble about how you’re a mistake and Tim isn’t.

(Things feel a little familiar though… just maybe…)

Anyways! You take classes (which are really just lessons from your parents) on how to be all prim and proper for Gotham high society while your little brother is snoozing as a little baby. At some point you debut in some gala and meet Bruce Wayne in passing who is… something. Ditzy. A little charming but quite bizarre. You think there’s supposed to be something else but, ah, you can’t remember what.

Tim gets bigger and so do you. By the time he turns 3, you’re certain you’ve carried him around more than your parents have. It seems wrong, somehow. But, Tim’s shaping up to be a little genius and you’re thrilled when he toddles after you more than he does to your parents. He gets a similar schedule and classes and eventually he debuts in high society as well.

There are rumours beginning to circulate that something is lurking in the shadows of Gotham City…

Haly’s circus comes to town. It’s a family trip to go and see them. The flying Graysons are amazing and wonderful and you and Tim get to talk and take a photo with the Graysons and see a quadruple somersault and-

The Graysons go splat. Falling to the ground like birdies shot out of the sky. Your parents do not usher you and Tim out fast enough to avoid seeing the aftermath of the disaster. As you leave, you catch a glimpse of Bruce Wayne, watching, with a sad look of resignation lingering on his face.

Things are quieter after that. Your parents begin to leave to go on long archaeological adventures and you’re left in the care of a rotating cast of babysitters who never stay long. They leave you with a mostly empty manor, unrestricted internet access, their contact information, and a black credit card.

Something more concrete about what has been running around Gotham and taking down criminals begins to take form. The Batman. Or just Batman maybe. Some nights you can see a light shining against the cloudy Gotham backdrop, a signal to him. Tim seems super interested in this Batman so you gather up newspaper clippings and take photographs of the signal when you can.

Every now and then your parents drop back in to socialize with high society Gothamites and bring you and Tim to galas to be cooed at but otherwise, they’re “too busy” for the two of you. Phone calls barely last a few minutes. Celebrations are missed on the regular. You think that it’s only going to get worse.

You continue to glance at Bruce Wayne and his new charge, Dick Grayson, at galas. They’re a riot from what you can see from the parties and news tabloids. Despite the short amount of time Dick Grayson has been with Bruce Wayne, you can tell Wayne cares deeply for him. They’re... fascinating.

Robin debuts by Batman’s side in traffic light colours, scaly shorts and a whole array of acrobatic moves and witty comebacks. Tim is enamoured by the dynamic duo and you think you might be too.

Your parents stop sending babysitters because “you’re old enough to take care of yourself and Tim, aren’t you dear?” which- Wow. Just, wow. You are ten years old. This is not your responsibility. You suck it up and pretend like you're making them proud by being "mature" and "responsible".

You go grocery shopping. You find recipes and learn to cook. You clean the dishes and pull up a stool so Tim can watch how to do it properly as well. A housekeeper drops by every now and then but the two of you don't talk to them.

Sometimes you think about calling the Waynes who are just next door and asking Mr. Pennyworth what you should do. You never do but you see him around when grocery shopping at times which makes you long to ask all the more.

You watch your parent’s company emails with increasing interest. School is dreadfully slow and there's nothing better to do. Your parents have mentioned once or twice at galas and during lessons that they hope you’ll inherit the company one day.

You still remember the lessons they teach you. Who to speak to. How to determine their worth. Whether you should climb atop them, crush them beneath your heel, or hold their hand and stand by their side. Those days you feel like your mother. Sharp as broken glass. Waiting to press against someone unsuspecting.

On Tim’s birthday, he asks to go out and see Batman and Robin. It was inevitable in hindsight. You give him a camera, a safety lesson, dress him up in clothes to blend in and head out with him. You’re absolutely sure if you said no, he would sneak out anyways.

And thus begins Tim’s (and yours by proxy) illustrious career as a stalker.

To sum up your thoughts, Batman and Robin are amazing. Sort of up close and sort of personal (a few rooftops away), you and Tim take plenty of photos and jot down notes on them every couple nights when you’re sure there’s nothing important for school the next day. It’s exhilarating.

On a night both you and Tim aren't out, Robin does a quadruple somersault. Tim, who had taken to coding and hacking, gets security footage of the night. The gears start cranking in your head.

Another few nights stalking out the duo. Another few nights that bring you closer and closer to Wayne manor.

Tim shakes you awake one night, hovering over you, saying it’s something important. You blearily sit upright and ruffle his hair out of habit.

“Dick Grayson is Robin,” he says with absolute confidence that you could be proud of.

“Dick Grayson is Robin...” you echo and with dawning horror, you say at the same time as Tim, “and Bruce Wayne is Batman.”

And you lean back into your bed, let the gears click into place, and pass out.

In retrospect, that made a lot of sense. Both about Batman and you. But wow. The Drakes f*cked up real bad. You are not supposed to exist. One very private breakdown later because "Oh no, Tim is going to become Robin and a Wayne and he's so f*cking stupid sometimes-"

You're taking things very well.

Newfound (old-recovered?) knowledge aside, you still have to go to school, make sure Tim is doing okay, and continue stalking Batman and Robin. You and Tim have even figured out their patrol schedule recently so really, it's not like much has changed.

The next little while goes by in rapid succession.

Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, debuts. Robin and Batman get into some kind of argument. Batman goes without Robin for a while and Nightwing debuts in Bludhaven. Jason Todd is adopted by Bruce Wayne. A new Robin flies.

You see him in school at times as a mere passerby in a different age cohort and Tim who’s in a lower grade sees him even less often as Jason Todd. As Robin 2 though, you’re seeing him almost every single night. He’s different than Dick Grayson was, obviously, more cuss words and less acrobatics, but still Robin. The light to Batman’s shadows. Magic.

He catches the two of you on a rooftop once. It’s still early in the night and you’re rooting around in your bag for the extra memory card when you hear Tim squeak and something thump on the rooftop.

“It’s a bit late to be out right now, isn’t it?” he asks.

You find the memory card and slot it into your camera. “Late night photography.”

Robin doesn’t look impressed but hey, you’re not the one going out late at night to fight crime.

Tim, who is tucked by your side glances up at you. You nod and nudge him forward.

“Robin!” he calls out. “Can I get a hug?”

Well, you know Robin. You know Jason Todd. He won’t deny your little brother a hug. So as the two of them step forward, you raise the camera and take a picture. You smile as you look at the developed photo later at home. One for you, one for Tim, and one for the Waynes if it ever comes to pass.

Some nights you let Robin spot you and Tim. The three of you chat and get some food before he's pulled away by crime. You make him promise not to dig into the two of you. He agrees.

Things are quiet for a while or as quiet as Gotham ever gets. You wait for the other shoe to drop. Something bad is going to happen soon. You can’t exactly recall what or when but you know something and-

Robin- Jason Todd dies. Barbara Gordon is paralyzed. The Joker is still alive, still having the last laugh at the end of it all. You hate it. You hate him.

Tim throws himself into some kind of frenzy to hide the pain just as Bruce Wayne loses himself in his grief. Batman does not kill but he comes very close in this time. The hospital records climb. You bring more and more medical supplies because if you don’t interfere these people, often petty criminals, are going to die before the police ever arrives.

"Batman is going to kill himself if this continues," Tim tells you.

"And what," you say because you think you know how this is going to play out, "do you want to do about this?"

The answer, it turns out, is to find Dick Grayson. In true Tim Drake fashion, he stalks him (or rather, he stalks Starfire), hacks into a database or two, and finds his address in Bludhaven. You probably shouldn't have encouraged this kind of behaviour but ehhhhhhh... it's fine.

Since you aren't inclined to allow Tim to head to Bludhaven on public transportation alone, you go with him. You can imagine it's quite a sight when Dick Grayson opens the door to two teenagers who tell him that they know who he is and that "Batman needs a Robin".

It's a very awkward car ride back to Gotham with too many questions like "Where are your parents?" and "What do you mean they're halfway across the world?" and "How old are you?".

He won't return as Robin. You didn't expect he would. Despite that though, he allows you and Tim into the Wayne manor where the two of you meet Mr. Pennyworth officially. He's cool and probably not paid enough in your opinion.

Dick Grayson shows the way to the Batcave as Tim explains what the two of you know. Dick Grayson leaves as Nightwing, not Robin like Tim wanted him to be. The three of you wait and wait until all communication with Batman and Nightwing have disappeared.

"I'm going to become Robin," Tim declares. “It’ll only be for a short while. Until Batman recovers or someone else becomes Robin.”

“Right,” you say dryly. “Just a short while.”

And that, perhaps, seals his fate. You allow Tim to go out as Robin just this once with Mr. Pennyworth as you navigate the Batcave and prepare everything in the medbay and start monitoring comms. If there's anything you know about vigilantes, it's that they always end up injured at the end of the night.

You have a plan though for the future. A very stupid plan perhaps but a plan nevertheless.

You’re going to be Robin too. Not always (vigilante night life isn’t really all that appealing to you) but lord knows you can’t trust Tim to not go out and do things even when injured.

At the end of the night, Batman, Nightwing, Mr. Pennyworth and Tim return to the Batcave where you are sitting disapprovingly on the chair by the batcomputer.

“This is…?” Batman’s voice is low and as harsh as gravel.

“(Y/n) Drake,” you answer sharply, feeling remarkably like your mother in some ways. “Let’s discuss how things are going to go with Robin, shall we?”

It’s your first real introduction to Batman and at the moment, you aren’t impressed but at the very least, you know he will do his best not to allow Tim to die. Tim will be Robin and eventually, Bruce’s son. But not now. You will not allow this Batman to be Tim’s father (not that you think he wants to right now) when he’s still mourning the loss of Jason Todd.

In many ways, Tim’s transition from stalking to fighting is easy. The Drake manor was never somewhere the two of you spend too long at anyways between school, nighttime photography and staking out at Barbara’s library to do work so heading over to the Waynes for training whenever there was time was easy. It’s just like another extracurricular to be picked up.

Tim trains and you convince Bruce Wayne to let you follow the same routine. He caves easily. So, so, easily.

But besides that, when your parents return briefly from a trip, you convince them to let you meddle with their company more for a little variety in your life more than anything else. You’re pretty sure the company is on track to going right under which- oof, that’s what happens when you’re off at random archaeological digs and don’t participate in the important decision making.

Although Tim is not yet allowed to be Robin yet, Bruce Wayne still goes out as Batman, still solves cases, still has not processed the grief. Taking care of him, you find, is very much so like taking care of another child. Replace his coffee with decaf, cross your arms disappointingly and drag him away from the batcomputer, double down and sic Mr. Pennyworth on him, make sure he’s staying hydrated-

The list goes on and on. More than a few times, you catch Tim repeating your actions which is cute and gives you hope that maybe he’ll also take care of himself when the time comes.

Mr. Pennyworth is great, as usual. He makes snacks when you and Tim come over, cooks meals you’ve never tried to make before, and teaches you about guns. Having him around is, perhaps, the first time in a long time you have had responsibility lifted off your shoulders.

Barbara Gordon is every bit as strong and fiery as you recall from the times you have seen her in the distance. She is also very much so enjoying having Tim be her little protege in tech. You come around from time to time to see if there’s anything new but hm… timeline is farther in the past than “back then”. Some things that are outdated to the you of before are still brand new here which means some of your previous knowledge isn’t particularly helpful.

Oh well. It’ll catch up eventually.

Dick Grayson’s presence in the manor is spotty. It always feels like he's going to try and corner you about you and Tim's living situation which a. is none of his business right now and b. you have it under control.

It's fine to leave Tim to him because Tim is super happy to be hanging out with him (the first Robin!!) and Grayson is doing that weird sort of "I want to be a good brother to new Robin because I wasn't good to Jason at the start and I want to be better this time-"

Whatever. Misplaced guilt complex aside, Grayson still gets into arguments with Bruce Wayne about a myriad of things so he never stays too long at the manor. You work real hard to make sure Tim doesn't overhear those arguments.

Man, you hope they get it together soon.

The pro of having a new set of adults in your life is that now you can off load things to them like picking Tim up from school when you have other extracurriculars.

You, texting Dick Grayson: hey, can you pick up Tim today?

You, texting Alfred Pennyworth: hi Mr. Pennyworth. can you pick Tim up from school today? Thank you!

You, texting Bruce Wayne: Pick up Tim up from school. Do not be late.

Things are going pretty well in your opinion. The two of you train with Mr. Pennyworth, then Batman, then Nightwing. Tim bonds with the members of the Batfamily, you remain ever so slightly distant but still involved and things are going pretty well.

Then, you get an urgent phone call.

Janet Drake died and Jack Drake has fallen into a coma.

It’s as though the world stops when you find out. You… you didn’t know this happened. Sure you assumed something must have happened for Tim to be adopted but you… you hadn’t thought it would be this soon.

You tell Tim.

You plan a funeral.

You become the teenage CEO of Drake Industries.

The world continues on.

Tim officially becomes Robin which you suppose is the start of a new era. You give him a very lengthy talk about it and tell him to let you know if he plans on staying nights over at the Wayne manor when you're busy with company work.

He's old enough to be responsible for himself, right? You always kind of see him with the rose-tinted glasses that comes with raising him basically most his life.

Tim goes out every few nights as Robin and gets more and more involved with Batman's vigilantism and the various cases in Gotham. You spend countless hours on work and school and try your best to help out in the Batcave when you have the time. It's rough the first couple weeks but you trust in Oracle, in Nightwing, in Mr. Pennyworth and in Batman to keep Tim alive.

And then, of course, Tim gets injured.

"You don't need to coddle me," he complains when you block him from the entrance of the Batcave.

"Right, Mr. three broken ribs and a stab wound." You stare at him, unimpressed. "Go rest up, I'll fill in for you."

He startles. "Wha-? What do you mean fill in- Hey!"

You hand him off to Mr. Pennyworth, shut your laptop, head down, and get suited up. Batman, who is sitting by the batcomputer, impressively does not flinch when you approach but you can tell he's hesitant and maybe a little shocked? You aren't as good at reading him when he's Batman as Tim is, unfortunately.

You roll your eyes regardless.

"Why do you think I asked to be trained alongside Tim? Let's go."

Your own first run as Robin is fascinating. Dangerous? Yes. Exhilarating? Also yes. No one notices that you're not actually Robin 3 which is a little annoying because yeah, Tim hit his growth spurt and is steadily climbing in height but you're still taller than him!

That aside, you know being Robin isn't sustainable for you. Definitely only a backup plan so you let Tim keep the reins on that. Jim Gordon is pretty cool though.

At some point, Batman brings Tim up to meet the Justice League. A couple weeks later, so do you. Almost everyone thinks you and Tim are the same Robin. Neither you nor Batman correct them.

