#pallis — interactions.

[thedragonagelesbian]

one of the gondians cast grease on yiseeril and shadowheart. maybe wulbren had some points.

[temeryte]

THE USED (2015-2017) LYRIC PROMPTS

@astremourante: "I’ve been standing here."

In the bustling lobby of a high-end downtown hotel, Pallis impatiently taps his polished leather shoe. Dressed in a finely tailored suit and talking animatedly on his phone, he pays little attention to the world around him.

As he continues his heated conversation about mergers and acquisitions, he suddenly finds himself standing next to Amelia and her baby girl, Eleanor, playing with a soft toy as she nestles in her arms.

Her tone is tainted with exasperation when she speaks to him, ignoring that he is on a call. It is true Pallis had summoned her here at a specific time and that he was running about 15 minutes late to that meeting, yet it was hard for him to care. He’s sorry about the little girl and how boring it was to wait at her age, sure, but she had to get some real-world experience sooner or later.

Covering the microphone of his mobile with his thumb and pulling it away, he glances back at Amelia and retorts with no apology or remorse, shrugging.

“You know how it is, darling—Business waits for no one.”

[strixhaven]

i need to play a vengeance or redemption paladin in tabletop sometime it’s imperative

[corrodedcoughin]

I am back with my begging bowl but I’m reverse uno prompting you all. Do YOU have any thoughts on Steve taking eddie on holiday/on a plane for the first time? Or eddie going to cooking classes so that he can properly wine and dine Steve? Or Eddie embroidering Steve’s initials into his own and Steve’s clothes? Or idk eddie taking steve on his first roller coaster? Or anything I’m not fussy. If you have a hc coherent or not this is a space for you to shine my friend

[aviisick13]

I love these two idiots

[probablyasocialecologist]

“The ‘war on drugs’ may be understood to a significant extent as a war on people. Its impact has been greatest on those who live in poverty, and it frequently overlaps with discrimination directed at marginalised groups, minoritiesand Indigenous Peoples. In our reporting and experience, we have found that such discriminatory impact is a common element across drug policies with regard to the widest range of human rights, including the right to personal liberty; freedom from torture, ill-treatment and forced labour; fair trial rights; the right to health, including access to essential medicines, palliative care, comprehensive drug prevention and education, drug treatment, and harm reduction; the right to adequate housing; freedom from discrimination and the right to equal treatment before the law; right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; cultural rights and freedoms of expression, religion, assembly and association. Globally, drug control has had massive costs for the dignity, humanity and freedom of people of African descent, with reports showing that people of African descent face disproportionate and unjust law enforcement interventions, arrests and incarceration for drug-related offences. In various countries, the ‘war on drugs’ has been more effective as a system of racial control than as a tool to reduce drug markets. Policing interventions based on racial profiling remain widespread, whilst access to evidence-based treatment and harm reduction for people of African descent remains critically low. Around the world, women who use drugs face significant stigma and discrimination in accessing harm reduction programmes, drug dependence treatment and basic health care. Although one in three people who use drugs are women, women constitute only one in five people in treatment. Women are also disproportionately affected by criminalisation and incarceration, with 35% of women in prison worldwide having been convicted of a drug-related offence compared to 19% of men. The causes of women’s interaction with the criminal justice system in relation to drugs are complex, often linked to other factors such as poverty and coercion, and may reflect systemic gender inequality in society more broadly. Of note, most women in prison for drug related offences have little education. Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose capital punishment for the ‘most serious crimes’, meaning crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing. Drug offences clearly do not meet this threshold. However, drug-related offences are still punishable by death in over 30 countries, and human rights experts have raised concerns about evidence of its discriminatory impact on individuals belonging to minorities. Everyone without exception has the right to life-saving harm reduction interventions, which are essential for the protection of the right to health of people who use drugs. However, according to UN data, only 1 in 8 people with drug dependence have access to appropriate treatment, and the coverage of harm reduction services remains very low. The situation is particularly critical for women, LGBTIQ+ persons, and other marginalised groups, for whom harm reduction and treatment services may not be adapted or respond to their specific needs. Women and LGBTIQ+ persons also face even higher levels of stigma, including self-stigma, and discrimination than men who use drugs.

