#the pandemic really fucked up how I think about getting sick

[hnitsua]

I HATE when my brain goes “you have this deadly disease, research everything about it now” when I’m feeling mildly sick

[autismserenity]

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

[heliza24]

I want to talk a little bit about Daniel in the Interview with the Vampire show, because the new trailer material has me stuck thinking about him, and also I’ve never written about how meaningful he is as disabled character to me before.

I don’t see many people thinking about show!Daniel in these terms, but he’s a canon disabled character. And I think the way he is written is just SO good. The acerbic wit, his relationship to doctors and his medication, his rueful acceptance of the way his disability has changed him. It is all so correct!! It’s really incredibly rare to have not only a disabled character written this well but specifically a chronically ill character written this well. His illness is always present; it doesn’t get forgotten about by the story. It gives Daniel insight into the vampires (more on this in a min), but it also gives Louis and Armand leverage over him. When Louis triggers his Parkinson’s symptoms? Deeply not ok. But that’s what made it such a great scene, and really made Louis feel dangerous and threateningin that moment. Armand and Louis arranging Daniel’s meds is a sign of great care and also great power over Daniel. It’s the perfect way to communicate the complicated power dynamic in their relationship.

I also just fucking love that this show takes place in 2022 and doesn’t erase the pandemic. Covid is a very present concern for Daniel and I cannot describe how validating that is for me as someone who is clinically vulnerable to Covid and who has had to really limit my life and take a lot of precautions because everyone else has decided to stop caring whether they pass on Covid or not. The fact that Daniel gets on a plane to Dubai is a BIG DEAL. He’s risking his life to talk to Louis and Armand before he’s even in the room with them. He really wants to be there. I have to make a similar calculation every time I travel, and trust me, getting on that plane knowing getting sick could spiral you into even worse health or kill you is really hard.

I think making Daniel disabled and including the pandemic is kind of a genius level decision on a thematic level. Of course Daniel is now facing down his mortality, which gives him a whole new lens on the vampires and the fact that he once asked them to turn him. And the pandemic further highlights his fragility, and is also possibly being used as a cover for drama that’s happening in the vampire world. But I think it also really sets Daniel up as a foil to Louis.

There’s a lot of analysis of the vampire chronicles that reads vampirism as a metaphor for queerness. But I would actually propose that it’s a much neater parallel for disability and illness in a lot of ways. So many of Louis’s initial experiences after being turned resonated with me, as someone who became chronically ill in my 20s. My appetite and relationship to food completely changed, much like Louis. My relationship with the outdoors and the sun changed, because of dysautonomia and allergy reasons. I was very mad, and very depressed, and I too have missed out on birthday parties and big life events like Louis did because I was too sick to go. Hell, you can even say that the way that Louis is treated as evil by his family, that the way vampires literally can’t be a part of society during the day, is reminiscent of ableist exclusion and ugly laws. (Ugly laws were laws that forbid disabled people, especially those with visible differences, from being out in public, and they were on the books in many American municipalities until the 1970s.) You can look at Lestat being an out and proud vampire in the first few episodes on the season and imploring Louis to leave his shame behind as a queer thing, but you can also view it as a disabled thing. Disabled people are portrayed as monstrous so often (and in a way that has gone relatively unexamined compared to say, the queer coded villain trope) that sometimes it’s just easier to embrace that label: I’m the monstrous Crip, but at least I’m not ashamed of or disgusted by who I am anymore.

I do think the real strength of this adaptation is that while you can find parallels between queerness or disability or other forms of marginalization with vampirism, ultimately it’s not a one-to-one parallel. It speaks to the real world but ultimately it is a gothic horror story about supernatural monsters. So I don’t mean to say that vampirism directly equals disability, because it does not. But I do think that making Daniel disabled was an intentional choice to help draw out some of those parallels, and I think the text is richer for it.

So Louis and Daniel have had these kind of parallel experiences of uncontrollable and difficult things happening to their bodies. It sets them up perfectly as foils, and even, I would argue, as the A plot and B Plot protagonists. This is one of my favorite ways of kind of examining the structure of a TV show (or maybe it’s that most of my favorite shows seem to be structured this way?). When TV was all episodic, it would be common to refer to the A plot (mystery of the week), B plot (interpersonal drama happening as the mystery gets solved) and C plot (any overarching plot tying the season together) in an episode. Now that stuff is serialized, there’s often a main protagonist, who has the main dramatic question and the most agency, and then there is often a secondary B plot that explores similar themes and mirrors the A plot, or presents a second main character who is the ldifferent side of the same coin” to the main protagonist. (My favorite example of this is Flint and Max in Black Sails, and I’ve also made the argument that Wilhelm and Sara fit this pattern in Young Royals.) In IwtV, Louis is obviously the main protagonist of the show, especially in the A Plot, which is the stuff taking place in New Orleans/Paris. But I would argue that Daniel is the protagonist of the B Plot set in Dubai. At the very least they’re intentionally set up as mirrors of each other:

They are both unreliable narrators, who are struggling with the way memory contorts (through memory erasure, illness, deliberate obfuscations, and just the passage of time). The most recent teaser trailer, where we hear Louis saying “I don’t remember that”, with panic in his voice, further underlined this similarity between Louis and Daniel to me. I don’t know if it means that Louis has also had his memory tampered with, as I’m assuming Daniel has, but I do think it means that Louis is going to be struggling with feeling out of control of his own narrative more in season 2, a thing that was already starting for Daniel in season 1.