You think Bruce Wayne is starting to feel better when you catch him giving those sad little orphan eyes to Tim when he isn’t looking. The grief has ebbed. The cruelty faded. It’s not enough for you to be satisfied.

“Go to therapy Mr. Wayne,” you say. “Tim will not be a replacement for Jason Todd.”

And- yeah, you’re being a little mean because you know that isn’t the way it actually is. Despite that, he still flinches at your words.

"You should also make it mandatory for all heroes at the Justice League by the way," you add.

“I don’t need-“

“Liar. You obviously do. If you’re worried about the whole secret identity thing, find a way around it, especially if the Justice League is going to be getting it as well.”

He sighs quietly and turns away.

“By the way,” you call out as he walks away with increasing speed, “if you don’t find a solution within the next three months, I will make a solution.”

He walks faster.

“You can count it as a threat!”

Less than three weeks later, he goes to therapy. It also becomes mandatory for every hero. Every single one. He also, very awkwardly, offers his help with running Drake Industries if you ever need it. You count it as a win.

The days continue on. You rework Drake Industries to an acceptable standard, spend countless hours at meetings and stare longingly at the coffee shops you pass by. There are always cases upon cases to work on.

Jack Drake awakens from his coma. Your life is thrown into chaos once more.

He’s a bit different now, probably because of the whole near death thing, and he’s weirdly more interested in “being a family” now. You scoff a little at his attempts. You’re old enough and remember enough that the neglect and unwilling role of a “parent” you’ve been put through is enough to make you disillusioned with fixing this family. You’re not cruel- he’s not a terrible father but he’s 10 years too late to be making an attempt now.

You snub him for company work. Tim snubs him for vigilante work. With nothing else to do, Jack Drake turns to dating a younger woman. You hire a housekeeper, Mrs. Mac, to help care for him. It’s just the way things are.

Spoiler appears in Gotham. She and Tim have this kind of... thing going on you think. Tim also has this thing going on with another girl or something. You don't really want to know but you give both of them a sex ed talk anyways. You read over her case, whatever is going on with Cluemaster, and leave it up to Batman and Robin.

On one of your stints as Robin, you pick up one Cassandra Cain.

You vaguely remember something about her being officially brought into the Batfamily before Batman got lost in time but you aren't really too clear on the when that happened. Was it supposed to be now? Whatever, it's probably fine. It takes quite a bit to coax her over (hmmm she seems more partial when you’re Robin compared to Tim so you were working overtime for a bit as Tim took on a different case) but eventually it works.

Regardless, it's a pretty terrible case. A child (nevermind she's around the same age as you) assassin brought up to be a weapon by David Cain and Lady Shiva. Doesn’t understand any language other than body language. Wants to become the next Batgirl (?)

Well, at least Bruce Wayne might be happy to have a daughter. Barbara is too old and has a good father. Spoiler hasn’t “officially” revealed her civilian identity and probably isn’t willing to be actually adopted. And well, the less that’s said about you the better.

Tim joins a group of teenage superheroes. You meet them too and there isn’t much to say but they’re nice and figured out you weren't Robin-Robin pretty quickly. You think you may have given them a heart attack though when they realized you were an imposter.

A bit later, a few months maybe, as you’re sitting in the Batcave, working on a case Nightwing asked for help on, Tim stumbles back into the Batcave with a slightly dead look on his face.

"Don't let me become evil gun Batman."

“?”

“Just… please.”

Did he meet an alternate universe version of himself or something? That’s a thing that happens often enough in DC right.

“Sure, okay, don’t let Tim become evil gun Batman. I’ll write that down.”

At least he seems relieved at your promise even if you don’t really understand what being “evil gun Batman” would entail.

“Oh and don’t become Batman just in general. Or like Bruce Wayne, okay?”

Batman offers to train Spoiler officially. Therapy must be doing something good to Batman because he asked you first if he should tell her Robin's identity before beginning training instead of just doing it. You call him a f*cking idiot and that settles that.

Stephanie Brown and Tim begin dating for real. It's um... a bit tumultuous. But, they have their little identity reveal and you get to meet her as yourself finally so, yay?

And of course, all good things must come to an end. This time it’s Jack catching Tim sneaking back home as Robin.

You’re away at a company meeting when it happens and by the time you get home, the dust has already settled and a deal has been made. Secrecy in exchange for giving up Robin. This won’t last, of course, but it’s better than other alternatives you suppose.

In the meantime, Stephanie Brown becomes the fourth Robin.

Her stint as Robin was very short if you remembered correctly. Months of training, something about disobeying orders and a gang fight. Also something about dying…? You keep an eye on the situation as Tim goes off to school for real for the next while.

Sure enough, Batman fires her and she sneaks out to deal with the criminal underworld. Thankfully, you've asked Oracle to keep an eye out on that so the moment she leaves, you're able to head out as well. You tell Mr. Pennyworth you’re going on a “ride”, half-suit up (can't also be Robin here!), borrow the Batmobile keys and rush off according to Oracle’s instructions.

It's chaos which is to be expected really. The entire time you're driving, you're cursing Batman out under your breath.

"F*cking Batman... can't keep a Robin to save a life." You turn a corner. "And here I thought therapy would make him better at communication."

Truly a Sisyphean task to make the Robins believe they aren't inadequate. You hope that by the time Tim goes back to being Robin, Batman will pull his head out of his ass.

Anyways, you head to where Robin is being held, crash through a couple of things and hit Black Mask with the Batmobile. Whoops, you think you decelerated enough to not break everything in his body. You get out of the car, toss Robin into the backseat and drive off to see Dr. Leslie Thompkins.

“What- can you… even drive???” Robin 4 asks as she bleeds heavily on the nice leather seats of the Batmobile.

"Don’t worry about it, I got my driver's license ages ago." You wave around the card as you break several traffic rules at once.

Eventually, you arrive at Dr. Thompkin’s clinic where she is able to be treated. While you linger beside the Robin as she is being treated, Dr. Thompkins apparently found it fitting enough to air out all of her concerns regarding child vigilantes and Batman to you. You really don't think you should be the one she should be telling this to.

Towards the end of the treatment, Batman shows up in the shadows, like always. Speak of the devil and he shall appear and all that.

"So, you've heard her thoughts," you say because you don't doubt he'll have heard everything already despite only showing up now. "Make yourself clear. Speak before you do something irreparable to each other."

With that, you usher both him and the doctor outside to speak properly. On the operating table, Stephanie Brown breathes, her chest falling and rising slowly and steadily. You end up falling asleep in the clinic.

In the aftermath, Stephanie Brown pauses vigilante activities to recover and Tim returns to being Robin. You and Jack Drake have an enlightening conversation about that but that's a story for another time. Oh, also, Stephanie Brown and Tim break up. It happens. At least it seems to be a mutual agreement.

Things enter equilibrium once again. You graduate high school, enrol in university part time, and immediately throw yourself full time into Drake Industries which has grown into a powerhouse you’re very proud of.

Stephanie Brown goes back to being Spoiler. Cassandra Cain goes out as Batgirl. Barbara Gordon is Oracle. Dick Grayson continues on as Nightwing. Tim is Robin and Bruce Wayne is Batman. Everything is steady for another little while.

However, the Joker is becoming a problem. You've observed enough of the happenings in Gotham to understand which things you can categorize as "threats" or "things that can be handled". The League of Assassins? Fine, handleable. Important for other things later on. The Court of Owls? Fine, you're working on purging some things that the others aren't aware of.

But the Joker? There are enough birdies in the Batfamily now that you're starting to worry.

So, what should you do?

You plot. You plan. Everyone is busy enough with cases (crime never stops in Gotham after all) that you're relatively undisturbed. It should be fine, you think. Harley had broken up with the Joker ages ago, you don't have qualms about killing, and you don't have to follow the "no killing" rule since you're not really part of the Batfamily. Besides, it's not like you're doing this as Robin.

A week later, you put your plans into action.

In truth, it's so easy you’re almost disappointed. All that planning just for tonight. You’re well aware of how swamped everyone will be with numerous rogues coming out to play. But the Joker will be preoccupied, hidden beneath the chaos he would normally thrive in.

Luring him out is simple. Killing him even more so. You like a little bit of poetic justice so a crowbar is the way to go.

The bats may not be able to kill the Joker for thematic reasons but you can.

The Joker laughs and laughs at nothing at all. He doesn’t know who you are. You think you almost crack a smile when you’re finished, his head bashed open and blood splattered against the floor. You wipe out the body, all the evidence and head back to the cafe to complete your alibi.

Midway through your fifth meeting of the night, you remember, “hey isn’t Jason Todd supposed to come back to life and get mad at Batman for not killing the Joker?”

You’ve encountered the League of Assassins in passing as “Robin”, made vague comments in Talia Al Ghul’s direction about “hidden parentage” and about how "the League is dangerous for children isn't it?" but you realize you’ve never really dug about Jason Todd. Well, um, it’s probably fine. You’re pretty sure you’re way too late to help him now with the whole revival thing anyways.

You go to bed at sunrise and rest with a weight lifted off your shoulders.

The very next day, Red Hood appears in Gotham City.

Talk about timing, huh? You're almost impressed.

Well, the good thing about all of this is that his appearance is enough to take attention off of the fact that no one's seen the Joker in a while. Relatively quickly, Red Hood takes over Crime Alley and starts messing around with the gangs and Black Mask. You end up hearing about the 8 heads in a duffle bag soon after.

As he "cleanses" Crime Alley and you work on providing help through Drake Industries to the residents undergoing this period of unrest, Gotham begins to shift uneasily. The Joker is gone, people whisper. He hasn't appeared for far too long.

Despite being stretched thin, the Bats still investigate. Mortal enemy privileges, you suppose, but you're well aware that they won't find anything.

Nightwing and Batman are the ones who conduct your "investigation", unsurprisingly. When they show up, you stop typing up company emails and sigh.

"Yeah, yeah, covering your bases, I know," you say before they begin. "Let's get on with it."

The meeting ends with "indeterminable". You may or may not have killed the Joker and while it's possible you could have, you also might not have. Schrodinger's killer if you will. You shrug and decide it's fine if they don't think you're totally innocent. Being around a family of detectives is just like that sometimes.

Soon after, Red Hood's movements sort of... halt for a bit. You think it might be because you wrecked all his plans by killing the Joker which oops, sorry, ruined his dramatic return and all that. He still clashes with the others and leaves hints dangling above their heads (you would know, you check the reports in the Batcave) but it's quite subdued.

Eventually, Bruce Wayne finds out Jason Todd's coffin is empty. Despite figuring out that Red Hood is Jason Todd, he doesn't tell anyone.

Because it's "dangerous" right now and "his safety is compromised", Tim gets grounded at Titans Tower. This is the first time your little brother has ever been grounded which is objectively, hilarious.

So, obviously, you "take a break" and go visit Titans Tower.

You're semi-suited up and masked (again, can't have two Robins here) to meet the Titans as kind-of yourself for the first time. They're, understandably, pretty shocked that you're meeting them not as Robin.

Anyways, since Tim is grounded and can't go out on patrol, he's stuck working on cases in the Tower. Looking over evidence, deciphering messages, etc, etc. He complains to you the entire time. Despite all this time, he's still the same as ever. Still your little brother. Still Tim.

Eventually when night falls, you usher him to bed with a promise to "take care of whatever is unfinished". Red Hood is coming tonight. You know he is.

In the dead of night, you wander and wait.

You arrive at the Hall of Fallen Titans. Jason Todd, in his Robin costume, stands before you.

The lights flicker.

"Jason," you tilt your head and let your footsteps echo. "You should come home."

Darkness descends.

Despite being a solid head shorter than him and nowhere near as built like a fridge as he is, you're absolutely certain that he won't attack. You're just "not-Robin" enough for him to pick up on the fact that something is wrong. You’re fairly certain he thinks you and Tim are the same person though.

Sure enough, when the brightness comes forth yet again, he has vanished.

You smile even as the alerts finally start going off.

The next day, Tim, who found out that Red Hood broke in while he was sleeping, gets kind of mad at you.

"What do you mean he was here?! Why didn't you wake me up?"

"I had it handled. Besides, it's just Jason."

"What? That's not the point!"

"It's fine," you insist. "Besides, you were so sleep deprived that it wouldn't make a different if you were awake or not."

Everyone knows it's Jason at this point in the aftermath by the way. It wasn't hard to piece together.

The Joker is officially declared "missing" but everyone knows that he's dead. You don't get accused of killing him again so you consider it a win. You do vaguely remember something in the comics about a whole separate confrontation with Red Hood, Batman and the Joker that didn't end well but um, you ruined those plans as well so you aren't really sure what's going to happen now.

Things vaguely simmer down afterwards. Red Hood is still active, of course, as well as the Bats and Birds but it's a smidgen more awkward, you think. You don't go out as Robin in this time but since everyone is still working overtime, you spend more time at the Wayne Manor then you normally would.

One morning, Jason Todd shows up at breakfast without a single word in advance.

Just waltzes through the front door and into the dining room where you’re seated, reading over a report from last night. He’s dressed like the exact same as usual just without the Red Hood mask. Seeing him up close now, he really only vaguely resembles the Robin you stalked in the past.

“Good morning,” you greet, just loud enough for Mr. Pennyworth to hear in the kitchen.

Jason remains silent for a few moments before responding. “… yeah. Good morning.”

As Mr. Pennyworth steps out, you slip away into the kitchen. You hear exclamations of joy and disbelief as you flip the eggs in the pan so they don't burn.

Tim shows up next, groggily wandering into the kitchen where you've prepared a cup of coffee. Once he's awake enough, he blinks at the scene in the living room. You watch with great interest as Tim drops his coffee mug that would have nearly shattered had you not caught it.

"That-? Jason Todd???"

"Yup." You nod and crack another egg into the pan. "Go out and say hi."

Dick Grayson walks in next and also freezes dramatically. You think he's started crying as he wraps his little brother in a hug. You nudge Tim out the kitchen as Bruce Wayne shows up. By the way, Cass and Steph are having a sleepover at Barbara's place so they aren't here.

Anyways, as that dramatic reunion is happening and you catch Jason Todd do a double take at Tim and you, you finish up the rest of breakfast and begin plating. And well, this is a good moment to remember so you snap a picture while you're at it.

*elden ring style title card*: family reunited

Whatever moral code issues they have can be dealt with later.

So, that was a whole thing. Hurrah for communication, you're very pleased that all that got resolved. Jason Todd isn't going to stop being Red Hood but they're worked something out that you don't care to be privy to. It's not perfect but it's something.