As the world grows older, drug use among people over 65 has also increased. The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the health and well-being of older persons, and studies show an increased use of pain relievers, tranquillizers, and sedatives among this age group. Older drug users are also more often using the dark web, social media, and online forums to obtain illicit substances resulting in a rise of drug-related deaths among older populations. The criminalisation of substances traditionally used by Indigenous Peoples such as the coca leaf can also result in the suppression, undermining and marginalization of traditional and indigenous knowledge systems and medicine, which has wide-ranging health impacts and is rooted in discriminatory hierarchies and conceptions. Forced eradication of crops, including through the aerial spraying of highly hazardous pesticides, can cause serious harm to the environment and clean water, as well as to the health and welfare of Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples that might be affected by these and other drug control operations must be meaningfully consulted, and guarantees should be given that their lives, cultural practices, lands and natural resources are not violated. Criminal laws and the punitive use of administrative and other sanctions stigmatise already marginalised populations. Criminalisation results in significant barriers to access to health services (including those for HIV and palliative care) and in other human rights violations. As called for by the UN system Common Position on drug-related matters, drug use and possession for personal use should be decriminalised as a matter of urgency. Drug use or dependence are never a sufficient justification for detaining a person. Compulsory drug detention and rehabilitation centres need to be closed and replaced with voluntary, evidence-informed, and rights-based health and social services in the community.

[mama-qwerty]

Wade's Bedroom

Okay. So, in the trailer for the Knuckles series, we see Knux take out a bounty hunter in what appears to be Wade's bedroom. I'm thinking this is his bedroom at his mother's house, so when he was a teen.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they decorate their personal space. And since I love Wade and am on my knees begging for better characterization, I wanna see what they put in the guy's bedroom.

Let's break it down.

1 - Little Robots

I can't tell exactly what robots these are, whether they're action figures from games or movies, or some model kits he's built himself. If they're models it shows Wade spent a lot of time on his own, and had the opportunity to focus on building something that required attention and patience.

2 - Books

There are a lot of books on his shelves, and the ones especially between Knux and the bounty hunter look like a series. Obviously we can't read the titles, but Wade strikes me as someone who'd enjoy manga, and the Choose Your Own Adventure stories.

3 - A Little Rainbow Sticker

This may indicate he knows someone who is LGTBQ+, or possibly he himself is. Or maybe he just likes rainbows.

4 - "Pistol" Pete Whipple poster

I'm not exactly sure how Pete is related to Wade, but I'm going under the assumption that Pete is his uncle. (Cary Elwes is 20 years older than Adam Pally, so while it's possible he's a brother, it's unlikely.) Here's this very impressive and 'famous' Whipple, who everyone looks up to and admires. (I'm assuming.) Wade feels so unimportant, he has this poster to remind him that he's related to greatness, and maybe he too can be important some day.

5 - Addams Family movie poster

I'm pretty sure this is the first movie, and Wade likes it because it shows people who are strange, people who don't look or act like everyone else, people who have odd hobbies and interact with the world in their own unique manner. And yet they love each other, Gomez in particular would do anything for his brother. Considering the nonchalant way his sister and mother behaved when he was yanked off the porch in the trailer, maybe Wade never really felt a connection like that.

6 - Robin Hood Prince of Thieves movie poster

The most famous example of helping those less fortunate than you, and being a hero to those on the receiving end of that help. Wade wants to help people. He wants to stand up for those who can't. I have no idea what his relationship with his father is/was like, but maybe the whole 'stand up to a corrupt authority' resonated with him for personal reasons as well.

7 - Speed movie poster

Maybe he wished he was Keanu Reeves, the hero with a calm head and always knew what to do. Maybe he always pictured himself as Sandra Bullock, an average person pulled into something dangerous and assuming an important role that helps save others.

8 - Ren and Stimpy poster

Okay, so he's a teen boy in the 90s. He's gonna like that gross-out humor.

9 - Total Recall movie poster

This movie is about an average joe who discovers he's actually someone Very Important. Wade has always thought of himself as a nobody. Deep down he wants to be someone Very Important. At least someone competent who isn't brushed off as a joke.