They are also both locked into power struggles with people more powerful than they are. The fact that Louis is under Lestat in the flashbacks and above Daniel in the Dubai scenes in terms of power/status makes it all the more interesting. And, if we want to go ahead and assume that the Devils Minion’s years have happened in the past by the time we get to Dubai— it’s possible that both Daniel and Louis are united in being the less powerful partner in their own respective fucked up gothic romances.

They’re also both the audience’s entry point into their respective stories. Louis’s narration guides us into the world of vampires. Daniel’s questioning satisfies our human curiosity in Dubai.

I think one of the things that makes the show so special is the way that these two protagonists interact. In a lot of shows the a plot and the b plot stay pretty separate. I love talking about Black Sails for this because I think it’s such a good example; Flint and Max never exchange dialogue the entire show, even though they’re so clearly affecting each other the whole time. But the way that Louis and Daniel clash in Dubai is so exciting. We see them both wrestling for control of the narrative. It’s thrilling to watch and it just hammers home the theme of how complicated and changeable stories can be.

I am SO excited to see how the Dubai scenes play out in season 2 because of it. I really can’t wait. I’m really hoping we’ll see Daniel and Louis’s relationship evolve in surprising ways, and I’m holding my breath that we’ll get a lot of Armandaniel material to work with. (I have a whole other post drafted that’s much less smart than this one and is just me waxing poetic about Devil Minion’s theories which I may post at some point. You have been warned.)

I do have two wishes for Daniel in the new season, and they’re 1: that he gets to have romance/sex, because disabled (and older!) characters are so often seen as unworthy of being desired, and I would like to see that challenged and 2: that he continues to refuse to be turned/is not offered a vampiric cure for Parkinson’s. The magic cure for a disability or chronic illness is probably my least favorite disability trope, because it serves to erase disabled characters and representation from the narrative, and I want to see my experiences continue to be reflected in Daniel’s. That means that whatever ending Daniel’s story has will probably have at least a bit of tragedy baked into it, but I’m ok with that.

[ideas-4-stories]

Cross Guild romance AU -

Buggy makes his own explosives, which doesn't sound all that important until you sit back and think of the ramifications and knowledge required for that. Buggy is damn good with chemistry, math, physics, and I bet he was the brain to Shanks's brawn on the Oro Jackson; he'd probably have been all over Crocus whenever he could to learn more about anything and everything.

Crocodile and Mihaw don't really put the two together, given that they see Buggy primarily as an idiot and coward. It's when an epidemic spreads on the island that some odd things click into place-

Buggy has forgone the big costume, is in comfy and sturdy clothes. His face is painted minimally, hair tied into a tight bun, bandana on, and he's working side by side with the medical professionals. He's elbows deep in checking vitals, organizing charts, and even synthesizing medications. More members are sick than not, and they go under a near-quarantine lock down to handle the illness. Between working in the medical tents and taking care of his people, Buggy has also had a hand in organizing for resources to be sent and delivered.

Neither Croc nor Hawk had even considered some of the balls Buggy has gotten rolling. They both have very strong immune systems, so they rarely face or think of illness or sickness as something to prepare for or to account for, but this just exploded one day seemingly without warning, and the clown had a plan in motion by eevening.

It's at this point that they begin to wonder if maybe there's something more to their Chairman than they first thought...

((Bonus points, they catch Buggy coming back from a long shift at the medtent, sent off by the other's to get some rest, so he's just at that sweet spot of tired enough to lose filter. They ask about the medicines, and Buggy goes on a mini infodump about chemicals, hormones, enzymes, antioxidants and antibiotics, mentions that he and a few others already have a few batches baking, and sleepily chuckles about how "the simpler ones seem to work well so far, thank goodness. I was worried... *yawn* that I'd have to dip into my supplies for my testosterone... *falls asleep at the table*.

Croc just becomes the Spiderman meme of "TRANS???" when Buggy wakes up))

I LOVE this is an understatement, this is so good!!! I love Competent!Buggy so much!!! Why can't the clown be a fucking genius while being clown-failure babygirl he is?

Buggy having a plan by evening is because he has so much anxiety, I mean, look at the poor clown! It's always the things that he didn't think of that happens that gets him in trouble. But this, he can do this. I also love the headcanon, that Buggy learn a lot of things from Crocus, so he has this in the bag!

It would be funny if Buggy could be fine in a really bad pandemics, but the flu and whatever the happened near Laugh-Tale is his biggest sickness problems. What am I saying, back to this cool ask!

Buggy being competent because he doesn't want his crew to die or get really ill, not because he needs them to work, but because he wants them healthy and happy. Buggy forgoing the pillow onesie for something better, and not taking that much time on his makeup is so good, that just shows how he priorities his Nakama before himself is so cute! I have a headcanon that Buggy has a least a Field Medic degree or a Nurse one. Mihawk and Crocodile watching at the sidelines is what I see them doing, because like the clown's being competent and they see there's not much they can do in this.

Yes, on Buggy rambling on and on about things he does, I want Buggy to infodump so hard. Like really really hard, Buggy could go on and on about things that interests him for a while.

Buggy is every gender and nothing at all to me, and the spiderman meme with Crocodile is the only one pointing at Buggy while Buggy is confused and sleepy, while Mihawk is just there on the sidelines. Is really funny to me.