You have a couple of conversations when you cross paths. Apparently he remembered enough of you and Tim stalking him. You're kind of surprised. When the topic of Titans Tower comes up, you clarify that you were the Robin he saw there.

Apparently he did think something weird was going on back there. Good to know.

Things go badly again when Captain Boomerang breaks into the Drake manor the one night you're home. He and Jack Drake kill each other and you get injured in the scuffle. Dana Drake (the lady your father married at some point), suffers a mental breakdown and gets sent to a mental hospital in Bludhaven.

Yikes.

This is a really bad time. A really, really, bad time.

People filter in and out of your hospital room as you recover. You're like, mostly fine, you think. You'll be good after some bedrest. Anyways, you spend most of your time in the hospital planning for Jack Drake's funeral as Tim effectively bans you from doing work.

The funeral isn't really too different from Janet's. They were alright parents. Neither you or Tim are as broken up about their deaths as others think you should be. It's complicated.

However, this brings about the next issue. You and Tim are orphans now. Although you're an adult (barely), Tim is still a minor which means someone has to be listed as his legal guardian. He made up a fake uncle or something in the comics, right? But, since you exist, wouldn't you just be listed as his legal guardian now?

"Bruce offered to adopt me," Tim tells you one day as you're organizing the Drake manor.

"Oh, congrats?"

"I'm not sure if I want to be adopted though."

"You don't have to give him an answer right away." You shrug. "Think about it."

You do know that he does enjoy being at the Wayne manor for reasons other than vigilante business. He fits in well with the family and your mandated therapy for vigilantes and heroes has been good for everyone. You've been around enough to decide that Bruce would be a good enough dad.

"What about you?"

"Hm?" You blink. "What about me?"

"Are you going to let Bruce adopt you too?"

What.

"Why would he adopt me?"

Tim looks back at you in confusion. "Why wouldn't he adopt you?"

"I'm an adult?"

"Adults can still be adopted if there is a mutual agreement between parties."

"I'm not part of your vigilante party."

"I think he wishes we all weren't."

"I don't think they would all want me around?"

You were pretty sure the others thought of you as a weirdo who barged into their home to keep watch on Tim. You're mainly around because you're Tim's sibling and while they've bonded well with him, you're a whole different story.

Isn't it weird to also have someone who's just "Tim (little brother coded)'s sibling" also become their sibling?

Despite it though, Tim looks at you, aghast.

"Wait, we're getting off topic, this is about your adoption. No one's even offered to adopt me or anything-"

"No, we're continuing on this topic-"

It ends in a mild argument, really. Not seeing eye to eye and all that. Apparently though, the interactions between the two of you have frosted over enough that everyone starts commenting on it. Luckily (or unluckily depending on who you ask), the ice that formed gets broken by an unexpected variable.

Damian Al Ghul shows up at the doorstep of the Wayne manor.

You're the one who opens the door since everyone is preoccupied. Of course, you recognize him instantly. He really does resemble Talia and Bruce. Still, this is... a bit early isn't it? He's like, a literal child.

He greets you by your full name, hands over a stack of papers (which were DNA tests and a letter from Talia) and introduces himself.

"Okay," you sigh. "Come in. I'll call Bruce and he'll do his own DNA test just to be certain. Mr. Pennyworth can make you something to eat if you'd like."

Damian lifts his head dismissively. You can already tell he's going to be a brat but he's young enough that it's still cute. After calling Bruce who rushes back, doing DNA test and confirming that "yeah this is real", Damian is brought into the fold.

Man. The number of assassins and people trained by assassins in this household is rising yet again. You decide to firmly leave the matter of Damian to Bruce. His child, his problem. While he has a breakdown about this, you push him off to talk about it in therapy and start working with Alfred to get everything for Damian in order.

Damian doesn’t settle easily in the Wayne manor. He’s prickly, self centered and very proud of his parentage and training. You'd know. He's already gone on his spiel about "the blood son" and "becoming Robin" and all that.

Tim, who has temporarily stopped being mad at you because there's a new variable, is skittish.

"What if they give him Robin?" he confides in you.

"They won't," you say. "He isn't even allowed in the cave yet. Plus, the title is yours right now, if they do give it away, I'll deal with it."

"Family" dinner rolls around. Jason is here, surprisingly. Apparently he and Damian knew each other from the League. So naturally, Jason is his favourite sibling (or rather the only one he acknowledges).

You had planned to grab a plate and sneak off into your room to finish reading the quarterly budget reports but Alfred got a hold of you first so you’re stuck at the dinner table as Damian argues for why he should be allowed to become Robin.

“Damian,” you interrupt midway through the same argument you’ve heard several hundred times, “you haven’t even hit double digits yet. You’re far too young to be going out at Robin at the moment. Besides, you haven’t been properly trained as Robin nor are you aware of the rules. You’re unfamiliar with Gotham, patrol routes, the rogues and far more than you may imagine. There is more to being Batman’s partner than just whatever you’ve learned at the League. Although you may be ahead in terms of physical abilities, you lack the experience.”

You take a deep breath. “In addition, you have yet to balance the public attention that comes from being Bruce Wayne’s child. Your civilian life must be sorted out before any vigilante activities may occur."

You've been around Wayne Enterprises. His PR team is in a constant state of being on fire.

“Fine.” Damian scoffs but settles petulantly in his seat. "I suppose not all of you are incompetent. You are as well spoken as Mother described."

Talia Al Ghul? Talking about you? Can’t be anything good. You decide to ignore it and continue stuffing food into your mouth.

Damian gets enrolled in school. It’s going to be a little awful and he’ll hate it but it’s necessary. You make a goal to motivate him. If he gets good marks, he’ll be allowed into the Batcave. It’s an acceptable trade off.

Surprisingly, for normal issues regarding school, Damian starts going to Tim for advice. It's a good thing you think? They snipe at each other (very sibling coded) but there aren't any murder attempts yet.

Damian gets less prickly. He likes art. He likes animals. He'll reluctantly play along during Galas and let the old people try to pinch his cheeks and coo at him. It’s an improvement.

The topic of Tim’s potential adoption hasn’t come up again. When Jack Drake was in a coma, the two of you were technically placed under Bruce's care (or Alfred's rather) but everything right now is kind of still up in the air. Maybe if you ignore it long enough it won't exist.

The days churn on.

You check your calendar.

Meeting with Talia Al Ghul tomorrow at 3 PM.

At least she went through the Drake Industry protocols to book a meeting, you think optimistically. And at least it's not Ra's Al Ghul. It's been pretty quiet on that end actually, you would've been worried if Talia didn't show up soon.

You're still not sure why she booked a meeting with you and not Bruce though.

The meeting occurs in your office at the main Drake Industries building. There's a lot of small talk. A lot of skirting around topics. It's the same as every other time you've spoken to Talia. The two of you discuss Damian for a bit.

And then Tim breaks into your office. Actually, it's more like Tim and Damian and Bruce (all of whom are in civilian form) but you digress. Talia and Damian (and Bruce) exchange words (you've already said he seems to be doing well but this is probably better for them) before she decides it's time to go.

"You know how to book another meeting," you say as you wave her off. "I will let you know how it goes with Linda from accounting."

She nods in a suitably appreciative way that reminds you of your mother, "Of course."

You answer some questions about how many times this has happened before shooing everyone else out of your office so you can do work.

Later, at night, Damian approaches you.

"You were always her favourite of Father's other children."

"Favourite?" You look away from your laptop and fight the urge to grimace. Tim is Ra’s Al Ghul’s favourite so you aren’t really sure what being Talia’s favourite could mean. But most importantly… "What do you mean of Bruce's other children?

"Are you not Father's ward?"

"No? I've never been adopted by Bruce."

"Yet Grayson and the others refer to Drake as their brother."

"That's Tim. You don't see them calling me their sibling, do you?"

"Hm."

As he turns and walks away with a contemplative expression, you can't help but feel as though you had picked the wrong dialogue option.

The fic sort of set up like a 5+1 thing (five times Bruce is not your father and one time he is/five times the bats are not your family and one time they are).

Roughly, part one would start to the end of Dick Grayson as Robin. Part two is Jason up until Tim's first night as Robin. Part three is training to Stephanie's end as Robin. Part four is killing Joker to Jack Drake’s funeral. Five is post-funeral until the end.

And then of course, there's the plus 1. It's mostly set up as like an outsider POV, observing you from the perspective of others. Despite your narration indicating that you're "not that close" to the Batfamily since you aren't a full-time vigilante, that's not really true.

Your POV focuses a lot more on "plot events" and your work dealing with Drake Industries but there's a whole bunch of things outside of that where you're just hanging out. You go shopping with everyone, you bake cookies with Alfred, you teach Cass language, you take Tim to skateboarding competitions, you give everyone Christmas presents, you do so so much outside of what you consider “really important”.

Despite what you think, you’re a really good sibling actually and you have gotten close with everyone in the Batfamily. If only you could see it. Of course, it doesn’t really kick in how you think of yourself as an outsider until the whole adoption thing. Did all that time spent together not get through your head?

Some part of it might be the rough start when you and Tim first became involved. Your relationship with everyone is… complicated. More than complicated.

You spent hundreds of days and weeks bringing Bruce back from the brink after Jason’s death. You dealt with the brunt of the damage he caused in the time just to make things easier on everyone else. It’s not an exaggeration to say you remade Bruce, remade Batman, in the image you wanted. It’s a complicated dynamic. He concedes to you often, too often for the two of you to really hold a normal parent-child relationship in any sense.

His reflection on his interactions with you and Tim are also super complicated, especially since when Tim first got involved as Robin, Bruce was stewing in grief and really did not want the two of you to be around. He does appreciate you but winning your appreciation afterwards is difficult.

You've also spent a lot of time when you first met Dick to basically plaster in his face "even if you're mad at each other, Bruce still cares about you and you should come back to the manor sometimes". Although you encouraged Tim to hang out with Dick, you never really sought him out that often on your own. You always seem a little confused when he spends time with you, as though you're an obligation to him.

Jason's memories of you and Tim from before his death are spotty at best. He remembers vague feelings. Giving Tim a hug. 2 figures running along the shadows of rooftops. Hiding along the edge of the room at galas to avoid people and finding you and Tim there as well. It's enough that it's impacted his time at the League and his feelings after his dip in the Lazarus Pit.

Much of his anger was directed towards Batman more than it was towards the new Robin. Especially after recalling some of the bits and pieces of who the Drakes are. Talia's "favouritism" towards you may have helped a bit.

It's only really after he kind of rejoins the Batfam and you and Tim chat with him does everyone realize how far your stalking went in those early days. The two of you had alluded to following Batman and Robin around in the past but Jason really brings to light the amount the two of you knew before you and Tim actually got involved. It's a... conversation for sure.

You've spent much of your life basically raising Tim, you’re almost equally his parent as you are his sibling despite only being three years older than him. And well-

Across the multiverse, Tim finds that there are hundreds of thousands of constants.

You are not one of them.

He has met many alternate selves, enough that there are protocols for when it happens. There is always Batman. There are superheros. There is Tim Drake.

There is no (Y/n) Drake.

He has not come across a single universe where you exist. None except for his. It's a difficult truth to swallow.

In those glimpses of other worlds, he sees how different things could have been, how many things have fallen apart without you. How fundamental you are to everything.

But he knows you. He knows you better than anyone else so he isn't surprised when Damian says that you do not believe yourself to be part of the family.

The rest of the +1 segment is sort of your induction into the Batfamily for real and everyone making is very clear that they do view you as family (an effort spearheaded by Damian who snitched to everyone). You stop repressing a bit and admit to it eventually. The adoption topic comes up again where you're like "it's going to be a PR nightmare" and everyone's like "it's fine dw about that".

I think towards the end, both you and Tim decide that you're both okay with being Bruce's wards but don't want to really be adopted-adopted. Some stuff after that would probably be passing on the Robin mantle to Damian, Tim becoming Red Robin and maybe a Duke cameo towards the end as well.

Some additional notes:

There are some other dynamics with you and the other characters in the +1 section but uhh i haven't decided what kind of dynamic. There would be more slice of life stuff in +1 segment though.

Tim did not go to boarding school because Jack and Janet decided you could take care of him well enough. In addition, the Drakes moved to become neighbours with the Wayne early because baby you stared at the Wayne manor often.

Your relationship with Jack and Janet is complicated. Very complicated. You resent them a bit more than Tim might just due to the whole being parentified thing.

There's more gala shenanigans early fic w/ Dick and Jason before you and Tim get officially involved with the Batfamily. Like passing candy around, hiding from other rich people, etc.

Tim was Robin every single Halloween since Robin debuted. You helped him update the costume every time.

You go to Tim’s parent teacher interviews. It’s only a little awkward when the teacher in question was one of your previous teachers. No one goes to your parent teacher interviews.

Anyone who has had a crush on Tim or been in a relationship with him has gone through the very Bisexual experience of also having a crush on you. It's a rite of passage really.

You’ve accidentally Pavlov-ed Bruce. Kind of. He tends to straighten whenever he hears your voice. It's a remnant of when you were essentially nagging him all day while Tim was training to be Robin. You haven’t noticed but everyone else has.

Actually, everyone has an automatic response to when you scold them. It's kind of the same as when Alfred scolds them.

You are Tim's favourite sibling. No competition.

You might also be Cass's favourite. She was very sad to find out you didn't consider yourself family.

Tim figured out you killed the Joker at some point and you know that he knows. He hasn't told anyone and covered up any remaining evidence that helped him piece it together.

You've spoken with Jason about if he wants to legally come back to life and enroll in university. He does come back to life legally eventually but hasn't enrolled in anything yet.

Everything about the Joker is still kind of up in the air but you admit to Jason that you killed him at some point.

It is well known that there's normal Robin 3 and scary Robin 3 (you). There's a bunch of theories about why Robin 3 is scary sometimes but most chalk it up to occasional mental breaks from dealing with Batman during that specific time period where Batman was terrible.

Although Tim is probably the best detective in the family, everyone knows that you "just know things" sometimes. They've come to just not question it when you say certain things must be done.

There's a bunch of background company plot stuff while you're working on Drake Industries. Like beefing with Lex Luthor and other billionaires, running your charity events, trying to fill out the spaces where Wayne Enterprises hasn't been focusing on and so on.

Even after Jack Drake awakens from his coma, Drake Industries is still really your company. He doesn't involve himself with it.

the main Gotham job prospects aren't great. It's either working for a company run by a teenage CEO, a company run by a billionaire playboy or becoming a henchman.

You get kidnapped often enough that you've gotten to know the goons and henchmen. You've also convinced them to unionize.

Again, despite your whole thing about "not really being that close with the batfam", there are traces of you everywhere. The medbay organization system? Yours. The fact that everyone in the Justice League is mandated to go to therapy? Your work. A good chunk of the emergency codes? Also yours.