10 - TMNT bedsheets (and he was wearing a TMNT shirt under his robe before he's dragged down the street)

Obviously he's a man of good taste. But again, a group of teens fighting bad guys. The man just wants to be a hero so badly.

Based purely on the way he acts as an adult (and I'm trying to look past the "oh boy isn't he dumb!" pathetic characterization the movies have so far given him) I see Wade as a lonely man. He's likely never had many friends, always feels like the odd man in every situation, and just isn't very comfortable in his own skin.

In the trailer scenes where Knuckles decides to train Wade, there are posters and notes tacked all over the room with encouraging messages to himself regarding working out. Maybe he's trying to change his image because he thinks that will make others like him more. Maybe he's just trying to get a date. Maybe he's wrestling with his own self-worth.

Whatever is going on with Wade, I think pairing him with Knuckles is a good way to have them both realize things about themselves they'd never known before. Wade will help Knux realize that it's okay to let his guard down and enjoy himself, and Knuckles can help show Wade that there's more to him than anyone (including himself) thinks.

Maybe I'm waaaaay off base with these. Maybe I'm thinking way too hard about it. Wouldn't be the first time. But I love Wade and I really want to understand him, and hope to see him grow and become more confident by the end of the series.

[greenyvertekins]

Silver in IDW was written around a complete misunderstanding of his backstory where Ian thought that Silver was the lonely and isolated last person on Earth. Silver’s actual backstory is that he fought against Iblis for half his life to try and restore peace to his devastated future. The point of fighting Iblis was to save the people of the future who Silver did interact with since he mentions asking people about how the world was destroyed but nobody could tell him how.

Since this was pointed out to him late last year Ian has switched from Silver being a touch starved isolated extrovert that doesn’t understand social cues to being “apprehensive about meeting new people because he’s used to seeing them die” but Silver was still written around a total misunderstanding of his backstory for over five years. The idea that Silver came from a world with no people is even why he’s written the way he is in the English version of Team Sonic Racing.

The thing is though, Silver doesn't always come from a devastated future. In Colours DS, he says himself that his future is a happy one. Plus, Flynn's rationale still doesn't slide in regards to a Silver who originates from a bad future as he was perfectly pally and cordial with Amy in '06 before she found out that his target was Sonic.

[thebibliosphere]

Which of the Trio would do best numbers on Twitter

Which universe? Canon or the Sugar Vladdy-verse?

Either way, I feel like they’d all do numbers for different reasons.

Canon Nathan would rarely ever retweet anyone but go viral every couple of months, posting wolf conservation videos with the kind of footage you could only get by getting your significant others to strap a go-pro onto your back because there are some things you need opposable thumbs for.

Canon Vlad would be addicted to Twitter. He’s on there constantly making multi-part threads about politics, social issues and the fact that he’s been alive for four hundred years and they’re still dealing with this shit.

Canon Ursula goes viral for being the top comment underneath all of them, noting that she’s been alive for [redacted] number of years and that, yes, they are indeed still dealing with this shit.

Everyone knows they’ve been together for hundreds of years and every time they interact, the notes are a mess of “omg throuple goals 🥰” or people assuming their relationship is secretly toxic/staged for notes.

Sugar Vladdy-verse: Ursula is the one who uses Twitter the most and occasionally does numbers for her thirst traps but also pointed social commentary. The latter usually results in people going “wait, aren’t you the tits/ass girl?” to which she replies “a bitch can be both.”

Sugar Vladdy Nathan endeavors to never go viral and mostly retweets things.

Sugar Vladdy Vlad resents that he has to have a public profile on Twitter for work and only ever uses it to promote hiring opportunities with the salary posted and to remind people that they have the right to form unions. HR begs him to stop. He will not.

He goes viral exactly once for telling Jeff Bezos he hopes he jettisons himself into the sun on his next space flight ater Bezos made some comment about wanting to acquire/merger with VampTech. Elon Musk tries to pally up fo him in the comments and Vlad tells him in no uncertain terms to go fuck himself.

The PR department is on the phone within seconds. Vlad turns his phone off. He said what he said.