[bonefall]

Since the ask box commands to vote Bumble in that tourament (which I did, cuz she was SCREWED over to the extreme) could you talk a whole lot about BB!Bumble's dyspraxia? Since we are talking about the *everything in canon* she got for the High Crime of being a fat foreigner woman and abuse victm in warrior cats, let's talk about the universe where we add disabled to her list of High Crimes but she isnt done dirty as balls(sorry if all this is worded weird)

Plus, I'm personally having issues writing a dyspraxic character (mostly because i kinda suck at absorbing information about things like disability when not using characters as exemples) and you've really helped me in the past with making characters with BPD, so it would be personally useful in character making

(Sorry if I'm rude, I deeply respect your work and it greatly inspires me, especially Clanmew)

All righty! BB!Bumble's dyspraxia!

First off, for newcomers;

WHY I ADDED DYSPRAXIA TO BUMBLE

In canon, Bumble is called a fat, useless kittypet, before being dragged back to her domestic abuser. She then dies while trying to survive on her own, starved to the point of emaciation before Clear Sky murders her.

A very common fandom response to this is essentially, "shes NOT useless! She could hunt/fight if you taught her!" And a lot of AUs will have her survive, learning how to be Truly Useful with all the same skills as everyone else.

I won't lie; I think that's very disappointing.

You're not refuting the rotten heart of this ideology, you're just doing what DOTC already does with Jagged Peak. You're AGREEING. You're saying she WOULD be useless if she couldn't hunt or fight like a wild cat, giving her Coolgirl Badass moments to haha embarass her bigots, and Actually the only problem here is that they didn't give her a chance.

What if they GAVE her that chance, and she COULDN'T hunt or fight like them? Would it be okay to send the battered housewife back to her domestic abuser? Hopefully fucking not!

Let's be frank; None of the groups in DOTC are starving. Not even after the prey sickness pandemic.

"Starvation Rhetoric" is an excuse, only ever rolled out by monsters like Clear Sky as justification for stealing land, murder, and throwing out cats the groups deem unworthy of life.

Yet, this gets rolled out for Bumble specifically, by the MOOR CATS, who are supposed to be opposing his ideology.

And that's where I'm starting from.

Okay. What if she couldn't perform physically like other cats?

What if she was part of a group that DID have real concerns about not having enough food?

How does Bumble herself cope with her feelings, and her desire to help her friends and contribute to a group that loves her?

Let's go through all that, and attack the heart of the idea. In fact, we're going to be doing a lot of it, with a significant portion of early ThunderClan being disabled cats.

(Thunder Storm has three legs. Bright Storm has asthma. Sunlit Frost loses the use of both front paws and ends up with chronic pain.)

Bumble's Dyspraxia

The first thing to know about dyspraxia (or DCD, Developmental Coordination Disorder) is that it comes in a LOT of different forms. The next thing to know is that it's RIDICULOUSLY common. Some estimates say 5% of the population has it-- 1 in 20 people.

It's heavily associated with autism and ADHD. The "classic" symptoms are general clumsiness and motor control issues, like having a hard time tying shoes. But these are also symptoms of dyspraxia;

Short-term memory issues, but not long-term

Being constantly covered in bumps and bruises

Having a hard time telling lefts and rights

Difficulties holding pencils or writing in general

"Wobbliness" including tripping mid-step or tripping over your own feet

Issues in the acquisition of "muscle memories," being slow to acquire physical skills.

Stuttering and taking long pauses before responding to someone else speaking

Most dyspraxics won't have all of these, these are symptoms. Not a checklist.

My partner describes theirs as like "constantly working with cold hands through a layer of gloves." The stiffness of being in a freezer, paired with the general delay of having a cover over your skin.

Mine is more focused on the mental side, acquiring new skills is unnaturally difficult, my reaction time is delayed, and I stumble into things.

Every person with dyspraxia is different, but what links us is that we're uncoordinated. We can't help it, telling us to try harder or pay more attention doesn't work. We aren't being careless-- our brains don't send signals to our bodies properly.

I'm basing Bumble's off my own. Her mate, Turtle Heart, shows her over and over how to hunt. It never sticks. She tries to pick up battle moves from Thunder Storm to help defend herself from Clear Sky's goons. It doesn't work.

She's really trying, she really is. The Moor group quickly loses patience with her, and Bumble is well aware that she's only tolerated on Turtle Heart's vouch. Her worst fears come true when Tom steals their children, and her mate is killed trying to retreive them.

That messes with her, and makes her believe that she really is worthless and a burden.

ThunderClan was FOUNDED on Thunder Storm's fury, breaking off his supporters to retreive her from exile, and Bumble's struggle with self-worth begins in earnest.

There's one thing she's confident about, and really loves. Bumble is trilingual, outgoing, and confident in her ability to talk to others. That's what she can add, and what she wants to do.

ThunderClan is different. It works with every strength and weakness of its members, and values diplomacy to keep it afloat against the odds. Bumble really is needed, but eventually even her translation work becomes less special as more kits grow up bilingual. Eventually, this too feels taken from her.

And then it's back to square one. Her mate is gone, one of her kits betrayed her, Owl Eyes is a big strong man who doesn't need his mum anymore. She's left with her fumbling paws, taking more from the pile than she puts in.

One can only hope she realizes that ThunderClan was born out of love for her. That it was never about what she could add. She didn't have to confront it in the main story because so much was happening, but as peace settles over the forest, it's time for her to start to unpack that idea.

[kenny-the-ken]

Omg imagine a kenny or kyle fic of a pregnancy scare like theyve been together for ages and they both just got into university and they’re like shit oh fuck what are we gonna do

I have a toddler so this one hits close to home considering I ended up pregnant at 18, and at the beginning of the pandemic 🫢 ALL AGED UP CHARACTERS!!

Positive or Negative?