You and Alfred have an ongoing back and forth of: "Mr. Pennyworth", "Just Alfred, Master (Y/n)", "Please, just (Y/n)"

You have your own room in the Wayne manor. So does Steph.

You lowkey micromanaged everything in the early days of Tim becoming Robin. If anyone were to ask you, you'd say it was a necessity. You still kind of micromanage everyone's schedule to make sure they all get a sufficient amount of sleep.

The rogues who are aware of the whole Bruce Wayne is Batman thing break into your office at Drake Industries pretty often. You'll get them all to book their meetings officially eventually.

When you go out as Robin, you try to swing around Crime Alley since it's what Jason used to do.

The Justice League does eventually become aware of the fact that you and Tim are indeed different people posing as the same Robin. Superman and Wonder Woman were already aware prior to it being officially revealed.

You respect Alfred a lot but you also think he lets Bruce get away with a lot and that he isn't harsh enough sometimes.

The majority of the time, you're on comms with Barbara while the others are on patrol. When you're busy with other things, you work on it in the Batcave in case an emergency pops up.

Damian goes to you for help about what to do at galas and such events since you've been at that game the longest out of all the batkids.

You don't know much about what happens when the others meet alternate universe selves. Everyone tends to stay quiet about it. You always think "surely it's not that bad is it?".

Spin off idea: 5 times other people thought you were Tim and one time people thought Tim was you. Featuring: Teen Titans, the Justice League, Jason Todd, Batman, the rogue gallery and the various employees of Drake Industries and Wayne Enterprises.

A couple of au ideas: 1. you get sick and Tim calls the Waynes. Early adoption stuff; 2. you catch Jason digging out of his grave and is like “shit okay guess I’m doing this now”; 3. You become an intern at Wayne Enterprises a bit before Jason dies. You get stuck there even after your internship is after.

So, yeah. Isekai with incomplete knowledge. Family Drama. Unreliable narrators. That's the fic concept I'm probably never going to write.

#family dissonance au #<- calling it that for now #from me #thinking about concepts #batman #batfam #dc #dcu #dc x reader #batfam x reader #dcu x reader #platonic #tim drake #batfamily #bat family x reader #reader insert #written in second person #my writing

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chaotic-tired-fox · 5 months ago

Note

i’m trying to keep anything related to iskall off of my blog personally, but there’s a new doc out and i dunno if people have seen it yet. i know you’ve done a few posts so i was wondering if you could circulate it a bit.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K2zSSeaUHiKZQbpWV7kGx0uI88bPupFrqIlalaUiH3c/mobilebasic

hopefully that works. take care, thanks for talkin <3

Thanks for bringing this to my attention anon, I’ll happily share it for you.

The document linked is an account from Kumara, an art director and long term artist who worked on Vault Hunters. They have written and provided proof to multiple accounts of being under paid, overworked, emotionally manipulated and gaslit by Iskall. How they were treated from 2020 to now is beyond despicable.

Also, any posts I make regarding the situation will be tagged with #iskall situation so you guys can blacklist/filter it if you don’t want to see these posts.

But I encourage spreading this information around as it’s not just sexual harassment that’s the issue here regarding Iskall. And anyone still defending him also needs to properly read through the accounts themselves and rethink their stance rather than just listening to what everyone else is saying. Listen to the victims because the amount sadly keeps growing.

#iskall situation #iskall85 #hermitcraft #vault hunters #vhsmp

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clonerightsagenda · 1 year ago

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Thank you for applying for a library card!

We are a large metropolitan library with twelve branches here in the city and a consortial agreement with ninety-seven different timelines (and counting). Your card is your ticket to our physical and digital collections, where we have something for everyone.

You’ve indicated that you are licensed for time travel and regularly travel in time or between timelines for work purposes, so you are eligible for our trans-timeline borrower’s card. Please read this document carefully to ensure you’re using your new card to its fullest potential and in compliance with library policy.

Our services:

The library has a floating collection, meaning items remain at the branch where they were returned rather than being sent back to the lending branch. However, we do return inter-timeline loans to their home universe to minimize temporal strain. If you’re browsing the shelves and see a book phasing in and out of existence, alert an employee. It’s probably misshelved.

Our new online system allows you to keep the same login information in all timelines. No more keeping track of dozens of passwords! If you previously created multiple logins tied to one card, visit the circulation desk, and we’ll merge your accounts for you. No, this will not make you responsible for alternate selves’ outstanding fines, and any version of yourself telling you that is lying to you.

You asked, and we listened. Our new online catalog displays reviews from patrons from all relevant timelines on items exceeding a 90% similarity score. We request that patrons keep debates over the superiority of their timeline’s version to venues other than our catalog.

Although our staff members are not medical professionals, they have been trained to recognize signs of temporal instability. If you are experiencing characteristic symptoms (faintness, disorientation, physical and/or mental age changes, etc.), a staff member can administer grounding agents until emergency services arrive.

The library has a robust inter-timeline loan system. If you’re looking for a book or article not published in this timeline, fill out our online form or ask at the circulation desk. The average wait time for an ITL request is five business days. That’s shortened to three if you’re requesting an item stored at the James Patterson Interdimensional Warehouse. (Note: This estimate may change as the warehouse continues to expand under its own power, or if our courier gets lost there.)

Our policies:

We do not accept returns before the publication date (month and year). Cataloging books paradoxically created through stable time loops gets too complicated. You can check a book’s month of publication in a review journal like Booklist, which we make available online and in our non-circulating magazine collection.

We’ve recently gone fine-free in this timeline, meaning we no longer charge fees for overdue books. This policy varies between consortium timelines depending on whether certain people on the board of directors have retired yet.

If a book is damaged beyond repair, lost in a Time Hole, or overwritten out of existence by timeline changes, you will be responsible for the replacement cost or a flat fee of $30, whichever is lower. We do not recommend attempting to rewrite time to avoid losing or damaging the book, as we would prefer to purchase a new copy rather than tear a hole in the fabric of reality.

Patrons may use our computers for two hours. You can extend this time if there are no other patrons waiting. Show respect to other library users and do not abuse time travel to circumvent the policy when there is high demand. We will notice if there are two of you at our computing stations. Yes, even if one of you is wearing a funny hat.

The library values your privacy. We will not disclose account information or the content of reference transactions to anyone, including alternate versions of the account holder. The library also does not keep a record of the materials you check out. However, some of our databases do track user data. If you need to conceal your presence in this timeline to avoid paradoxes, the Time Cops, or your ex, we keep a collection of electronic resource licenses at the reference desk so you can judge which products to avoid.

Holder vs. Holder found that copyright protections extend across timelines and prior to publication, and copyright is exclusive to the iteration who created the work. Patrons attempting to copy library materials and publish them under their own name will have their cards revoked, even if they created the material in another timeline. This policy was adopted after consultation with our legal team. Trans-timeline copyright enforcement is very aggressive.

The library respects the personhood and autonomy of patrons no matter their timeline of origin. However, this respect is not always universal. If you need to know what the laws are for time travelers/alternate selves/dimension-hoppers/“timeclones”/etc. in this dimension (or the terminology used to refer to them), stop by the reference desk.

Violence is against library policy. If you are about to battle your alternate self from another timeline because you ran into each other in the cookbook section, take it to the parking lot.

In conclusion:

Libraries are committed to free access to information, and with the resources of dozens of timelines available to us, our mission has only gotten bigger. In fact, we’re hiring! If you’re looking for somewhere new to apply your time travel certification, we’re looking for team members in our inter-timeline loan department. Entry-level courier positions do not require an MLIS. Familiarity with James Patterson is a plus.

We can’t wait to see you in our library. (Maybe we already have.)

#wrote this down in a frenzy a few years ago after dreaming I had an inter-timeline library card #kat writes

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renphousa · 1 year ago

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natalyarose · 1 year ago

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𝓥𝓮𝓷𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓪𝓷𝓼 - 𝓐𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓸 𝓕𝓮𝓮𝓵 𝓟𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓾𝓻𝓮

Hi, and happy Bharani season to all :) I've been working on this analysis for days not necessarily because it took long to write, but moreso because I could write endlessly on Venus Nakshatras & it took me a lot of time to organize the stream of info I'd written in a more adequate manner. I hope this piece is enjoyed & informative to someone 🩷

In this piece I'm going to be diving into Venus's themes of dancing along the line between pain & pleasure, and the artistry and beauty that is born from the merging of these two extremes.

𝓖𝓵𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓑𝓸�� 𝓫𝔂 𝓟𝓸𝓻𝓽𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓵𝔂𝓼𝓲𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓻𝓮𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓽𝓸 𝓥𝓮𝓷𝓾𝓼 𝓝𝓪𝓴𝓼𝓱𝓪𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓼

The song 'Glory Box' by Portishead is the song that inspired me to write my first song and take it truly seriously.

It's just such a sensual, classy, sexy, beautiful masterpiece. Though beyond that, the meaning portrayed in the song & music video speaks to my soul so vividly. I always was enchanted by this track, but seeing the music video brought it all together for me and the meaning just 'clicked'.

'I'm so tired, of playing playing with this bow and arrow I'm gonna give my heart away leave it to the other girls to play for I've been a temptress too long just give me a reason to love you give me a reason to be a woman... I just wanna be a woman'

youtube

Everything about this song, this video just screams Purvashadha & Venus. Even the line 'playing with this bow & arrow' lol- sidereal Sagittarius much? I wouldn't be surprised if Purvashadha is directly connected to Cupid.

I'm going to go a bit freeform in my interpretation of the song & video, but I think I've got the 'right' grasp of the idea portrayed:

The music video depicts people in a vintage style office setting & old fashioned, very professional 'uptight' attire. It is boring and in a sense drab, but we see life in the subtle expressions & communication. There is flirtation, but it is secretive. There is an an expectation to be professional, to be 'proper'.

There are clips of Old Hollywood-esque people having drinks, enjoying themselves. We get sporadic visuals of the singer (Beth Gibbons, Purvashadha Sun, likely Uttarashadha Moon; Uttarashadha being prominent in music), dressed beautifully & glamorously performing on the tv, looking almost pained in her beauty & artistic display of emotion.

This song speaks to the desperation to be free and sensual as a woman, or just as a soulful human being in a world where there are responsibilities and expectations to keep up an image, 'play the game' in society. The desire to 'be a woman' and express your feminine energy authentically, dress up, be emotional & sensuous, indulge in pleasure and break free from social/circumstantial limitations. However, the pain and friction between two worlds almost makes the longing and lust for the person/life you desire even more intoxicating.

Venusian desire & artistry is so intense, in the corporate world Venus ruled individuals often find themselves needing to reign in their passion, and even punishing themselves for it.

I think I first started listening to this song when I heard it in a reel that was again, extremely Venusian! I would credit it, but I think this just was a circulating video & I have no clue who the originator was. The dude (Gene Kelly) has Purvashadha Moon & Purvaphalguni ascendant. Just look at the suave-ness of Venus men lol :

There's so much more I could write about this specific song and the nature of Venus, but ima try to stick with the 'k.i.s.s' (keep it simple, stupid!) principle.

I always thought that this song & message is such a perfect piece of art to demonstrate Venusian nature, but I will note that Beth's Uttarashadha Moon definitely intertwines in terms of the message this song communicates. Uttarashadha being the height of the Sun (a 'masculine' energy) is very on par with the experience of wanting to be feminine in masculine dominated fields/with traditionally masculine expectations upon you. We could see this as almost like a conflict of interest between Beth Gibbon's Purvashadha (Venusian, feminine, romantic, beautiful) Sun and her Uttarashadha (ambitious, masculine, stoic) Moon.

𝓥𝓮𝓷𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓪𝓷 '𝓑𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓭𝓸𝓶' & 𝓛𝓸𝓷𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓰

You can often tell when a Venusian is behind a song or art piece because the vocal tone, writing style and or colour choice emanates this distinct attitude: sexy, raunchy, articulate... & often kinda bored or reflecting an unhappiness with the way the modern/current state of the world is. Especially in Purvashadha Nakshatra, there is often an intense idealisation of the past and 'old times', reflecting Venus Nakshatra patterns of longing for things they can't yet have and shaping their world view around that desire. This definitely speaks to the way Tropical Earth signs (especially Capricorn) are seen being drawn to old, vintage & prestigious relics of the past. This is in part due to Ketuvian Nakshatras residing within Tropical Earth signs, but it is also Venus Nakshatras' placement. Venusian elitism is possibly best observed in idealisation of the past- something so exclusive that nobody can actually go back to it & mainstream society often disregards it.

Venusians can exist in this state of boredom and embody this energy, this aura that almost reads 'impress me, peasant' lol. Feed me grapes & fine wine while I lay adorned in jewellery on a velvet chair- then we'll talk.

This is where Venusian Nakshatras classic pickiness, elitism & in some cases classism (and all the other isms lmao) comes in.

I once read that men can be attracted to women who look bored, disinterested or detached, because they take it as a challenge to be the one to impress her and light her up- very Venusian. It kinda explains (some) men's misguided efforts to impress women who are very clearly not interested. We see this in nature too- peacocks (and other birds), for example lol; the male peacock flamboyantly attempting to impress the female, and more often than not she is disinterested- female peacocks are a tough crowd man.

You can always spot Venusians by their expression & overall demeanour- they leave you feeling like 'I admire you, but I'm kinda scared of you and feel like you're judging me at the same time' lol. The irony lies in the fact that while yes, Venusians can be extremely critical of others, their 'judgy' expression often has more to do with the fact that they're always judging themselves. Harshly critiquing themselves like a piece of art. Venusians can find it veryy hard to feel they are 'good enough', the same way an artist never feels the painting is truly done.

Sophia Loren, Purvashadha Asc | Blake Lively, Purvaphalguni Moon | Donna Summer, Purvashadha Sun & Purvaphalguni Asc

daddy Ted Danson, Purvashadha Sun | Audrey Hepburn, Bharani Sun | Johnny Depp, Purvashadha Moon

admittedly, Audrey & Johnny boi come across a little softer to me due to their other placements, but they still definitely have the look/energy. My Bharani mama was a master of this look, & I always thought she looked a little like Donna Summer.

While Venus women embody this choosiness & unapproachability, Venus men can take on that role of wanting to be the ones to impress the woman they've set their sights on, 'wow' her.

However, that being said, Venusian men are also often very picky themselves. Venusian men and women alike are seldom impressed by aesthetic beauty alone and place a lot of importance on internal value. They often crave exoticism & uniqueness in women. Venus in our charts represents what we value & find beautiful. In a way there is more value in something or someone who is rare.