[fedorahead]

PALWORLD CRUELTY-FREE CHALLENGE

BASICS

No hurting pals

No using pals to hurt other pals

The only pal byproducts that can be used are ones abandoned by their pal (wool on the ground, etc) or the result of wild pal interactions (they fight each other, scavenge what's left)

ALLYING WITH PALS

As pals can be caught in palspheres, but can also resist palspheres, throwing a pal sphere at a pal that is both unharmed by status effects and fully aware of the sphere coming at them can be considered seeking consent. If an unharmed, status-free pal chooses not to resist the sphere, they are consenting to become a PALLY

Eggs can be incubated

PALLIES can be employed so long as they have full access to beds, food, and some form of breakroom and are free to slack off if they so choose

TRADE

No selling pals to the shifty man in the market

Pal products cannot be purchased, as products from the wandering merchant cannot be considered fair trade or ethically sourced; schematics and plants, etc are fine

HUMANS

Humans on the palpagos islands cannot become ALLIES, but may be caught, killed, used for labour, etc. They are not free of sin.

[jigschosai]

Rock and Hard Place

I know the title reads like a fanfic thing - but this is actually a question from Jigs' mun. Sorry if I threw any of you for a loop.

Background:

I joined FFXIV because I got a bug about wanting to tank stuff where tanking mattered. FFXIV was great because it was required for a lot of content, and seemingly the tank classes can do fine on their own for open world stuff. We just take our time with things.

I expected to be mostly on my own with the game but as a big surprise some friends I met through other games decided to follow me in. To support everyone, I started a little FC for us, we ended up getting a house, and spend an hour or two most weekends running some roulettes. I'm the only one where FFXIV is a main game/interest. There's seemingly no interest in the group moving on to another game, but at the same time, no one else is looking to play any more than they do already.

The Point:

I'm craving some more social interaction in the game as the bulk of it outside of the FC hour long weekend runs tends to be the random conversation that pops up when Praetorium is my MSQ roulette.

I know statics and linkshells are things that are kind of outside an FC - but really have no idea how or where to advertise myself for that kind of stuff.

The other option I'm seeing is to start a new toon, drag their pally butt through 400+ hours of content, and pick up an FC for them along the way. The bright side with that option is the lull in content before Dawntrail will give me something to do, and I can also do a tail-less toon so I can wear some of the stuff with full capes without cringing. But 400+ hours feels very intimidating at the moment.

I know this is pretty cringe - but I'm trying to find out if there are options I haven't thought about; or find out what others have done, or would do if they were in my position. I appreciate your understanding.

Jigs Chosai 90 PLD Ultros [Primal]

[mariaofdoranelle]

Just passing to ask if everything is alright, it's been a while since you're not posting. If it is too personal just ignore this. 😕 Sending love🫂💕

Hey! I’m sorry I disappeared. This is so sweet of you to ask. I’ve been getting a few similar messages, I hope I didn’t leave anyone worried ❤️

I haven’t been feeling in touch with my hobbies lately, and socializing (doing most daily activities really) has been kind of a hard task. Which I’m used to!! I’m prone to having depressive episodes, so by now I already know the drill.

I’m just labeling it as my ✨hibernation era✨ and letting myself be, since I’m sleeping most of the time. Grandpa’s doctor told my family recently that his cancer treatment isn’t going as we hoped, so today Mom and I met the hospital’s palliative care team for the first time to sign his DNR. Everyone was really nice to us, but it still sucks.

After that, we had lunch. I cried. Then she cried too with me. Then I skipped class and napped for 4 hours straight because why not.

There’s so many papers to sign and the family’s lawyer wants to discuss Grandpa’s taxes and his conservatorship and the Air Force’s social worker wants to discuss funeral assistance and I’m so overwhelmed because I just want to spend Grandpa’s last months in peace but I never thought something as natural as death could be so bureaucratic

Anyway. Sorry for the rant. I do tend to do that a lot 😂. I’ll get back to my wips as soon as I can because I miss writing and interacting here, even if I can’t bring myself to do it right now ❤️❤️

[anattempttostudyharder-blog]

23/5/23 (Day 31)

Studied obg

Solved obg and palliative care questions

Wrote urology notes

Did a push workout

//Studied 7 hours today. The fear of not doing enough is really starting to creep in. Hopefully will subside soon.//

I clicked this by mistake and now I can't remove it because Tumblr mobile 🙄

[greyfics]

title: a first for sincerity.