You were due your dreaded monthly a week ago, and the longer you'd been waiting for it to come, the more and more worried you became. You hadn't told Kenny, even though you both shared an apartment together, you were too scared to tell him, how would he react if he thought you were pregnant?! Would he stay with you or run for the hills? Not to mention, did YOU even want to be pregnant?! You just wanted this nightmare to end! But would it end how you wanted it to?

You couldn't believe you were saying this, but you were praying for your period to come, and Kenny had picked up on your strange mood and behaviour the past few days, and he thought it was something that he had done, and as he rose from your shared bed, the smell of pancakes wafting through your apartment, and the sound of the radio radiating from the kitchen. He decided that you had seemed off for long enough, and he needed to know why, and was he to blame.

"Hey baby." Kenny's voice was groggy, his arms wrapping themselves around your waist, his head resting on your shoulder as you stood over the cooker, flipping the four pancakes in the frying pan, a smile on your face, melting against his touch.

"Morning, babe, sleep well?" You asked, as Kenny pressed a gentle kiss on your cheek. And Kenny nodded, watching carefully what you were doing.

"Yeah I did, babe. Can I ask though... have I done anything to piss you off or... has something happened you haven't told me about, cause you've seemed off the past few days." Kenny asked, as you turned to look at him, shaking your head no.

"No no, Ken, it's nothing like that it's just... it's silly really, it doesn't matter." You spoke, shaking your head no as you turned back to serve the pancakes, placing two each on the plates sitting on the worktop, you had already sat out a collection of different toppings, and you hoped that Kenny would let the issue go, you really didn't want to talk about this right now.

It was early and both of you had class in a few hours, the first semester of university had only just started, Kenny was studying Physics with an interest in Quantum Physics and mechanics and you were studying Criminal Law with Forensic science. Both of you wanted to get ahead in life, give your children in the future what you both never had. You had both worked your asses off to get a scholarship, and you both got accepted at South Park University, on top of that, working all hours for minimum wage so you could both leave your shitty living conditions and finally have a good life, but if you were pregnant, then what?! You knew Kenny would be worried sick, he'd probably go back to drug dealing to keep you both ticking over and able to afford the rent, since you'd end up out of work for a while, and what about your degrees?!

"Babe, please. Talk to me! We promised no secrets, whatever it is we can get through this together, just please don't shut me out." Kenny pleaded, his eyes soft, almost teary looking, and you couldn't keep it in any longer. A long sign escapes you as you sat opposite him at the kitchen table, your head landing in your hands before rising to look at your boyfriend.

"I'm freaking out because I was supposed to have my period a week ago, and it still isn't here! I think I might be pregnant, Kenny." You spoke, voice quiet, tears in your eyes as you looked up at him, his mouth agape and eyes wide.

"Holy shit! Um... okay. Have you taken a pregnancy test?" Kenny asked, trying to approach the situation calmly.

"No, I'm too scared to!! I just... promise you won't leave me?" You spoke, head back in your hands, wiping the tears that fell from your eyes, and you felt a warm embrace, Kenny held you close, peppering kisses along your face, shushing you before he spoke, his tone soft.

"Babe, we'll get a test, if it's negative, then we're okay, and if it's positive then we'll discuss it further, but I swear to you, baby or no baby, I will always be with you, no matter what, okay?" He reassured you, gently moving a strand of your long h/c hair from your face, smiling at you, and you smiled back, wiping your eyes with the backs of your hands.

"Okay, Kenny. Thank you." You said, returning his hug and taking a deep breath of his scent, he smelt like aftershave, your perfume and weed, and you suddenly felt safe, your mind slightly more at ease.

"I bought a test the other day, I've just been too scared to take it." You spoke, and Kenny took your hand, making you stand from your chair, completely forgetting both of your breakfasts, as he led you to the bathroom.

"I'll come in with you, I'll be there every step of the way baby, okay?" Kenny was taking this far better than you expected him to, and you nodded, taking it from the pharmacy bag you had dumped there the other day, and staring blankly at the box, before opening it, taking the test from its plastic packaging and reading the instructions.

You sat, hovered above your hand that was underneath you, holding the test, as you sat on the toilet, and once you'd peed on the stick you put its cap back on and sat it on the sink, cleaning yourself up and then washing your hands.

"How long till we know?" Kenny questioned, looking more nervous than he was before, a small bead of sweat visible on his forehead.

"Three minutes." You replied, coming to hug your partner, needing some serious moral support in this moment.

Those three minutes felt like the longest three minutes of your life, and you swore time had came to a standstill. You lifted the test when your timer went off on your phone, your eyes closed, before cracking one open slightly to see the words Not Pregnant written on it, and you felt a huge wave of relief crash over you, as you handed it to Kenny, and both of you smiled at each other, Kenny also sighing, wiping his forehead.

"This calls for celebration sex!" Kenny exclaimed, picking you up bridal style as you laughed the whole way to the bedroom, both of your minds now at ease. Sure, you both loved each other, and you both wanted to have a family, but you wanted financial stability first, and to live your lives child free, at least for a few more years till your degrees were finished.

"Yeah, well pull out this time, before we end up in this mess again with a different outcome!" You replied, both of you laughing as Kenny plopped you on the bed, before landing beside you, pulling you down with him.

While happy that you weren't pregnant, you couldn't wait for when you would be, just knowing you both would create the most beautiful little baby ever, but that was for the future, right now in this moment, you were both happy just you two together.

[rpstartersinc]

* 𝐇𝐁𝐎'𝐒  𝐓𝐇𝐄  𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓  𝐎𝐅  𝐔𝐒  /  𝐄𝐏  𝟏  &  𝟐.

feel free to change pronouns / wording!