When Venusian men do find a girl they really like, they can be extremely persistent and there are a lot of cases where Venusian men will successfully initiate a relationship with a woman who wasn't initially interested by genuinely winning her over with his dedication, adoration & direct pursuit of her.

In terms of aesthetic appearance, Venusians (again, men & women) tend to have a preference for natural beauty in some way too. Femininity often refers to an energy of being flowing & receptive rather than performative or immensely exuberant. It's not uncommon to see Venus women forgoing 'performative' femininity and embracing raw female beauty. No makeup, allowing body hair to grow, messy hair, not being afraid to look 'beautifully dishevelled'- yet never necessarily unkempt. Imperfectly perfect, like a piece of art.

This is why Mars Nakshatras tend to be the women most prominent in the world of makeup and glamour. The curation and forceful manipulation of the body to look a certain way is 'masculine' in a sense. Like the way mankind manipulates & curates nature. Although there are two sides to this coin, as Venus Nakshatras can also grapple with the 'beauty is pain' idea and go to great, sometimes sadistic, masochistic lengths to achieve their ideal.

Venusians, but Bharani natives especially have a reputation for rarely smiling fully, always holding a mildly restrained expression (one of Bharani's translations literally being 'the Star of Restraint'. The Mona Lisa famously depicts this Bharani-esque expression; painted of course by Bharani Sun, Leonardo Da Vinci. It is often remarked that the painting itself isn't particularly outstanding in terms of beauty, but what makes it so charming is the mysterious aura emanated through means of the 'drab' yet earthy, sensual colour pallet & demure, vaguely amused expression. Others have remarked that the drab colour scheme brought special attention to the Mona Lisa's face, inviting us to engage with her.

Off the topic of Venusians; but Leonardo Da Vinci is also Shatabisha Moon conjunct Jupiter - Shatabisha natives, in true sidereal Aquarian fashion often receive praise for being 'ahead of their time' as Leo was indeed.

𝓥𝓮𝓷𝓾𝓼, 𝓟𝓪𝓲𝓷 & 𝓟𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓾𝓻𝓮, 𝓕𝓸𝓻𝓫𝓲𝓭𝓭𝓮𝓷 𝓛𝓸𝓿𝓮

Purvashadha is said to embody a state of wishing to return to the 'Garden of Eden', where we are one, we are divinely connected in pure bliss, beauty and pleasure. This further explains the Venusian life of oscillating between/existing with the realms of pain & pleasure.

Bharani experiences these themes through its association with 'delayed gratification' & later rewards. Bharani will work hard and go through a lot of pain to reap pleasures later on. Bharani being ruled by Lord Yama, the Vedic God of Death draws a connection between Bharani & facing your karma in your next incarnation.

Purvaphalguni experiences the conflict between pain & pleasure through the realisation that nothing can be 'perfect' and the frustration of knowing that some things are just out of their control. Purvaphalguni experiences the 'royal' quality of the Sun combined with the the sensuality of Venus- these people often take their happiness into their own hands, but run into struggles when they realise they can control themselves but they can't control other people's mistakes & external circumstances that may put a wrench in their ideals.

Purvashadha experiences the pain/pleasure theme through pining for something, shooting for the stars with some usually highly ambitious goal, and then realising all of the obstacles in the way of attaining that goal. However, Purvashadha translating to 'the invincible one' and also having the elephant tusk as a symbol (strong, unbreakable) shows how when Venusians persist in pursuit of their desires, they ultimately are successful and attain that Venusian dream life.

In my mind desire, is a result of the friction created between pain and pleasure. This is why forbidden love is so beautiful yet hurts so badly. Almost every Venusian I've ever met has some intense story of forbidden love- falling madly in love with a cartoon character that doesn't technically exist, falling in love with teachers, falling in love with someone who's dead, falling in love with someone who's an inappropriate choice due to their age, status, culture, professional role, etc.

Perhaps the most infamous story of forbidden love, is Romeo & Juliet. I had to check, & William Shakespeare is most likely (almost definitely considering the range of birth times proposed) a Bharani Sun native. (Side note that he looks kinda like Leonardo, lol)

Amidst these intense themes of romance, tragedy and longing, Venusians are very good at playing a role in their life and showing up to that role, often very ambitiously. However within them is always this gnawing desire to just- be wild and free with their passions without the pretence, without the pressure. This can sometimes express through random outbursts of frustration.

The elitism of Venus can even be somewhat of a defense mechanism. in Venus Nakshatras there is such a deep desire to experience true intimacy and bliss with another human being; that to protect this very human vulnerability they will often design some sort of system to decide who is worthy & who isn't- eg. 'I will only befriend/associate with people who enjoy this type of music'. That way there is always guaranteed common ground & allyship between them and those whom they let in, somewhat protecting their heartspace. In this way, Venusians are 'warriors of the heart' in a sense.

This longing and desperation to be united and feel that oneness, but knowing it may not be possible is often the drive for the art of Venusians in some way or another. The pure angst, the passion.

A lot of Venusians I've observed can develop an almost nihilistic worldview, or can even seem very 'boring' or overly structured on the surface- but ironically, the reason they have this view & demeanour is because they are at their core so idealistic and full of passion that it hurts. It feels easier to just close off the heart-space all together and in some cases express their passion in a strange, or abstract (or in darker cases, violent) manner because society isn't built around beauty & pleasure as much as Venusians tend wish.

This aching to feel alive & dance between pain vs pleasure can be seen in Venusian Nakshatras' tendency to self harm or self sabotage. Venusians can do wild and even dangerous things just to feel ALIVE. To Venusians, pain is worth it if it means there could be a pleasurable outcome.

More on Venusian boredom: one of Purvashadha's symbols is a hand held fan, often a symbol of gracefulness and high society, sometimes used to convey boredom (think of the classic imagery of the beautiful women with unenthused expressions on their faces watching a riveting piano recital).

𝓥𝓮𝓷𝓾𝓼 𝓶𝓮𝓷 𝓵𝓸𝓸𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓰 ~𝓹𝓪𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓭~

(Refer to image below)

Venusians often look PAINED lol, the women too but especially the men. Venus men have this distinct look. A lot of the time they can be womanizers or at least pleasure seeking, but also kinda sad and troubled (more of Venus' pain/pleasure themes. In a lot of stories of Venus men, they may be womanisers in lifestyle yet always have 'that one woman' who they really can't get past and regard as their 'soulmate'.

Johnny Galecki , Bharani Sun & Purvashadha Moon - particularly in his famous role as Leonard Hofstadter in the Big Bang Theory. He pines after his love interest, Penny for yearsss, getting shot down but always persisting- eventually he 'won her over' and even got married. (Bharani's delayed gratification & Purvashadha's romantic ambition).

Johnny Depp (what's with these J names?? There's this meme that boys with 'J names' are trouble, I wonder if there's any cosmic connection with Venus Nakshatras lol) Purvashadha Moon - famous for his intense relationships with women (and substances), somewhat of a womaniser as well

Jim Morrison, Bharani Moon - stunning artist & musician of course, also a womanizer who often slept with women on the road, indulging in substances.

Charlie Sheen, Purvaphalguni Sun - in real life & in the show 'Two and a Half Men' where he quite literally plays himself, he is an infamous womaniser with a penchant for substances, partying and destructive forms of pleasure.

My partner was originally in this collage lmao because I kid you not his Purvashadha lookin self fits this collage perfectly (he's got the Jim Morrison beard and the whole shabang), but he wouldn't enjoy being on tumblr so eh.

It's worth noting that a lot of Sun men who are considered attractive to women often have Venus ruled Nakshatras through their chart also. Sun influence without Venus can make men seem very dry and not very understanding of female emotions or psychology, therefore somewhat unpleasant for women to be around.

Bottom line is Venusians, love women! Venus men love women, Venus women love women.

Anyway, as always this was toooo long and like I earlier mentioned, this is the tip of the iceberg on what I could yap about in regards to Venus Nakshatras and their influence on their natives and our world in a general sense.

Thankyou for reading :) 🩷

ps. I'm very wary of talking about planets and the whole feminine/masculine thing because I really don't want to give the impression that there is a certain polarity that is more or less ideal for a gender. It's not as though if you're a woman with Mars or Sun Nakshatras you simply are not feminine, neither does it mean a woman necessarily should be traditionally feminine. be yourself lovely people ✌️

#nakshatras #sidereal astrology #vedic astrology #vedic astro observations #venusians #nakshatra #astrology #astro observations #astro community #astro placements #astro notes #lunar mansion #astrology notes #venus #purva phalguni #bharani #purvashadha

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3liza · 3 days ago

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im sorry i think im having an autistic oppositional moment that is wholly unreasonable. and that i need to work through it to get my head straight. i have to do some talking it through with myself ancient philosopher style. because no one NEEDS to know that rats and mice are different, really. no one tests you on it. if you arent a rodent specialist of some kind it really does not matter. but

im still having trouble believing anyone, even who lives in i think Indonesia based on their blog, who posts in english on an english-based site that uses pictures and posts about animals as a form of local currency, and who claims to have studied German and Italian extensively, both languages that like english have separate words for mice and rats and in my experience use them in language education templates extensively, would genuinely be unaware that there are more than one species of household pest rodent, and also that a pet rat is also a type of pet. i dont really understand that level of being checked out of information that ambiently exists in the places where this person appears to be interacting with large posts that link to other large posts where ambient information is in circulation etc etc. like they arent isolated and just using tumblr as a personal blog. but i think im having an unreasonable response like i said. i will just have to update my worldview

one of the big things about this thats baffling to me is they really do not look similar except when they are irl scurrying around your house, because the wild type mice and rats do tend to be sort of a similar brown color and often a young rat will be not much bigger than an adult mouse and they hide and move quick so i get it. but in a google search the speciation is really really clear from photo to photo

this is like that time i discovered my boyfriend at the time was unaware that when days got shorter in the winter or longer in the summer, it was because the sun both rose and set at ever-changing times of the day. he thought in winter the sun rose at the same time as it did all year (i should have asked him what hour he thought the sun ALWAYS came up every day but i was so shocked i didnt think about it), but just set earlier. he was like 25 years old and regularly stayed out working or clubbing until dawn, so he must have been putting in extra effort not to notice that the sun was rising at different times. this doesnt even get into that he was fully uncomprehending of how the planet actually works in orbit around the sun but i assume most people do not beyond "the planet spins and this is somehow related to how days and seasons work". learning he was wrong about this didnt seem to affect his life at all. despite it being the second thing they would tell you about earth if you were a visiting alien, you can live your whole life here never internalizing that information despite it appearing constantly everywhere, and it will take 25 years or never for someone to catch you not knowing shit about it. the basic principles of physics are not relevant to the everyday lives of human beings. weird to consider

anyway in my opinion you will have more fun if you know about multiple kinds of rodents or how the earth travels around the sun or that ponies are not baby horses. i think it makes your life better in a lot of ways so its cool that a lot of people are finding out about rats and mice today

there. i have successfully talked myself down from reactive irritability

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radio-charlie · 2 years ago

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Just try looking for a positive story on China any day of the week in any of the leading global media outlets. Apart from reports in January about the Lunar New Year, there will hardly be any, and these too are likely to have a negative spin. It would appear there is a confidential memo circulating within Western media groups that guides reporters and editors to ensure there cannot be any positive news arising from a country with 1.3 billion people.

Typically, the negative stories adhere to three core ideas, which inform the unspoken guidelines within these press rooms when it comes to reporting on China.

First is the belief that China is a threat to the world and that this belief must be relentlessly reinforced at every available opportunity. How and why China is a threat is never explored; such is the deep-rooted and almost religious nature of the belief. Sound arguments do not matter. The basic tenets of good journalism are ignored when it comes to a China story. There is no need to explain or give evidence of why China is a global threat.

Left ignored is the plentiful evidence that shows China is not a global threat – even if one can point to mistakes and overreach in certain areas. China has not invaded any country in decades, or imposed sanctions that have devasted the lives of millions in poor countries, unlike the West, led by the United States.

Second is that China must be linked to every possible global event that affects the West. This provides an opportunity for the West to bash China while simultaneously burnishing its own credentials as the supposed arbiters of what is right and wrong in international relations. From the pandemic to the Russia-Ukraine war to carbon emissions; from rising sea levels to the scramble for rare earths; from the building of infrastructure in Africa to the production of vaccines – there must be an angle to demonize the country and instill fear in Western nations (and beyond).

Indeed, media outlets are reverting to the “yellow peril” of the late 1800s. There is no subtle and nuanced approach to instilling fear like this. It is full-on and very often blatantly racist – but it is now acceptable for one to be racist about the Chinese in Western media, despite the fact that Black-White relations are very carefully described.

The third part of this phenomenon, which is surprisingly not challenged by liberal readers of mainstream media, is the sentiment that everything must be done – even illegal and unfair methods – to arrest the rise of China. Never mind the rights of hundreds of millions of Chinese to have a better life after a century of poverty and deprivation.

#written by an indian-malaysian no less #i'm surprised as usually the people (regardless of ethnicity) who write for such publications #and who write this well and soundly #do so for NATO-friendly purposes. hopefully the tide will shift further soon

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shorthaltsjester · 5 months ago

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coming off the high of finishing the draft of the last of my exegetical/theory heavy chapters of my thesis and while i was writing i was thinking a lot about why applying real world political philosophies to exandria specifically tends to fall flat and like. even beyond the explicit treatment of things like homophobia as nonexistent and hegemony functioning wildly differently if it really actually exists in exandria as we conceptualize it in our actual world really boils down to the works that make up a lot of the roots of the leftist theory people apply to exandria. like obviously marx is a big guy, nietzsche has more influence than you’d think given his reputation as the internets (poorly interpreted) sad boy, and less people probably know the names of the critical theorists that came out of the frankfurt school but you’d know their ideas — and they all have their toes in countless leftist ideas today, whether their influence is explicit or not. what’s notable in all those theorists is something found in the argumentative and background work that they provide before the claims most people on the internet know re: the workers of the world uniting, god’s being dead, and the culture industry, whether in their previous work or just earlier in the same books that people have read the goodreads quotes of: first principles.

if you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s just a philosophy word for basic proposition that cannot be deduced from a previous claim. And for a whole lot of works in the history of moral and political philosophy (as well as other less relevant branches), one of the most common first principles you could find was the proposition that god exists. so much of the work of philosophers who inform leftist theory has required them to do the work of either coming up with a different first principle and justifying it and/or providing justification for why first principles are in themselves a flawed notion. nietzsche was so impactful in his claim that god is dead because it targets the very notion that history and the philosophy in it was finding the proposition that god exists to be unsatisfactory if unsupported. marx then was only able to ground his historical materialism because that first principle re: god was able to be dismantled. critical theorists, like adorno for example, were only able to do their work in light of accepting that god is not something worth appealing to without justification. and the reason any of this is relevant to the fantasy world of a silly internet show where voice actors roll dice is because any leftist theory whose most foundational basis is the realization and gradual societal acceptance that the claim “god is real” could not be assumed but had to be given justification will always end up being unsatisfactory when it is applied to a world where “god is real” is not only factually true but is also societally accepted and the existence of those who might philosophize about the gods is a direct product of those gods’ existence.

this isn’t to say there can’t be insight granted by applying these theories anyway (looking at my blorbos and applying philosophical theories is my favourite hobby, just ask my thesis supervisor) nor is it to say that the risks of trying to apply these theories to exandria starts and ends with its failing to be philosophically apt — but there have been many great posts circulating re: the issues with viewing certain facets of exandria through an “it’s a colonialist metaphor” lens and many similar cases so i won’t dive in here. just pointing out that as a facet of the objective truth that can exist in a fictional world, especially a world established by gods (world here being a word that includes the existence of mortals), some of the foundational propositions of the philosophical arguments at work in those theories are rendered false in the exandrian context. but this also means that, if the gods leave exandria in some sense, i will have a very fun time unpacking a nietzschean interpretation of their absence. because i predict that though the gods will be dead/gone, his meaning of god being dead will Not be fulfilled since ostensibly the majority of exandria still looks to the gods in love and in doubt as providers of guidance, and i question how much their presence actually informs the depth of that dependence. anyway. that’s my philosophical enrichment for the night.