- °•. ✦ .•° -

characters: the ghoul (cooper howard) + lucy maclean

fic type: enemies turned friends, optimist/cynic friends, fluffy, fair bit of dialogue, bit of angsty reflection 

word count: 1.4K

inspo: just my brain wanting to see how coops and lucy lu would interact on more positive terms, but still being very hilariously different characters, also a meme I saw about lucy recognising cooper howard on tv.

cw: first season of fallout spoilers

summary: on their way to an all too well known city in the distance, pursuing lucy's father, the duo take rest for the night, and have their first proper conversation on more friendly terms- though their differences soon show through. 

- °•. ✦ .•° -

A fire is ignited, comfortably tucked a fair few metres inside the mouth of what ten minutes ago had been a nest of radscorpions- and now, was a cosy little den for the two travellers, with a neat supply of crispy, bulging tails to keep their stomachs sated. Two heavy travel packs fell onto the sharp, black assortment of stones lining the floor of the cave- much comfier cushions to rest on after day after day of ceaseless striding. She adjusted the bag and carefully plopped herself down, hands falling askew in her lap with a carelessness she lacked but a few weeks ago. He wouldn't have even stopped in the first place, had he not adapted to the needs of his human travel companion.

Yet as his focus drifted away into the sting of light before them, long adjusted to quiet, wordless nights, she found herself unable to maintain the same still reserve; it started with a leg thumping. He did not move. Then with an innocuous whistling of some patriotic dweller song- he lifted his eyes for a moment, but they soon fell back to their starting position.

Clearing her throat, Lucy decided after a whole five minutes that this silent inaction was too unbearable to continue one moment longer, and finally words burst from her mouth, "So! Las Vegas. Seems like your kind of town." He groaned, scoffed, and waved away her attempt at communication, saying "Just 'cos we're going in the same direction don't mean you gotta try and get all pally with me, sweetie. Sweet jesus...- you vault dwellers are so polite- it's insufferable, you know that?" the words were sharp, but the tone was playful. He had to admit, however much it drove him up the wall at times, the bright-eyed sparky pip in the vault-dweller's step was amusing at the very least, and endearingly hopeful at a push. With a stiff lip and one hand planted against her hip, the girl tried to shrug off the comment with her own retort, "Fine, have it your way. I was just trying to get to know you, since we're going to be together for a while."

"Alright, alright- if it'll stop your lecturing for five fuckin' minutes- what exactly do you wanna know?"

She found herself stumped at this rejoinder- shamefully, she realised that her initial attempt at conversation was a selfish and insincere attempt to broach a silence in the name of social norms- social norms for a vault full of useless sheltered pacifists. She'd learned to try her hardest to find a balance between that vaulted delusion, and the cynical realities of the world above. Taking a minute to actually think back on their ... mixed past interactions, she thought of his recoiling at the site of the vault-tec's icon, the vault boy. He wasn't one to waste his bullets, she knew that for sure. So, losing the chipper persona, her pitch lowered slightly and her stature relaxed, as she once again asked him a question- with sincere intrigue, this time: "How'd your whole vendetta with Vault-Tec start? I mean, clearly you're no Cooper Howard fan." This comment received an abrupt raucous round of laughter from the gunslinger, that she did not quite understand, "Honey, you can't begin to understand how right you are there. As for Vault-tec... well, I'd rather not talk about it."

She made a quick cry of protest, before flinging a radscorpion tail at him in frustration- he wove to the side in time for it to skip across the ground and exit the cave behind, smoothly returning to his former hunched-up position on his travel pack. Before he could begin to argue, she piped up to cut him off, "You just said you'd answer my questions." He barked back, louder, "Well you just opened a can of worms I don't wanna contend with while I'm tryna catch a little break and forget everything for a while. How about we start talkin' bout what you're gonna do when we catch up to your daddy?"