“ and that’s your biggest worry? ”  

“ i presume the prospect of a viral pandemic keeps you up at night as well? ”

“ you like saying no. ”  

“ billions of puppets with poisoned minds. ”  

“ i was gonna make you birthday pancakes. ”  

“ how old are you again? ”  

“ gonna have to wear diapers soon. ”  

“ you’re still alive, you old fucker. ”  

“ your t-shirt’s inside out. ”  

“ can’t tell you how exciting it was listening to that fucking conversation. ”

“ i was gettin’ worried. ”  

“ i was thinkin’ we’d make some cookies. ”  

“ i don’t know why i talk to her. ”  

“ you locked the door for once, good job. ”

“ you got me a present? ”  

“ i don’t hear anything. ”  

“ that was lame. ”  

“ i put the change back because i’m an honest thief. ”

“ it’s the thought that counts. ”  

“ don’t fall asleep. ”  

“ wasn’t my fault this time. ”  

“ help me. ”  

“ get in the truck! ”  

“ you killed her. ”  

“ we’re gonna be brave, and we’re gonna get outta this. ”

“ are we sick? ”  

“ there’s nowhere to fucking go! ”  

“ i got you. ”  

“ can you run? ”  

“ you keep your eyes on me. ”  

“ we’re gonna get you somewhere safe first. ”  

“ hey! no one told you to move. ”  

“ are you alone? ”  

“ how did you get this? ”  

“ it’s okay. you’re safe. ”  

“ well, the more you shoot people, the harder it is to sleep, i guess. ”

“ you want ‘em or not? ”  

“ fucking fireflies been blowing shit up all week. ”

“ it’s easy to make a mistake in the dark. ”  

“ i’m not asking you to say anything. ”  

“ how about we just let it go? ”  

“ you gonna keep me here? kill me? ”  

“ i give you my word that he won’t hurt you. ”  

“ i’d like to go home and drink ‘til my face stops hurting. ”

“ they’re shooting at us. ”  

“ i’m not a firefly! ”  

“ people are gonna come looking for me. ”  

“ let me out or you’re gonna pay, motherfuckers! ”  

“ i’m not supposed to be here! ”  

“ you can’t be serious. ”  

“ there are worse things than infected out there. ”

“ i got jumped by a couple guys. ”  

“ it’s a miracle you’re alive. ”  

“ it’s a miracle any of us are alive. ”  

“ i was in fedra lockup all day. ”  

“ i need you to take a breath. ”  

“ we’re gonna find out, quietly. understand? ”  

“ i would very much like for you to hurt him. ”  

“ our people are asking what’s going on, and i don’t know what to tell them. ”

“ rebellion takes time. ”  

“ is this real? ”  

“ keep it quiet. ”  

“ you tell me to ‘look for the light’ and i’ll break your jaw. ”

“ you’re not scared. ”  

“ why did you stop them? ”  

“ i won’t tell anyone about any of this, i swear. ”

“ you were safe there until you decided to sneak out. ”

“ why won’t you let me go home? ”  

“ i wasn’t expecting it. ”  

“ you can’t be stupid like this. ”  

“ obviously didn’t take ‘fuck off’ for an answer. ”

“ gimme my knife. ”  

“ it’s our business to know things. ”  

“ you’re the cause of it. ”  

“ we don’t smuggle people, sorry. ”  

“ i know what’s out there. ”  

“ what are they capable of? ”  

“ you trust her? ”  

“ your watch is broken. ”  

“ you mumble in your sleep. ”  

“ i’ve never been on the other side of the wall. ”

“ look how dark it is. ”  

“ but you know where to go, so we’re gonna be okay. ”

“ holy shit, i’m actually outside! ”  

“ you stay close, and you follow my lead. ”  

“ i’m not sick! ”  

“ i should fucking kill you! ”  

“ i apologise about your lunch. ”  

“ is this bite from a human? ”  

“ so they’re still out there... ”  

“ i have spent my life studying these things. ”  

“ i’m not infected. ”  

“ i think what really impressed them was the fact that i didn’t turn into a fucking monster. ”

“ there’s not gonna be anything bad in here? ”

“ better them than us. ”  

“ i’m gonna talk to you like you’re an adult. ”  

“ fuck you, man, i didn’t ask for this. ”  

“ can i have a gun? ”  

“ i’ll have to thrown a fucking sandwich at them. ”

“ they hit most of the big cities like this, they had to slow the spread somehow. ”

“ whatever, i snuck in. ”  

“ you got some balls on you, sister. ”  

“ people like to tell stories. ”  

“ have you heard of books? ”  

“ i don’t know how i was supposed to know that. ”

“ you’re a weird kid. ”  

“ you try climbing ten fucking floors with our knees, see how you feel. ”

“ where’d you learn to do that? ”  

“ no more questions about me. ”  

“ was it hard? like, knowing they were people once. ”

“ you step on a patch of cordyceps in one place, and you can wake a dozen infected from somewhere else. now they know where you are, now they come. ”

“ you’re not immune from being ripped apart. ”

“ from this point forward, we are silent. ”  

“ well, i didn’t shit my pants, so... ”  

“ how about you just take the good news? ”  

“ is it everything you hoped for? ”  

“ our luck had to run out sooner or later. ”  

“ i never ask you for anything. ”  

“ save who you can save. ”  

“ i’m not going with you! ”

[timetravellingkitty]