#a tumblr post can be a grad student applying their research interests (which are useful no where else) to the blorbo show #sometimes i think about the fact that the twilight movies made fun of studying philosophy and just suffer #because they were right and also if TWILIGHT makes fun of u. question your choices #regardless. thoughts be upon you. i mentioned sartrean bad faith in a bells hells post a little while ago #and that was me soft launching making rotted philosophy posts. as i finish more of my thesis i’ll hard launch more #now that my brain slowly becomes less and less Trapped #alas #critical role #exandria #exandrian pantheon #cr3

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ghcstao3 · 10 months ago

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(part 2) (cw fictional drugs, mild body horror, mild torture)

Shifters should be born, not made. That’s one of few things that science has been able to say for certain about the biology (and ethics) of the species.

Of course, this never stopped those truly motivated—for a few years now, there’s been a serum circulating black markets and cartels and terrorist rings, a dangerous, potent thing that allows for the temporary rewrite of human DNA; for just a handful of hours, this serum allows any non-shifter to gain a shifter’s abilities, often with the goal of making them stronger, deadlier when it comes to picking off their enemies.

Obviously, this serum comes with a few cons: a human cannot determine what animal a serum will give them until it is taken, and because its effects are only temporary, the substance becomes highly addictive. One taste is never enough—but after so many continuous uses, the drug’s effects change into something far more sinister. Potentially fatal; one might lose their mind if they’re lucky, or become some deformed half-thing stuck between human and animal if they’re not.

There’s a reason, scientists will say, that sometimes genetics, DNA is not to be tampered with to such extreme lengths.

But with this serum comes a rumour: somewhere out there exists a more permanent solution, a serum to completely change someone, to make a shifter. Something so strong that it can transform a person, though at a high risk of something going wrong.

This serum does exist, and certainly does hold a risk of things going wrong—the survival rate within days of injection is a measly 5%. The human body is not built to withstand the force of fundamental change, though some prevail; unfortunately, however, often enough they don’t survive long enough afterwards to meet the full potential of their new abilities.

And not necessarily because of the change itself—but rather because the people creating these abnormalities will often decide to erase their existences, once past their use and novelty. If this new creature cannot be leashed, there’s no point in keeping it, no point in allowing it to go free and revel in its newfound talents.

When Simon Riley doesn’t break the way Manuel Roba wants him to, he becomes a victim of this serum. He’s informed, in spite of his torture-induced delirium, that this injection will put him down one way or another—be it through the pain, the incompatibility with his body, or through his expired usefulness after Roba has beaten him into submission in whatever form Simon is blessed with.

The serum feels like hot, molten, infernal flame has been injected directly into Simon’s veins, searing his body from the inside out. The first wave of pain arrives in a flash, has him writhing on the ground as his muscles lock up and he’s gasping for breath to fill lungs already burned to ash. Throat closing up, bones grinding together, the ripping of flesh. He can’t scream. Can’t claw at himself until he’s bloody and raw and dead.

It just goes on.

Roba’s laughter rings through the cold, impersonal laboratory, four cement walls and a cracked floor, the reeking, cloying scent of mildew and rust and failed experiments—it’s all that Simon’s world has narrowed down to until he blacks out in his anguish.

When he wakes, everything is wrong.

Simon’s more than disoriented, though that’s hardly a surprise. But beyond that, beyond the usual aches and sores and bruises—the red of the bloodstained floor is dull, too dull, and his limbs don’t feel like his own. His brain is a fog, simultaneously exhausted and alert, and his tongue sits heavy in his mouth—Simon rolls over, sluggish, his tongue sliding languidly with gravity, picking over teeth sharper than he remembers them being.

The bars of his cell rumble open, the rattle reverberating through Simon’s body.

Wrong. All wrong, wrong, wrong.

It takes effort to lift his gaze, to meet Roba’s own where he stands in the doorway. Simon’s eyelids droop, weighed down by nothing he can discern, and all he can make out through the slits of leftover vision is that smarmy grin and those beady, oil-black eyes.

Roba grins wider when Simon stirs, shifting stiff muscles in a fool’s errand of attempting to sit up.

“I knew you would survive, English,” he says. Simon’s ear twitches. “Welcome to the first day of your new life.”

Roba’s footsteps are loud, grating in their approach. He crouches in front of Simon’s prone form, regarding him in a way Simon has been plenty subject to—always displeased in some capacity, sometimes for known reasons and sometimes not, but also plotting, envisioning the next methods he might use to drill obedience into the soldier, to rearrange his anatomy, to fuck irreparably with his head.

With a sigh Roba reaches into his breast pocket to fish something out, some antique compact with engravings on the lid that Simon is in no state to decipher. He opens it with a muted click, then holds it in front of Simon’s face with something akin to a sick glee woven into his expression.

What stares back at Simon is not human.

#trying something out lol #any thoughts appreciated #simon ghost riley #ghost mw2 #shifter au #alternate universe #writing

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covid-safer-hotties · 9 months ago

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SARS-CoV-2 is now circulating out of control worldwide. The only major limitation on transmission is the immune environment the virus faces. The disease it causes, COVID-19, is now a risk faced by most people as part of daily life.

While some are better than others, no national or regional government is making serious efforts towards infection prevention and control, and it seems likely this laissez-faire policy will continue for the foreseeable future. The social, political, and economic movements that worked to achieve this mass infection environment can rejoice at their success.

Those schooled in public health, immunology or working on the front line of healthcare provision know we face an uncertain future, and are aware the implications of recent events stretch far beyond SARS-CoV-2. The shifts that have taken place in attitudes and public health policy will likely damage a key pillar that forms the basis of modern civilized society, one that was built over the last two centuries; the expectation of a largely uninterrupted upwards trajectory of ever-improving health and quality of life, largely driven by the reduction and elimination of infectious diseases that plagued humankind for thousands of years. In the last three years, that trajectory has reversed.

The upward trajectory of public health in the last two centuries Control of infectious disease has historically been a priority for all societies. Quarantine has been in common use since at least the Bronze Age and has been the key method for preventing the spread of infectious diseases ever since. The word “quarantine” itself derives from the 40-day isolation period for ships and crews that was implemented in Europe during the late Middle Ages to prevent the introduction of bubonic plague epidemics into cities.

Modern public health traces its roots to the middle of the 19th century thanks to converging scientific developments in early industrial societies:

The early industrial era generated horrendous workplace and living conditions for working class populations living in large industrial cities, dramatically reducing life expectancy and quality of life (life expectancy at birth in key industrial cities in the middle of the 19th century was often in the low 30s or even lower). This in turn resulted in a recognition that such environmental factors affect human health and life spans. The long and bitter struggle for workers’ rights in subsequent decades resulted in much improved working conditions, workplace safety regulations, and general sanitation, and brought sharp increases in life expectancy and quality of life, which in turn had positive impacts on productivity and wealth.

Florence Nightingale reemphasized the role of ventilation in healing and preventing illness, ‘The very first canon of nursing… : keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him,’ a maxim that influenced building design at the time.

These trends continued in the 20th century, greatly helped by further technological and scientific advances. Many diseases – diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. – became things of the past thanks to near-universal highly effective vaccinations, while others that used to be common are no longer of such concern for highly developed countries in temperate climates – malaria, typhus, typhoid, leprosy, cholera, tuberculosis, and many others – primarily thanks to improvements in hygiene and the implementation of non-pharmaceutical measures for their containment.

Furthermore, the idea that infectious diseases should not just be reduced, but permanently eliminated altogether began to be put into practice in the second half of the 20th century on a global level, and much earlier locally. These programs were based on the obvious consideration that if an infectious agent is driven to extinction, the incalculable damage to people’s health and the overall economy by a persisting and indefinite disease burden will also be eliminated.

The ambition of local elimination grew into one of global eradication for smallpox, which was successfully eliminated from the human population in the 1970s (this had already been achieved locally in the late 19th century by some countries), after a heroic effort to find and contain the last remaining infectious individuals. The other complete success was rinderpest in cattle9,10, globally eradicated in the early 21st century.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, global eradication programs were very close to succeeding for two other diseases – polio and dracunculiasis. Eradication is also globally pursued for other diseases, such as yaws, and regionally for many others, e.g. lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, measles and rubella. The most challenging diseases are those that have an external reservoir outside the human population, especially if they are insect borne, and in particular those carried by mosquitos. Malaria is the primary example, but despite these difficulties, eradication of malaria has been a long-standing global public health goal and elimination has been achieved in temperate regions of the globe, even though it involved the ecologically destructive widespread application of polluting chemical pesticides to reduce the populations of the vectors. Elimination is also a public goal for other insect borne diseases such as trypanosomiasis.

In parallel with pursuing maximal reduction and eventual eradication of the burden of existing endemic infectious diseases, humanity has also had to battle novel infectious diseases40, which have been appearing at an increased rate over recent decades. Most of these diseases are of zoonotic origin, and the rate at which they are making the jump from wildlife to humans is accelerating, because of the increased encroachment on wildlife due to expanding human populations and physical infrastructure associated with human activity, the continued destruction of wild ecosystems that forces wild animals towards closer human contact, the booming wildlife trade, and other such trends.

Because it is much easier to stop an outbreak when it is still in its early stages of spreading through the population than to eradicate an endemic pathogen, the governing principle has been that no emerging infectious disease should be allowed to become endemic. This goal has been pursued reasonably successfully and without controversy for many decades.

The most famous newly emerging pathogens were the filoviruses (Ebola, Marburg), the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, and paramyxoviruses like Nipah. These gained fame because of their high lethality and potential for human-to-human spread, but they were merely the most notable of many examples.

Such epidemics were almost always aggressively suppressed. Usually, these were small outbreaks, and because highly pathogenic viruses such as Ebola cause very serious sickness in practically all infected people, finding and isolating the contagious individuals is a manageable task. The largest such epidemic was the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when a filovirus spread widely in major urban centers for the first time. Containment required a wartime-level mobilization, but that was nevertheless achieved, even though there were nearly 30,000 infections and more than 11,000 deaths.

SARS was also contained and eradicated from the human population back in 2003-04, and the same happened every time MERS made the jump from camels to humans, as well as when there were Nipah outbreaks in Asia.

The major counterexample of a successful establishment in the human population of a novel highly pathogenic virus is HIV. HIV is a retrovirus, and as such it integrates into the host genome and is thus nearly impossible to eliminate from the body and to eradicate from the population (unless all infected individuals are identified and prevented from infecting others for the rest of their lives). However, HIV is not an example of the containment principle being voluntarily abandoned as the virus had made its zoonotic jump and established itself many decades before its eventual discovery and recognition, and long before the molecular tools that could have detected and potentially fully contained it existed.

Still, despite all these containment success stories, the emergence of a new pathogen with pandemic potential was a well understood and frequently discussed threat, although influenza viruses rather than coronaviruses were often seen as the most likely culprit. The eventual appearance of SARS-CoV-2 should therefore not have been a huge surprise, and should have been met with a full mobilization of the technical tools and fundamental public health principles developed over the previous decades.

The ecological context One striking property of many emerging pathogens is how many of them come from bats. While the question of whether bats truly harbor more viruses than other mammals in proportion to their own species diversity (which is the second highest within mammals after rodents) is not fully settled yet, many novel viruses do indeed originate from bats, and the ecological and physiological characteristics of bats are highly relevant for understanding the situation that Homo sapiens finds itself in right now.

Another startling property of bats and their viruses is how highly pathogenic to humans (and other mammals) many bat viruses are, while bats themselves are not much affected (only rabies is well established to cause serious harm to bats). Why bats seem to carry so many such pathogens, and how they have adapted so well to coexisting with them, has been a long-standing puzzle and although we do not have a definitive answer, some general trends have become clear.

These are characteristics that might have on one hand facilitated the evolution of a considerable set of viruses associated with bat populations. In order for a non-latent respiratory virus to maintain itself, a minimal population size is necessary. For example, it is hypothesized that measles requires a minimum population size of 250-300,000 individuals. And bats have existed in a state of high population densities for a very long time, which might explain the high diversity of viruses that they carry. In addition, the long lifespan of many bat species means that their viruses may have to evolve strategies to overcome adaptive immunity and frequently reinfect previously infected individuals as opposed to the situation in short-lived species in which populations turn over quickly (with immunologically naive individuals replacing the ones that die out).

On the other hand, the selective pressure that these viruses have exerted on bats may have resulted in the evolution of various resistance and/or tolerance mechanisms in bats themselves, which in turn have driven the evolution of counter strategies in their viruses, leading them to be highly virulent for other species. Bats certainly appear to be physiologically more tolerant towards viruses that are otherwise highly virulent to other mammals. Several explanations for this adaptation have been proposed, chief among them a much more powerful innate immunity and a tolerance towards infections that does not lead to the development of the kind of hyperinflammatory reactions observed in humans, the high body temperature of bats in flight, and others.

The notable strength of bat innate immunity is often explained by the constitutively active interferon response that has been reported for some bat species. It is possible that this is not a universal characteristic of all bats – only a few species have been studied – but it provides a very attractive mechanism for explaining both how bats prevent the development of severe systemic viral infections in their bodies and how their viruses in turn would have evolved powerful mechanisms to silence the interferon response, making them highly pathogenic for other mammals.