She was the one to remain silent, then. Flashes of a decaying woman reaching out so tenderly to the daughter she hardly got to know, because of Vault-Tec. Bloodied knights in bone-crushing steel-plated power armours, raiders, hunters, her own father- hundreds of people slitting each others throats and putting holes through each other, for the sake of a tiny blue chip with the potential to bring an end to the false necessity for war- she felt as if the man that raised her was but the dying shadow in the horrifying light revealing the man who wrought the destruction of what could've been a peaceful life for her- and stapled open her eyes to the truths of the world without sticking around to help her live in it. Her eyes were brimmed with glitter, glass- but she could not let herself cry right now. She wasn't in the mood for taunting.

Though he tried to fight it, that alien, long-forgotten gnawing of guilt began to creep into his chest- she didn't know. She hardly knew anything at all. Yet, even when he left her to be torn asunder for her parts in exchange for a little bit more time in his 200+ year lifespan, she refused to back down to his level- she chose redemption over retribution. She had been the first person he'd met in these wastelands to bother giving anyone else a second chance- and it was stupid, and it was naive-

but damn it, wasn't it a change?- and, how rare was that in this god-forsaken place?

Now he was the one to awkwardly shuffle his weight from one leg to the other, and after ten minutes of silent preparation and thirty seconds of an inaudible string of curses under his breath, he finally initiated a conversation himself, "I didn't used to be a big, bad meanie you know. I was just a man with a family, before the nukes dropped. Hell, I didn't just buy into the vault-tec gimmick- I lost jobs promoting those fuckers as their front man-" He left, at that moment, a dramatic pause to bask in the slow realisation that dawned upon her as to his identity, "Yep. Not that my career was my biggest worry when the bombs dropped." She doesn't even know where to begin in questioning him with that small snippet of insight- but once again, her mind comes back to his disdain of the vault-tec organisation- and how paradoxical it seemed to her for cooper howard himself from the commercials to have turned against the company she had assumed he worked for, "Not to circle back to the can of worms I opened earlier but- what changed your mind about the vaults?"

A phantom heartache burned into the ghoul's chest at that moment, as that venomous conversation played once more on a loop in his mind ( "a nuclear event would be a tragedy… but also, an opportunity." )-

-it took him longer than he would have liked to be able to compose himself, and go back to playing the loveable rogue, "They wouldn't let me bring my dog into the vault." ("perhaps the greatest opportunity in history.")

Her heart just about burst, unable to contain the unexpected gem of redeemability she had dug out from her former adversary ("because when we are the only ones left, there will be no one to fight.")-

"Awww, you do have a heart under all that... you !-" ("this is our chance to make war obsolete.")-

"-It might not be beating, but now I know it exists at least!" ("because in our current societal configuration, ... we have friction.") He chuckled half-heartedly at the vault dweller's attempt at a witty barb, but his mind had already flown elsewhere as their conversation continued, autonomous hums of interest stepping in to account for his attention disappearing.

 ("We have conflict and we have war.") After a few minutes of rambling, she realised that the conversation had ended a while ago- the genuine sliver of human empathy they shared once again shying away. This time, she found herself content with the silence. She realised, in fact, that she was losing precious time thinking about her future predicament with words that had lost their purpose- She thought she could understand the wastelander's silence ("and war, well... war never changes.").

She couldn't begin to- not quite. Not yet.

Perhaps soon.

[mizufae]

This is Korben from this morning at the internist specialist. It was just a consultation today. Tomorrow, however, they are doing all SORTS of invasive things. He is gonna get a full endoscopy and colonoscopy, a liver biopsy, samples taken from his gallbladder and bile duct, and he’s gonna have a feeding tube put in!!! Our beautiful handsome boy is going to get all kinds of terrible bandages.

What’s wrong with him, you may ask? Well, after throwing up every day for over a week a couple weeks back, we did urgent care vet and then multiple ultrasounds and rounds of blood work, all showing an increase in his billirubin and inflammation of his pancreas, gallbladder, and liver. He stopped throwing up but then got a respiratory infection and was sneezing boogers for a week. Coupled with all of this he had lost over a pound in the past three months and had already been underweight. And then he stopped eating. He has only eaten tiny amounts in the past two weeks and is continuing to lose even more weight.

