#nothing really prepares

[thalassarche]

This is kind of long and it's me getting things out. Scroll past if you don't want to read about medical stuff, or declining health of aging parents, or failures of the medical system, or the feeling of personal failures in the face of all of this.

My mom isn't doing well.

I've been living with her for three years now, after losing my job during the pandemic. She had recently been diagnosed with end stage renal failure and needed dialysis three days a week, which really tired her out, so she needed help, and I didn't have a job. So I've been her caregiver for that time. Helping with shopping and meals and appointments and so on. August 1st, she had a stroke, primarily affecting the language centers of her brain, and making speech difficult. She seemed okay when I got up that day but by the time I did my morning routine (teeth brushing etc) she wasn't talking properly and we went to the nearest ER. Since then she's been in neuro ICU, post-stroke rehab, and a short-term care center, for therapy and recovery. Except she was fighting some terrible lower back pain that was making it very difficult for her to do her PT, then getting to the point she was bedridden.

Myself, and her brother and sister-in-law (who are our neighbors), agitated for diagnostics of what was going on with her back pain. They did an xray with "no significant findings" and prescribed oxycodone for pain management. We tried to get a CT scan or MRI or something like that for her and nothing happened, as she was transferred from rehabilitation to short-term care, and short-term care just kept up the narcotics. Well. Now she's in ICU again. CT scan, MRI, and bloodwork revealed that she has osteomyelitis of the lumbar vertebrae -- an infection in the bone/bone marrow of her lower back. There's actually an abcess there in her spine. That's what was causing the hideous pain. Osteomyelitis in the spine has a roughly 20% mortality rate. And Mom just isn't very healthy to begin with. She's a breast cancer survivor with osteoporosis as a result of her treatment. She has diabetes, with that effect on wound healing. She has the aforementioned end stage renal failure, so her kidneys don't work and her blood has to be filtered artificially three times a week. She has atherosclerosis (which may have caused the stroke) and has a stent in her heart, plus an artificial heart valve.

The doctors have said they don't like the look of the infection, and they don't feel she's a candidate for surgery to remove it, so it's going to be treated via antibiotics delivered via PICC for the next 6 weeks. But, it's sort of hanging there, that there's a solid chance she doesn't make it through this. And I just can't stop feeling as if I failed her, by not following through with the additional diagnostics, by not making myself such a pain in the ass that they did it to get me to shut up, and maybe found it sooner. Or that maybe I didn't even catch the stroke soon enough. Or who knows, maybe insurance denied the CT scan, or something like that. Just, that I'm supposed to be her caregiver, and yet, look. I don't know what I'm saying here other than just getting all of this out somewhere. But it sucks. The healthcare system sucks, insurance sucks, all of this sucks, and I just want my Mom.

[eruzed]

getting into the magnus archives after only seeing fanart is such a rollercoaster 😭 before listening i assumed the archival crew would be a loving and supportive friend group but in reality 1. they hate each other so fucking much 2. a lot of them are dead

[natsmagi]

honestly the more i hear about engstars and its TLs the more i absolutely dread the inevitable release of poltergeist and what may ensue from it, bc if if the translators themselves are already invalidating arashis identity then i Really Truly do not want to see how theyll translate natsume and tsumugis microaggressions/transphobia towards her. esp since ive noticed a rise in people being comfortably transphobic towards her, and i REALLY do not wish to see natsume and tsumugi being stupid fucking morons be used as evidence to discredit her

and i think this is all the more reason why its VERY IMPORTANT for engstars to DIRECTLY ACKNOWLEDGE arashi and her gender. bc sometimes characters are STUPID and RUDE and APATHETIC. enstars is a story with NUANCED and FLAWED CHARACTERS, and when a character is being a fucking asshole youre meant to PROVE THEM WRONG. but they dont even acknowledge arashi as a girl themselves. so, if you do use engstars, please keep pressuring them bc omfg this is so bad and i can only see it getting worse

[forestborg]

Learning to trust people is hard but at least tiddy is soft

[faaun]

the way that diff languages sound r so fascinating they're all different and all so vivid

[13eyond13]

underrated funny thing about lawlight is they never actually did get to confirm that 100% of the time they were basically thinking exactly what the other person thought they were thinking every single time

[lokh]

fastest way to piss me off is to try and add something to a task im in the middle of doing because 'youre already doing it so this shouldnt be extra work tee hee' THATS NOT HOW THIS WORKS

[controllerofthemist]

My thoughts on Skirk

With the way Skirk treats and talks about him, its no wonder Tartaglia turned out the way he did. A bright and naive 13 yr old boy with no combat experience falls away from the comfort of his home into a world full of monsters with no sun or safety and the only psuedo-caretaker he has won't even speak to him properly because she says him as too weak to bother with, and after 3 months of fighting his way through hell and losing his humanity, he returns to that home he was longing for, only to find that 3 days have passed since he left and he tells not a single person what happened to him. No wonder he lost his mind down there.

I miss the Skirk that I had made up in my head, the one I patched together from different fic writer and fan artists ideas for her, the one that had that same rambunctious and bloodthirsty personality that Tartaglia inherited, the one that took care of a child the best she knew how while hardening him to survive the abyss' dangers, the one that at least *tried*, because she *wanted too*.

I just feel disappointed, and I think a lot of other people are as well.

I think that, until we see her again, I'm just going to keep pretending that the one in my head is the real one.

[mewtwo24]

Okay but like. Two things about the volume 8 statue [redacted] chapter.

Firstly. By god no amount of "yeah it was unhinged" comments on this website prepared me for whatever the fuck that was. I need at least 5 business days to process.