The tolerance towards infection is possibly rooted in the absence of some components of the signaling cascades leading to hyperinflammatory reactions and the dampened activity of others.

An obvious ecological parallel can be drawn between bats and humans – just as bats live in dense colonies, so now do modern humans. And we may now be at a critical point in the history of our species, in which our ever-increasing ecological footprint has brought us in close contact with bats in a way that was much rarer in the past. Our population is connected in ways that were previously unimaginable. A novel virus can make the zoonotic jump somewhere in Southeast Asia and a carrier of it can then be on the other side of the globe a mere 24-hours later, having encountered thousands of people in airports and other mass transit systems. As a result, bat pathogens are now being transferred from bat populations to the human population in what might prove to be the second major zoonotic spillover event after the one associated with domestication of livestock and pets a few thousand years ago.

Unfortunately for us, our physiology is not suited to tolerate these new viruses. Bats have adapted to live with them over many millions of years. Humans have not undergone the same kind of adaptation and cannot do so on any timescale that will be of use to those living now, nor to our immediate descendants.

Simply put, humans are not bats, and the continuous existence and improvement of what we now call “civilization” depends on the same basic public health and infectious disease control that saw life expectancy in high-income countries more than double to 85 years. This is a challenge that will only increase in the coming years, because the trends that are accelerating the rate of zoonotic transfer of pathogens are certain to persist.

Given this context, it is as important now to maintain the public health principle that no new dangerous pathogens should be allowed to become endemic and that all novel infectious disease outbreaks must be suppressed as it ever was.

The death of public health and the end of epidemiological comfort It is also in this context that the real gravity of what has happened in the last three years emerges.

After HIV, SARS-CoV-2 is now the second most dangerous infectious disease agent that is 'endemic' to the human population on a global scale. And yet not only was it allowed to become endemic, but mass infection was outright encouraged, including by official public health bodies in numerous countries.

The implications of what has just happened have been missed by most, so let’s spell them out explicitly.

We need to be clear why containment of SARS-CoV-2 was actively sabotaged and eventually abandoned. It has absolutely nothing to do with the “impossibility” of achieving it. In fact, the technical problem of containing even a stealthily spreading virus such as SARS-CoV-2 is fully solved, and that solution was successfully applied in practice for years during the pandemic.

The list of countries that completely snuffed out outbreaks, often multiple times, includes Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Bhutan, Cuba, China, and a few others, with China having successfully contained hundreds of separate outbreaks, before finally giving up in late 2022.

The algorithm for containment is well established – passively break transmission chains through the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as limiting human contacts, high quality respirator masks, indoor air filtration and ventilation, and others, while aggressively hunting down active remaining transmission chains through traditional contact tracing and isolation methods combined with the powerful new tool of population-scale testing.

Understanding of airborne transmission and institution of mitigation measures, which have heretofore not been utilized in any country, will facilitate elimination, even with the newer, more transmissible variants. Any country that has the necessary resources (or is provided with them) can achieve full containment within a few months. In fact, currently this would be easier than ever before because of the accumulated widespread multiple recent exposures to the virus in the population suppressing the effective reproduction number (Re). For the last 18 months or so we have been seeing a constant high plateau of cases with undulating waves, but not the major explosions of infections with Re reaching 3-4 that were associated with the original introduction of the virus in 2020 and with the appearance of the first Omicron variants in late 2021.

It would be much easier to use NPIs to drive Re to much below 1 and keep it there until elimination when starting from Re around 1.2-1.3 than when it was over 3, and this moment should be used, before another radically new serotype appears and takes us back to those even more unpleasant situations. This is not a technical problem, but one of political and social will. As long as leadership misunderstands or pretends to misunderstand the link between increased mortality, morbidity and poorer economic performance and the free transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the impetus will be lacking to take the necessary steps to contain this damaging virus.

Political will is in short supply because powerful economic and corporate interests have been pushing policymakers to let the virus spread largely unchecked through the population since the very beginning of the pandemic. The reasons are simple. First, NPIs hurt general economic activity, even if only in the short term, resulting in losses on balance sheets. Second, large-scale containment efforts of the kind we only saw briefly in the first few months of the pandemic require substantial governmental support for all the people who need to pause their economic activity for the duration of effort. Such an effort also requires large-scale financial investment in, for example, contact tracing and mass testing infrastructure and providing high-quality masks. In an era dominated by laissez-faire economic dogma, this level of state investment and organization would have set too many unacceptable precedents, so in many jurisdictions it was fiercely resisted, regardless of the consequences for humanity and the economy.

None of these social and economic predicaments have been resolved. The unofficial alliance between big business and dangerous pathogens that was forged in early 2020 has emerged victorious and greatly strengthened from its battle against public health, and is poised to steamroll whatever meager opposition remains for the remainder of this, and future pandemics.

The long-established principles governing how we respond to new infectious diseases have now completely changed – the precedent has been established that dangerous emerging pathogens will no longer be contained, but instead permitted to ‘ease’ into widespread circulation. The intent to “let it rip” in the future is now being openly communicated. With this change in policy comes uncertainty about acceptable lethality. Just how bad will an infectious disease have to be to convince any government to mobilize a meaningful global public health response?

We have some clues regarding that issue from what happened during the initial appearance of the Omicron “variant” (which was really a new serotype) of SARS-CoV-2. Despite some experts warning that a vaccine-only approach would be doomed to fail, governments gambled everything on it. They were then faced with the brute fact of viral evolution destroying their strategy when a new serotype emerged against which existing vaccines had little effect in terms of blocking transmission. The reaction was not to bring back NPIs but to give up, seemingly regardless of the consequences.

Critically, those consequences were unknown when the policy of no intervention was adopted within days of the appearance of Omicron. All previous new SARS-CoV-2 variants had been deadlier than the original Wuhan strain, with the eventually globally dominant Delta variant perhaps as much as 4× as deadly. Omicron turned out to be the exception, but again, that was not known with any certainty when it was allowed to run wild through populations. What would have happened if it had followed the same pattern as Delta?

In the USA, for example, the worst COVID-19 wave was the one in the winter of 2020-21, at the peak of which at least 3,500 people were dying daily (the real number was certainly higher because of undercounting due to lack of testing and improper reporting). The first Omicron BA.1 wave saw the second-highest death tolls, with at least 2,800 dying per day at its peak. Had Omicron been as intrinsically lethal as Delta, we could have easily seen a 4-5× higher peak than January 2021, i.e. as many as 12–15,000 people dying a day. Given that we only had real data on Omicron’s intrinsic lethality after the gigantic wave of infections was unleashed onto the population, we have to conclude that 12–15,000 dead a day is now a threshold that will not force the implementation of serious NPIs for the next problematic COVID-19 serotype.

Logically, it follows that it is also a threshold that will not result in the implementation of NPIs for any other emerging pathogens either. Because why should SARS-CoV-2 be special?

We can only hope that we will never see the day when such an epidemic hits us but experience tells us such optimism is unfounded. The current level of suffering caused by COVID-19 has been completely normalized even though such a thing was unthinkable back in 2019. Populations are largely unaware of the long-term harms the virus is causing to those infected, of the burden on healthcare, increased disability, mortality and reduced life expectancy. Once a few even deadlier outbreaks have been shrugged off by governments worldwide, the baseline of what is considered “acceptable” will just gradually move up and even more unimaginable losses will eventually enter the “acceptable” category. There can be no doubt, from a public health perspective, we are regressing.

We had a second, even more worrying real-life example of what the future holds with the global spread of the MPX virus (formerly known as “monkeypox” and now called “Mpox”) in 2022. MPX is a close relative to the smallpox VARV virus and is endemic to Central and Western Africa, where its natural hosts are mostly various rodent species, but on occasions it infects humans too, with the rate of zoonotic transfer increasing over recent decades. It has usually been characterized by fairly high mortality – the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) has been ∼3.6% for the strain that circulates in Nigeria and ∼10% for the one in the Congo region, i.e. much worse than SARS-CoV-2. In 2022, an unexpected global MPX outbreak developed, with tens of thousands of confirmed cases in dozens of countries. Normally, this would be a huge cause for alarm, for several reasons.

First, MPX itself is a very dangerous disease. Second, universal smallpox vaccination ended many decades ago with the success of the eradication program, leaving the population born after that completely unprotected. Third, lethality in orthopoxviruses is, in fact, highly variable – VARV itself had a variola major strain, with as much as ∼30% CFR, and a less deadly variola minor variety with CFR ∼1%, and there was considerable variation within variola major too. It also appears that high pathogenicity often evolves from less pathogenic strains through reductive evolution - the loss of certain genes something that can happen fairly easily, may well have happened repeatedly in the past, and may happen again in the future, a scenario that has been repeatedly warned about for decades. For these reasons, it was unthinkable that anyone would just shrug off a massive MPX outbreak – it is already bad enough as it is, but allowing it to become endemic means it can one day evolve towards something functionally equivalent to smallpox in its impact.

And yet that is exactly what happened in 2022 – barely any measures were taken to contain the outbreak, and countries simply reclassified MPX out of the “high consequence infectious disease” category in order to push the problem away, out of sight and out of mind. By chance, it turned out that this particular outbreak did not spark a global pandemic, and it was also characterized, for poorly understood reasons, by an unusually low CFR, with very few people dying. But again, that is not the information that was available at the start of the outbreak, when in a previous, interventionist age of public health, resources would have been mobilized to stamp it out in its infancy, but, in the age of laissez-faire, were not. MPX is now circulating around the world and represents a future threat of uncontrolled transmission resulting in viral adaptation to highly efficient human-to-human spread combined with much greater disease severity.

Rat climbing a ship's rigging. Modern public health traces its roots to the middle of the 19th century thanks to converging scientific developments in early industrial societies:

The germ theory of diseases was firmly established in the mid-19th century, in particular after Louis Pasteur disproved the spontaneous generation hypothesis. If diseases spread through transmission chains between individual humans or from the environment/animals to humans, then it follows that those transmission chains can be interrupted, and the spread stopped. The science of epidemiology appeared, its birth usually associated with the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London during which the British physician John Snow identified contaminated water as the source of cholera, pointing to improved sanitation as the way to stop cholera epidemics. Vaccination technology began to develop, initially against smallpox, and the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaigns began, starting in England in the 1850s. The early industrial era generated horrendous workplace and living conditions for working class populations living in large industrial cities, dramatically reducing life expectancy and quality of life (life expectancy at birth in key industrial cities in the middle of the 19th century was often in the low 30s or even lower2). This in turn resulted in a recognition that such environmental factors affect human health and life spans. The long and bitter struggle for workers’ rights in subsequent decades resulted in much improved working conditions, workplace safety regulations, and general sanitation, and brought sharp increases in life expectancy and quality of life, which in turn had positive impacts on productivity and wealth. Florence Nightingale reemphasized the role of ventilation in healing and preventing illness, ‘The very first canon of nursing… : keep the air he breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him,’ a maxim that influenced building design at the time. These trends continued in the 20th century, greatly helped by further technological and scientific advances. Many diseases – diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. – became things of the past thanks to near-universal highly effective vaccinations, while others that used to be common are no longer of such concern for highly developed countries in temperate climates – malaria, typhus, typhoid, leprosy, cholera, tuberculosis, and many others – primarily thanks to improvements in hygiene and the implementation of non-pharmaceutical measures for their containment.

Furthermore, the idea that infectious diseases should not just be reduced, but permanently eliminated altogether began to be put into practice in the second half of the 20th century3-5 on a global level, and much earlier locally. These programs were based on the obvious consideration that if an infectious agent is driven to extinction, the incalculable damage to people’s health and the overall economy by a persisting and indefinite disease burden will also be eliminated.

The ambition of local elimination grew into one of global eradication for smallpox, which was successfully eliminated from the human population in the 1970s6 (this had already been achieved locally in the late 19th century by some countries), after a heroic effort to find and contain the last remaining infectious individuals7,8. The other complete success was rinderpest in cattle9,10, globally eradicated in the early 21st century.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, global eradication programs were very close to succeeding for two other diseases – polio11,12 and dracunculiasis13. Eradication is also globally pursued for other diseases, such as yaws14,15, and regionally for many others, e.g. lymphatic filariasis16,17, onchocerciasis18,19, measles and rubella20-30. The most challenging diseases are those that have an external reservoir outside the human population, especially if they are insect borne, and in particular those carried by mosquitos. Malaria is the primary example, but despite these difficulties, eradication of malaria has been a long-standing global public health goal31-33 and elimination has been achieved in temperate regions of the globe34,35, even though it involved the ecologically destructive widespread application of polluting chemical pesticides36,37 to reduce the populations of the vectors. Elimination is also a public goal for other insect borne diseases such as trypanosomiasis38,39.

In parallel with pursuing maximal reduction and eventual eradication of the burden of existing endemic infectious diseases, humanity has also had to battle novel infectious diseases40, which have been appearing at an increased rate over recent decades41-43. Most of these diseases are of zoonotic origin, and the rate at which they are making the jump from wildlife to humans is accelerating, because of the increased encroachment on wildlife due to expanding human populations and physical infrastructure associated with human activity, the continued destruction of wild ecosystems that forces wild animals towards closer human contact, the booming wildlife trade, and other such trends.

The most famous newly emerging pathogens were the filoviruses (Ebola44-46, Marburg47,48), the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, and paramyxoviruses like Nipah49,50. These gained fame because of their high lethality and potential for human-to-human spread, but they were merely the most notable of many examples.

Pigs in close proximity to humans. Such epidemics were almost always aggressively suppressed. Usually, these were small outbreaks, and because highly pathogenic viruses such as Ebola cause very serious sickness in practically all infected people, finding and isolating the contagious individuals is a manageable task. The largest such epidemic was the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when a filovirus spread widely in major urban centers for the first time. Containment required a wartime-level mobilization, but that was nevertheless achieved, even though there were nearly 30,000 infections and more than 11,000 deaths51.

The major counterexample of a successful establishment in the human population of a novel highly pathogenic virus is HIV. HIV is a retrovirus, and as such it integrates into the host genome and is thus nearly impossible to eliminate from the body and to eradicate from the population52 (unless all infected individuals are identified and prevented from infecting others for the rest of their lives). However, HIV is not an example of the containment principle being voluntarily abandoned as the virus had made its zoonotic jump and established itself many decades before its eventual discovery53 and recognition54-56, and long before the molecular tools that could have detected and potentially fully contained it existed.

Still, despite all these containment success stories, the emergence of a new pathogen with pandemic potential was a well understood and frequently discussed threat57-60, although influenza viruses rather than coronaviruses were often seen as the most likely culprit61-65. The eventual appearance of SARS-CoV-2 should therefore not have been a huge surprise, and should have been met with a full mobilization of the technical tools and fundamental public health principles developed over the previous decades.