So, what could be going on? That’s what all the procedures are for tomorrow! They are going to take all the samples from his various bits and culture them so we know the exact kind of medicine to give him. And meanwhile, we will do steroids to help the inflammation, and be able to get food into his stomach and put all his medications in him through his feeding tube, instead of forcing pills and goop down his throat and traumatizing him multiple times a day. It could just be a worsening of his preexisting IBD. It could be an obstruction in his common bile duct or small intestine or gallbladder. It could be small cell lymphoma! All of these are treatable, though IBD is progressive and lymphoma would mean different kinds of cancer treatment and palliative care.

This is all costing an arm and a leg, but Korben has a very rich grandmother who would be downright offended if she didn’t pay for it, thank goodness. The less expensive diagnostic option was just more fuck around wait and see ultrasound bloodwork bullshit which would lead to months and months of trial and error. There are of course risks to all of this, but Korben has been under anesthesia before and done just fine, and other than his complete unwillingness to eat and his elevated liver values, his blood work looks good, his energy and personality is still there, he completely got over his runny nose, and he hasn’t thrown up except for once a week ago which was before we stopped the antibiotics that obviously upset him so much he stopped eating or drinking and all he would do is drool and try to spit them out. Sigh. Poor guy. Fingers crossed though, because although we have now interacted with four separate very competent vets and numerous techs, nobody has ever given us an indication that Korben is unlikely to recover.

Other good things: I’ve now learned how to give IV fluids and injections! It really is super simple, as long as your cat is mellow like Korben and you have a second person to be another pair of hands. The needles are like the least troubling part. I love the immediate relief and comfort Korben exhibits when he gets fluids. I know myself how it feels to be terribly dehydrated and in pain and then get an IV, so it’s a great feeling being able to do that for my cat. Yesterday I gave him his third vitamin b12 injection (he is getting them weekly for now), and he didn’t care for it one bit but it was fine. So now, I’m confident that if anyone else I care for needs injection meds, I can give it to them! I am honestly shocked I’ve never helped a trans friend with their hrt or anything before this, but now if it ever comes up can be like “let me help! Just act like a cat!”

So. I am currently in the “ignore it until shit happens” phase where I’m trying to just project calming normal energy at Korben, who is currently sleeping in a sunbeam by an open window. Tomorrow morning he is going to be going through it, so keep him in your hearts and all that. And then afterwards will be the notable experience of gooshing puréed food in through a tube in his neck! Eeeek! Then it will be some time to get the cultures done, and then it will probably be over a month of antibiotics and other supportive meds. Egad! Fingers and toes and eyes all crossed.

Thanks @penaltykeks and a few other people who have checked in and asked how me and Korben are doing. I’ve just been sort of trying my best to engage with pleasant things online and not write out my worries because I’ve learned it doubles down on my rumination. BIG UPS to Zoloft, which REALLY FUCKING WORKS for me, I would basically be a pile of quivering useless bones and fat without it. As it is I am a quivering pile of bones and fat that can give IV fluids to my cat and call my mom and do the dishes. 😽🤞

[half-mad-wanderer]

Grief

Grief is weird...it can differ in a lot of ways for people, many having unique reactions to it. Some immediately, some delayed, some bypass it.

Mine's always been delayed. Whenever a beloved pet dies, In highschool when a friend died, in college when a roommate died, 4 years ago when both uncle's died within a day of eachother, and now my grandfather.

A week some ago I learned he had cancer in multiple organs that's terminal. The following Friday he was in hospital, Saturday I visited him in palliative care (and knew it would be soon), Sunday to a hospice, and Monday he passed. It didn't seem real, even after seeing him like that.

Two days later and now I've woken up numb, feeling like I'm observing the world through someone else's eyes as a passenger.

Gone.

No more interactions, no more wry grins, no more anything involving him.

The best thing out of it is that he didn't fear the end. He welcomed the Reaper. He ran a good 94 years despite his faults. Now he knows peace.