Going Anonymous for security reasons here. So, regarding Kashmir: I am sick and tired of how people on Tumblr (or rather Hindublr tags) really believe that Kashmir is healing when it is still the most armed state in the world. I am horrified of how these people glorifying Army personels, who are no more than paid abusers and rapists and this is coming from a person whose family legacy is that of 'serving in the Army' I am not Kashmiri (And I cannot say I have faced the same shit they faced and I commend their resilience and their spirit) but I've had the chance to visit the 'non tourist' spots and let me tell you, it is fucked up. Even from the perspective of a person who is very privileged in this situation. I've literally seen some of these 'brave sons of India' beat up a seven year old boy just because he was 'being a hindrance in the road' One of my dad's colleague just got a 'warning' even after being a convicted assaulter after he raped two Kashmiri women (And this was back in 2013) and I came to know about this through Twitter out of all things. I remember going through those small towns in Kashmir and it being fucking empty and everything being closed up because they were afraid of the people who were stationed to 'protect' them. I am so sorry for venting out on your inbox like this but I've seen some of these blogs defend the Militarisation in Kashmir and it is awful and inhumane of how these people could even defend that out of all things. And to burst their bubble of delusion, it has gotten worse after the bill was passed. So many Kashmiri Muslims are getting wrongfully evicted out of their homes to 'house' the Pandits (but doing nothing when they were living as refugees and in destitution in Jammu) and the internet ban during the pandemic and people think Kashmir is healing?

And most of all, I wanted to thank you for posting the masterlist about Kashmir. It is very informative and has helped me learn and unlearn a lot of Kashmiri history.

This isn't even the first time the Army has done something like this. The IPKF was responsible for the massacres and rapes of multiple Tamil civilians it's insane how dedicated we are to glorifying the Indian military

[the-final-sif]

Thank you for answering, do you think this will be a similar thing to covid? Now I don't have facts or sources other than one disabled advocate on social media but I heard something about one of covids less popularized effects being something about brain degeneration? Or something loosely connected to that. And because of how poorly covid was handled in the US it ended up affecting a lot of people including the children. Or maybe it was something about how the pandemic never truly ended over there and people stopped wearing their masks too soon. I can't remember, but if you know more of it or have any idea what I'm talking about, how comparable do you consider the two situations? Thanks in advance

So I haven't really seen anything about brain degradation, but there is current research into acute covid-19 infections disrupting the blood brain barrier.

It does appear to happen in severe cases, but it's specifically severe cases as far as all of the research I've seen. It's also not really unique to covid-19. To my knowledge, there's a lot of viruses that can trigger a similar response, like Influenza or West Nile. This is generally what causes the most severe forms of these diseases, the BBB gets disturbed, and this triggers inflammation in the brain which fucks with a lot of shit.

This topic is really complicated, and again, research is still ongoing. Part of the current issue with active neurological studies for COVID-19 is kinda similar to CTE research, you can only really tell how bad the neurological damage was after someone's died and you can yoink their brain out to have an in depth look. This means a almost all of the more indepth studies on COVID-19 in brain tissue are from people who are dead. Usually from COVID. So there's a strong bias towards the most severe cases.

That being said, I actually don't think this is particularly comparable to the severity of lead poisoning on people through the 1950s-1980s. Part of which is that children, while they did catch COVID-19, didn't usually get severely sick. They also didn't tend to catch COVID-19 as often in the first place. That's not to say neither happened ever, just that it's comparatively quite rare.

Meanwhile, effectively 100% of children had lead blood poisoning at a level of clinical significance for most of the 1950s-1980s.

Literally, I am not even kidding, this research is from 2015 but it's still extremely informative,

Like, their graphing of blood levels displays this really well,

I apologize, you may have to click on it to see, but this is graphing out our entire population in the US and led blood levels in early childhood (note, while people who are old enough to not have been born or been children in the 1950s would not have had CHILDHOOD lead poisoning, they still would've been at high risk for exposure to adult lead poisoning which can still fuck you up). S

For quick reference on blood lead poisoning btw, the CDC level used to be 10 μg/dL (light blue and above), but as since been lowed to 5 and then 3.5 μg/dL as a reference level. This is part of no amount of lead being safe, but above 10 μg/dL is bad. Above 20 μg/dL for children is "hey so we need to do a full medical exam of this child, do an environmental hazard investigation of your home and get a hazard team response specifically to help you get lead of your house". Meanwhile above 45 is "we may need to hospitalize this child".

That's the scale I'm talking about when I say everyone in the 1950s-1980s had childhood lead poisoning. It was everyone. COVID-19, while bad, isn't everyone. It isn't even close. BBB disruption, according to the research I could find, only occurs in some acute illness of infections that happen. This is still bad, but nowhere near the scale of lead poisoning.

[roxineedstosleep]

Idk if this is a request or something but I just wanted to get it out there before I forget it. How would the batfam react to a batsis coming from the last of us universe?( the last of us is a zombie apocalypse type game.) How would they react to all of batsis PTSD from being born in a world over ran by zombie’s and learning to survive at a young age. How would they help them? How would they react if they ever were transported to there(batsis) world?

Don't worry, the truth is that I also questioned several times the reaction of an OC insert or Reader with the passage of time, characters who lived that situation.

Also, sorry if it’s a quite large, but I get exited about this, I was also thinking and thingking about this kind of situtation or scenario and could mange myself about it.

The Last of Us, I know it's based on a video game (comic too or at least I saw several fanmade ones, sorry I don't know much about it, my thing about apocalypse was The Walking Death). And from what I understand, since I get a lot of it on my TikTok feed (thanks Pedro Pascal, I love you in all your ways) I know that the way the infected are handled and the ways of contagion are pretty fucked up.