The ecological context One striking property of many emerging pathogens is how many of them come from bats. While the question of whether bats truly harbor more viruses than other mammals in proportion to their own species diversity (which is the second highest within mammals after rodents) is not fully settled yet66-69, many novel viruses do indeed originate from bats, and the ecological and physiological characteristics of bats are highly relevant for understanding the situation that Homo sapiens finds itself in right now.

Group of bats roosting in a cave. Another startling property of bats and their viruses is how highly pathogenic to humans (and other mammals) many bat viruses are, while bats themselves are not much affected (only rabies is well established to cause serious harm to bats68). Why bats seem to carry so many such pathogens, and how they have adapted so well to coexisting with them, has been a long-standing puzzle and although we do not have a definitive answer, some general trends have become clear.

Bats are the only truly flying mammals and have been so for many millions of years. Flying has resulted in a number of specific adaptations, one of them being the tolerance towards a very high body temperature (often on the order of 42-43ºC). Bats often live in huge colonies, literally touching each other, and, again, have lived in conditions of very high density for millions of years. Such densities are rare among mammals and are certainly not the native condition of humans (human civilization and our large dense cities are a very recent phenomenon on evolutionary time scales). Bats are also quite long-lived for such small mammals70-71 – some fruit bats can live more than 35 years and even small cave dwelling species can live about a decade. These are characteristics that might have on one hand facilitated the evolution of a considerable set of viruses associated with bat populations. In order for a non-latent respiratory virus to maintain itself, a minimal population size is necessary. For example, it is hypothesized that measles requires a minimum population size of 250-300,000 individuals72. And bats have existed in a state of high population densities for a very long time, which might explain the high diversity of viruses that they carry. In addition, the long lifespan of many bat species means that their viruses may have to evolve strategies to overcome adaptive immunity and frequently reinfect previously infected individuals as opposed to the situation in short-lived species in which populations turn over quickly (with immunologically naive individuals replacing the ones that die out).

On the other hand, the selective pressure that these viruses have exerted on bats may have resulted in the evolution of various resistance and/or tolerance mechanisms in bats themselves, which in turn have driven the evolution of counter strategies in their viruses, leading them to be highly virulent for other species. Bats certainly appear to be physiologically more tolerant towards viruses that are otherwise highly virulent to other mammals. Several explanations for this adaptation have been proposed, chief among them a much more powerful innate immunity and a tolerance towards infections that does not lead to the development of the kind of hyperinflammatory reactions observed in humans73-75, the high body temperature of bats in flight, and others.

The notable strength of bat innate immunity is often explained by the constitutively active interferon response that has been reported for some bat species76-78. It is possible that this is not a universal characteristic of all bats79 – only a few species have been studied – but it provides a very attractive mechanism for explaining both how bats prevent the development of severe systemic viral infections in their bodies and how their viruses in turn would have evolved powerful mechanisms to silence the interferon response, making them highly pathogenic for other mammals.

The tolerance towards infection is possibly rooted in the absence of some components of the signaling cascades leading to hyperinflammatory reactions and the dampened activity of others80.

Map of scheduled airline traffic around the world, circa June 2009 Map of scheduled airline traffic around the world. Credit: Jpatokal An obvious ecological parallel can be drawn between bats and humans – just as bats live in dense colonies, so now do modern humans. And we may now be at a critical point in the history of our species, in which our ever-increasing ecological footprint has brought us in close contact with bats in a way that was much rarer in the past. Our population is connected in ways that were previously unimaginable. A novel virus can make the zoonotic jump somewhere in Southeast Asia and a carrier of it can then be on the other side of the globe a mere 24-hours later, having encountered thousands of people in airports and other mass transit systems. As a result, bat pathogens are now being transferred from bat populations to the human population in what might prove to be the second major zoonotic spillover event after the one associated with domestication of livestock and pets a few thousand years ago.

The death of public health and the end of epidemiological comfort It is also in this context that the real gravity of what has happened in the last three years emerges.

The implications of what has just happened have been missed by most, so let’s spell them out explicitly.

Oklahoma’s Strategic National Stockpile. Credit: DVIDS Understanding of airborne transmission and institution of mitigation measures, which have heretofore not been utilized in any country, will facilitate elimination, even with the newer, more transmissible variants. Any country that has the necessary resources (or is provided with them) can achieve full containment within a few months. In fact, currently this would be easier than ever before because of the accumulated widespread multiple recent exposures to the virus in the population suppressing the effective reproduction number (Re). For the last 18 months or so we have been seeing a constant high plateau of cases with undulating waves, but not the major explosions of infections with Re reaching 3-4 that were associated with the original introduction of the virus in 2020 and with the appearance of the first Omicron variants in late 2021.

The long-established principles governing how we respond to new infectious diseases have now completely changed – the precedent has been established that dangerous emerging pathogens will no longer be contained, but instead permitted to ‘ease’ into widespread circulation. The intent to “let it rip” in the future is now being openly communicated84. With this change in policy comes uncertainty about acceptable lethality. Just how bad will an infectious disease have to be to convince any government to mobilize a meaningful global public health response?

We have some clues regarding that issue from what happened during the initial appearance of the Omicron “variant” (which was really a new serotype85,86) of SARS-CoV-2. Despite some experts warning that a vaccine-only approach would be doomed to fail, governments gambled everything on it. They were then faced with the brute fact of viral evolution destroying their strategy when a new serotype emerged against which existing vaccines had little effect in terms of blocking transmission. The reaction was not to bring back NPIs but to give up, seemingly regardless of the consequences.

Critically, those consequences were unknown when the policy of no intervention was adopted within days of the appearance of Omicron. All previous new SARS-CoV-2 variants had been deadlier than the original Wuhan strain, with the eventually globally dominant Delta variant perhaps as much as 4× as deadly87. Omicron turned out to be the exception, but again, that was not known with any certainty when it was allowed to run wild through populations. What would have happened if it had followed the same pattern as Delta?

UK National Covid Memorial Wall. Credit: Dominic Alves Logically, it follows that it is also a threshold that will not result in the implementation of NPIs for any other emerging pathogens either. Because why should SARS-CoV-2 be special?

We had a second, even more worrying real-life example of what the future holds with the global spread of the MPX virus (formerly known as “monkeypox” and now called “Mpox”) in 2022. MPX is a close relative to the smallpox VARV virus and is endemic to Central and Western Africa, where its natural hosts are mostly various rodent species, but on occasions it infects humans too, with the rate of zoonotic transfer increasing over recent decades88. It has usually been characterized by fairly high mortality – the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) has been ∼3.6% for the strain that circulates in Nigeria and ∼10% for the one in the Congo region, i.e. much worse than SARS-CoV-2. In 2022, an unexpected global MPX outbreak developed, with tens of thousands of confirmed cases in dozens of countries89,90. Normally, this would be a huge cause for alarm, for several reasons.

First, MPX itself is a very dangerous disease. Second, universal smallpox vaccination ended many decades ago with the success of the eradication program, leaving the population born after that completely unprotected. Third, lethality in orthopoxviruses is, in fact, highly variable – VARV itself had a variola major strain, with as much as ∼30% CFR, and a less deadly variola minor variety with CFR ∼1%, and there was considerable variation within variola major too. It also appears that high pathogenicity often evolves from less pathogenic strains through reductive evolution - the loss of certain genes something that can happen fairly easily, may well have happened repeatedly in the past, and may happen again in the future, a scenario that has been repeatedly warned about for decades91,92. For these reasons, it was unthinkable that anyone would just shrug off a massive MPX outbreak – it is already bad enough as it is, but allowing it to become endemic means it can one day evolve towards something functionally equivalent to smallpox in its impact.

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Mpox virus particles. Credit: NIAID And yet that is exactly what happened in 2022 – barely any measures were taken to contain the outbreak, and countries simply reclassified MPX out of the “high consequence infectious disease” category93 in order to push the problem away, out of sight and out of mind. By chance, it turned out that this particular outbreak did not spark a global pandemic, and it was also characterized, for poorly understood reasons, by an unusually low CFR, with very few people dying94,95. But again, that is not the information that was available at the start of the outbreak, when in a previous, interventionist age of public health, resources would have been mobilized to stamp it out in its infancy, but, in the age of laissez-faire, were not. MPX is now circulating around the world and represents a future threat of uncontrolled transmission resulting in viral adaptation to highly efficient human-to-human spread combined with much greater disease severity.

This is the previously unthinkable future we will live in from now on in terms of our approach to infectious disease.

What may be controlled instead is information. Another lesson of the pandemic is that if there is no testing and reporting of cases and deaths, a huge amount of real human suffering can be very successfully swept under the rug. Early in 2020, such practices – blatant denial that there was any virus in certain territories, outright faking of COVID-19 statistics, and even resorting to NPIs out of sheer desperation but under false pretense that it is not because of COVID-19 – were the domain of failed states and less developed dictatorships. But in 2023 most of the world has adopted such practices – testing is limited, reporting is infrequent, or even abandoned altogether – and there is no reason to expect this to change. Information control has replaced infection control.

After a while it will not even be possible to assess the impact of what is happening by evaluating excess mortality, which has been the one true measure not susceptible to various data manipulation tricks. As we get increasingly removed from the pre-COVID-19 baselines and the initial pandemic years are subsumed into the baseline for calculating excess mortality, excess deaths will simply disappear by the power of statistical magic. Interestingly, countries such as the UK, which has already incorporated two pandemic years in its five-year average, are still seeing excess deaths, which suggests the virus is an ongoing and growing problem.

It should also be stressed that this radical shift in our approach to emerging infectious diseases is probably only the beginning of wiping out the hard-fought public health gains of the last 150+ years. This should be gravely concerning to any individuals and institutions concerned with workers and citizens rights.

This shift is likely to impact existing eradication and elimination efforts. Will the final pushes be made to complete the various global eradication campaigns listed above? That may necessitate some serious effort involving NPIs and active public health measures, but how much appetite is there for such things after they have been now taken out of the toolkit for SARS-CoV-2?

We can also expect previously forgotten diseases to return where they have successfully been locally eradicated. We have to always remember that the diseases that we now control with universal childhood vaccinations have not been globally eradicated – they have disappeared from our lives because vaccination rates are high enough to maintain society as a whole above the disease elimination threshold, but were vaccination rates to slip, those diseases, such as measles, will return with a vengeance.

The anti-vaccine movement was already a serious problem prior to COVID-19, but it was given a gigantic boost with the ill-advised vaccine-only COVID-19 strategy. Governments and their nominal expert advisers oversold the effectiveness of imperfect first generation COVID-vaccines, and simultaneously minimized the harms of SARS-CoV-2, creating a reality gap which gave anti-vaccine rhetoric space to thrive. This is a huge topic to be explored separately. Here it will suffice to say that while anti-vaxxers were a fringe movement prior to the pandemic, “vaccination” in general is now a toxic idea in the minds of truly significant portions of the population. A logical consequence of that shift has been a significant decrease in vaccination coverage for other diseases as well as for COVID-19.

This is even more likely given the shift in attitudes towards children. Child labour, lack of education and large families were the hallmarks of earlier eras of poor public health, which were characterized by high birth-rates and high infant mortality. Attitudes changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century and wherever health and wealth increased, child mortality fell, and the transition was made to small families. Rarity increased perceived value and children’s wellbeing became a central concern for parents and carers. The arrival of COVID-19 changed that, with some governments, advisers, advocacy groups and parents insisting that children should be exposed freely to a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus to ‘train’ their immune systems.

Infection, rather than vaccination, was the preferred route for many in public health in 2020, and still is in 2023, despite all that is known about this virus’s propensity to cause damage to all internal organs, the immune system, and the brain, and the unknowns of postinfectious sequelae. This is especially egregious in infants, whose naive immune status may be one of the reasons they have a relatively high hospitalization rate. Some commentators seek to justify the lack of protection for the elderly and vulnerable on a cost basis. We wonder what rationale can justify a lack of protection for newborns and infants, particularly in a healthcare setting, when experience of other viruses tells us children have better outcomes the later they are exposed to disease? If we are not prepared to protect children against a highly virulent SARS virus, why should we protect against others? We should expect a shift in public health attitudes, since ‘endemicity’ means there is no reason to see SARS-CoV-2 as something unique and exceptional.

We can also expect a general degradation of workplace safety protocols and standards, again reversing many decades of hard-fought gains. During COVID-19, aside from a few privileged groups who worked from home, people were herded back into their workplaces without minimal safety precautions such as providing respirators, and improving ventilation and indoor air quality, when a dangerous airborne pathogen was spreading.

Can we realistically expect existing safety precautions and regulations to survive after that precedent has been set? Can we expect public health bodies and regulatory agencies, whose job it is to enforce these standards, to fight for workplace safety given what they did during the pandemic? It is highly doubtful. After all, they stubbornly refused to admit that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne (even to this very day in fact – the World Health Organization’s infamous “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne” Tweet from March 28 2020 is still up in its original form), and it is not hard to see why – implementing airborne precautions in workplaces, schools, and other public spaces would have resulted in a cost to employers and governments; a cost they could avoid if they simply denied they needed to take such precautions. But short-term thinking has resulted in long-term costs to those same organizations, through the staffing crisis, and the still-rising disability tsunami. The same principle applies to all other existing safety measures.

Worse, we have now entered the phase of abandoning respiratory precautions even in hospitals. The natural consequence of unmasked staff and patients, even those known to be SARS-CoV-2 positive, freely mixing in overcrowded hospitals is the rampant spread of hospital-acquired infections, often among some of the most vulnerable demographics. This was previously thought to be a bad thing. And what of the future? If nobody is taking any measures to stop one particular highly dangerous nosocomial infection, why would anyone care about all the others, which are often no easier to prevent? And if standards of care have slipped to such a low point with respect to COVID-19, why would anyone bother providing the best care possible for other conditions? This is a one-way feed-forward healthcare system degradation that will only continue.

Finally, the very intellectual foundations of the achievements of the last century and a half are eroding. Chief among these is the germ theory of infectious disease, by which transmission chains can be isolated and broken. The alternative theory, of spontaneous generation of pathogens, means there are no chains to be broken. Today, we are told that it is impossible to contain SARS-CoV-2 and we have to "just live with it,” as if germ theory no longer holds. The argument that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to wildlife means that containment is impossible illustrates these contradictions further – SARS-CoV-2 came from wildlife, as did all other zoonotic infections, so how does the virus spilling back to wildlife change anything in terms of public health protocol? But if one has decided that from here on there will be no effort to break transmission chains because it is too costly for the privileged few in society, then excuses for that laissez-faire attitude will always be found.

And that does not bode well for the near- and medium-term future of the human species on planet Earth.

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