Second, was I the only one who read that scene as:

Hua Cheng, teeming with self-satisfaction to see Mu Qing near writhing with scorned disgust and fury: this was a 100% successful trip

Xie Lian: our statues are fucking in Mu Qing's palace oh god oh fuck what do you m e a n successful

Hua Cheng, smirk getting even bigger: this was a 100% successful trip

[girderednerve]

The French capital faces an unprecedented emergency housing crisis. Paris’ homelessness hotline — the 115 — receives roughly 13,500 calls every day, but only 10 percent of callers are able to get emergency housing. Every evening at 6 p.m., dozens of unhoused people flock to the Hôtel de Ville in central Paris, where the charity Utopia 56 helps match them with Parisians who have a spare bed — but the association is overwhelmed by demand. Meanwhile, evictions of informal living spaces in the Île-de-France region — which includes Paris and its suburbs — doubled over the past four years. The number of unhoused people increased by about 500 in the past year.

The approach of the Olympic Games has exacerbated these trends. Statistics from civil rights groups show a troubling rise in evictions over the past year as the city has prepared for the global event that will bring 14 million tourists to Paris starting in late July. While official numbers on displacement are hard to come by, the Observatory on Evictions from Informal Living Spaces, a research group, counted 138 expulsions in the Île-de-France between April 2023 and May 2024, affecting roughly 12,545 people, an increase of about 40 percent compared with two years prior. A government spokesperson, Christophe Noël du Payrat, told the New York Times that authorities had evicted roughly 5,000 people in the past year, most of them single men.

For this story, I spoke with more than a dozen unhoused or precariously housed Paris residents, as well as charity workers, researchers and public officials. The upcoming Olympics, they all suggested, have provided Paris a neat deadline for accelerating processes of urban renewal — and displacement — that were already underway in an effort to sanitize the city for tourists. The Games, which the International Olympic Committee have hailed as a “new model” that is at once “ambitious, spectacular, open to all, but also more responsible, more sustainable, more supportive and more inclusive,” could have been an opportunity to address chronic homelessness, they lamented. Instead, the city started ramping up evictions.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Queen Sansa when Northmen start coming to her worried about their lack of resources

[saintprivateer]

posty by himself for now but hello again im drawing sky ship things!!

[anxiously-sidequesting]

okay wait stop. okay wait for me, okay just- (steps around my mountains of garbage and slime)

Listen we all love Malorn Ashthorn (as we fuckin' should) but I just realized. okay, just how much undeserved mess that poor blessed soul went through

Like okay think about it for a second. He's introduced early on in the first arc as Malistaire's former top student and now impromptu Death Professor at Ravenwood, okay so we all know that. But the implications man. The implications, I didn't think about the IMPLICATIONS.

He's like this 12 year old kid, okay. Already even BEFORE his official appearance in the game, imagine being a straight A student, one of the very best (to the point where it's noted and revered amongst the other professors AND your fellow students), under THE Malistaire Drake, who, even before his villain arc, was also one of the most esteemed and powerful Death professors ever. Like I couldn't even keep a C in school that shit must be wild

AND THEN. And then, your professor literally commits several war crimes, causes irreversible damage and trauma, and becomes a national criminal against.... the universe???? Like Malistaite commits heinous terrible shit, and sinks the entire Death School along with him. And then it falls to Malorn Ashthorn, once again who's like a teenager, to PICK UP THE METAPHORICAL PIECES because he had no choice. He was literally the only candidate to fill in Malistaire's place, a legend turned monster, to teach and guide GENERATIONS of new children that are HIS AGE or even OLDER THAN Malorn is.

And then the actual changes in the school. Malorn, former student, now has to learn how to become a professor with his limited knowledge of Death Magic. Like imagine filling in for the college astrophysicist teacher when you've only graduated 6th grade. He has to change his SCHEDULE, from waking up early as a student to get up and get ready even EARLIER as a professor to prepare the classes HE comes up with. Not to mention late nights grading hundreds of papers from multiple students??? AND he either is the ONLY tutor (which means more overtime and work for him, to personally help individual students with different Death lessons), or he has to actually call upon help from other students to help him get his job done.

And then there's like the relationship aspect of it. Malorn is literally just a child, like any other student, but adopting a role as a professor, an adult, means that he also has to adopt a certain mindset. Malorn literally HAS to be patient, HAS to be guiding and nurturing, HAS to be the adult in every situation in order to be a GOOD professor. Malorn has to train hard not only in magic to be ahead of the others in order to teach them properly, but has to retrain his mindset to be ABLE to handle to teach properly. Like you can't be a regular tween teaching other tweens.

And then it's just the pressure after that. The PRESSURE GUYS, of not only living up to one of the most talented and accomplished the school has ever seen, but deal with the fact that the very same person also became a tyrant and war criminal and left Malorn, his most promised student, in his place. Like I could easily imagine the rumors, the judgement, and the fear surrounding that boy, wondering if he would ever turn out to be the same as Malistaire.

No one asked for this. This soap opera I mean, nobody asked me about Malorn Ashthorn or this long ass post but I don't care because I'm crying. Girls I'm crying my entire bed is wet with tears of despair and snot. Malorn is literally a sweetie oh my God he does not, and never will deserve this shit I'm so sorry honey. Sweetie Malorn baby I'm so fuckign sorry, i'm so so sorry,

[suguru-getos]

friday got me feeling numb & shit been so busy 😮‍💨

[saints-who-never-existed]

Okay so one thing I really like right off the bat is Franklin and Fitzjames' vertical journey through Erebus from engine room upward through each deck and onward to see off the lead parties.

It's a nice parallel actually to the horizontal journey we see at the start of Episode One where we begin at the bow of Erebus, gradually moving down the length of her as the action unfolds and then on to see what's happening on Terror behind.

Again, it really helps us to understand the ships as real living, breathing, working spaces and to understand the sheer scale of them too as essentially floating multi-storey buildings.