I mean, at least in TWD the bites were the sure shit, with a good body protector you could get away with it until you got to a safe place…. but that spore stuff? that's a fucking nightmare.

Not only should you avoid being bitten, you should avoid being in contact with any highly contagious source. Food, water, air that's been "stored", spaces that are too enclosed/humid and dark (from what I see I know it's a type of fungus, fungi spread better in those conditions)… I mean, really scary.

I think the only ones who could be saved from those situations would be those who live in sanctuaries in the middle of nowhere (highly extreme climates, like snowy and deserts) or those who reach space. In that situation, which I mentioned a little earlier, the situation for Batsis would be a little worse.

Caves? First place of contagion, unfortunately.

Away from all the PTSD that Batsis must surely have from the traumatic situation of living there…. I don't think it can get much better.

Let's play a bit of a game about it, as I love the What Ifs.

Should it be Batsis from an Apocalyptic Universe coming to a "Healthy" Universe, and by healthy I can even mean post Covid0s universe like ours.

In going from a sick world to a healthy one:

She wouldn't really know how to adapt, it's one thing if the situation was with her being an adult and she at least knew that much about what it meant to have a routine within the normal. Sure, Bruce and the boys would do their best to make her feel safe in many ways, but it wouldn't be possible to make her feel safe at all. She grew up, matured, and developed in that world where every breath could mean having a fucking killer fungus inside her.

Did you ever see videos of people with OCD or germaphobia during the pandemic? Many had breakdowns at such a level that they could become paralysed with fear, breakdowns or hysteria. She would refuse to leave her safe areas, no matter how hard her father and siblings tried to convince her that the rest of the mansion was safe to walk through.

The garden? She refuses to even look at it, places where the spread of spores is more likely due to all the wind and pollination (I've never known bugs or birds to be immune, but considering they can move around because of the pollination issue I don't doubt that any place free of nature is free of risk or cross-contamination).

The cave? The last time one of her brothers tried to get her down to be checked in the medical wing, she almost slit his throat with her own fingernails. She won't go down there, that place is dark, with an uncovered water source and full of dampness… Can't you see that one of those swollen beaks is probably there?

I think she would have serious problems with food, or so I think. Not that she wants to be mean to her, really. But from what I understood a little from seeing at least the first chapters of the series, and also played with several seasons of TWD, she herself would have to see how they prepare the food to avoid contamination or fear of spoiled food. I feel like she would be safe with canned food, specifically canned food that is older than a month before it all goes down the drain. After that, she would obsessively look at the factory's provenance and be in an internal binger over the places that were dropped one by one until she was sure she was safe to eat.

So I don't see her eating with her brothers or her father something that is homemade or from scratch. Unfortunately not. Especially the flours, since they are the crops that were the first to fall before the fungi. I'm sure she would calm down a bit if Alfred showed her the family garden and the fungicides they keep in the barn. If it's not that, will she walk away or not hesitate to spit it out?

To sleep? I think so, I think she would settle, but she is hidden to avoid any risk. Next to Dick, she's the best at hiding in the high and least expected places. After she was found napping in her chandelier, where she had no nightmares or panic attacks, they decided they would let her sleep there. At least until she gets used to the idea that a return portal isn't going to be there anytime soon.

Her father and her brothers would be there for her, don't doubt it. They would love her, they would try to understand her limits, to know that she went through that terrible place to destroy the mind of a poor girl. I mean, Ella was very lucky to have reached an age of near adulthood... Do you know what that mean?

She is happy to have her brothers and her father and her grandfather back in her life. Every day she prays to all the gods she knows, to thank for not having to return to that place. But, even though she has the support of her family, the trauma cannot be reversed.

After those, which I do know are several problems to overcome, I truly believe that she would panic or become hypervigilant when there is a man, who is not from her family, near her... and for sad reasons.

In itself, for a world without the problems of the apocalypse, it is already dangerous to be a woman. Now that the whole world, morale and the little security we had has gone down the drain? I feel like it's even more dangerous. If I remember correctly there is a movie that touches on that subject. Of the possible life of women within a post-apocalyptic world. The SA would be the bread of every day, kidnappings and assaults for the possibility of being able to repopulate the earth would not be strangers. Even more so if we don't talk about ultra-religious cults that try to sell the idea of a woman's sacrifice to "heal" the masses.

Do you see what I'm going to? The fact that she survived childhood and was into young adulthood means that she had to be protected and she knew how to defend herself against all of that. And even more so because, despite everything, she could never fully forgive Bruce for what he did to her and her brothers.

Earlier I mentioned that only the most privileged could be inside those sanctuaries or even reach space to be safe from earth, right?, well. There goes a bit of the matter.

Bruce decided to stay.

For the general public, Bruce Wayne, his children and his closest friends went to one of the many earthly sanctuaries as soon as things turned terribly ugly, but not before sending all his employees safely to a compound of National security.

But Batman? Batman, Robin, and the rest of the bat family stayed to wear out their souls, their safety, and their lives for a city full of killer mushrooms.

She remembers how at first the whole family agreed to stay in the city to find a cure with the help of the League. But over time, when Alfred fell ill, Tim was infected, when Duke had to amputate his arm, Jason almost got infected and Dick was not found for months (not counting attempted assaults on S and others to kidnap her). things in the family got much worse.

Robin in case he was a child soldier, but at this point he looked more like a killing machine than a human being, she herself tried to find a cure and it was more risky and almost impossible over the time to find users who did not have advanced disease or who were immune.

She begged her father that at least the LG members with higher immunity would take care of the safety of the earth, that she and her siblings could be moved to the moon base. Superman, Wonder Women and Mr. Martian could easily handle the situation without going on a death streak every time they breathed, she and her brothers were not that lucky.

But Bruce didn't listen to her, no by any chance.

One by one they began to fall, all her family started to died, even her father amputated his leg after a bad mission plan, until, in an intent of being helpfull (she had simply fled across town looking for medicine for her father's fever), a porthole opened and she fell to that new world where his father and brothers were safe.

Did she ever forgive Bruce for that? No, even in that world where none of that happened, she couldn't forgive the fact that her mother decided to sacrifice himself and his siblings when they could have found another way to save themselves.

Bruce? He will never forgive himself when he finds out that it was his fault and his stubbornness that caused his family to perish. Even more so when he finds out that his daughter, with whom he fought the most and argued about escaping the planet to be save, in any case put his integrity at risk for wanting to save him from a fever that would have killed him anyway at the end of the day.

It hurts Dick to see how Batsis always jumps on him and the rest of his brothers to see if they have any bites or open wounds, Jason is destroyed to see how his sister shakes like a leaf, but he allows anyways to Damian to take her to the garden to get fresh air. Tim watches, in dispair, as she tries to learn all the first aid techniques and amputation procedures, because she is afraid to come back at any time and not know how to do it; Bruce cries when he sees how his daughter, his sweet girl, stores as much food as he can in hidden corners of the mansion and high on the roof; Damian can't help but feel weak when he sees, clearly sees and notices, how his sister is starving to eat any home-cooked food, but they end up throwing up when he takes a tentative bite and must go back to the canned goods.

It hurts everyone, it tears them apart, and she suffers in the process too. Of course, she no longer has to run for her life every hour, she can breathe easy, she can have all the canned goods she wants and she knows that her brothers and her father will be with her after she closes her eyes and opens them again. .

Psychiatric treatments only work in part, therapies are somewhat slow and not easy to achieve. I mean, no one can tell a specialist doctor that she comes from another universe, Harley Queen could be an option, she herself knows a lot of shit about the multiverse and astuff, but even after a general check-up she had told Bruce, no matter how much treatment she could give him toast to Batsis, poor kid would be scarred forever.

At least the therapies help with the issue of food and hypervigilance. Outside of that, she will always need the support of others to get through everything else.

[aurumacadicus]

My kingdom for fics where okay wait a minute this has facets. Bullets then.

1) Steve doesn’t like to ask for things because it makes him feel weak. He’s part of the Greatest Generation (the GI Generation, if you will). He grew up experiencing the greatest economy and a technology boom (radio, telephone, cars), but he also experienced the tail-end of the Spanish Flu Pandemic and the stock market crash and following Great Depression. He grew up sick with a working mother and (in some iterations) an abusive father. This man would rather crawl off and cut a bullet out of himself than walk into medical and have someone else do it because he doesn’t want people to see him as fallible.

2) This is Tony’s biggest beef with him. He’s rich, he’s never going to be able to spend all of the money he has, and as such he likes spoiling his friends. And Steve never fucking wants anything, even seems distrustful and annoyed when Tony gives him things he’s sure he’ll like, like art supplies or a motorbike upgrade. He uses them begrudgingly at first because he doesn’t like waste and Tony sees him using them and just keeps buying those things for him. Steve hates it but he can also tell that Tony would be terribly hurt if he told him so, so he stoically keeps his mouth shut because he’s good at it.

3) Absolute fucking astonishment, this helps Steve see that he deserves things that are not Duty and he starts to heal a little bit. Doesn’t seek therapy tho, what is he, a pansy lol (😰) even though he could really use it. He is very tired of the entirety of the team telling him to see a psychiatrist. He was in a frozen coma for seventy years just leave him alone.

4) Steve and Tony start dating! Who didn’t see this coming tho. Anyway they start learning about each other, growing together, it’s all very sweet and Natasha started strangling Clint when he started to pretend to gag so that’s nice.

5) Steve becomes comfortable enough with Tony that he gets the courage to ask for something. Could be anything, really, but for purposes of this post let’s go with ummmm a dog. And Tony is immediately delighted! Steve asked him for something! This is wonderful! Forget saying “I love you,” this is a way bigger step (and quite frankly something he never believed would happen) so he’s over the moon! Of course we can get a dog! And by we I mean that I’ll pay for everything and you can walk it and clean up after it. (Steve is actually okay with this because Tony can barely remember to take care of himself when he gets busy, he just thinks that it would be nice to have something with a heartbeat to cuddle while Tony’s jetting off doing Important Business Things and Tony thinks this will be good because dogs have been proven to be therapeutic.)

6) Steve gets a dog, and it hates Tony. I’m talking growling when Steve isn’t near to hear it, snapping at Tony’s ankles (Steve always scolds it, and it stops for a while, but then Tony goes on a business trip and it starts all over again), peeing on anything Tony leaves lying around, it’s chewed up three StarkPads and torn apart his pillow. “It’s fine, it just needs a little more training,” he tells Steve every time it happens, because this is the first thing Steve has ever asked him for and he doesn’t want to ruin it just because he’s a little scared of this dog. It’s fine. Things can be replaced! And it’s only nips, sometimes running under his feet to knock him over. It’s fine. The dog loves Steve after all, and that’s all Tony really expected because he’s gone so often.

7) Tony is in tears in private tho okay. He keeps telling Rhodey and Pepper and Happy how scared of this dog he is and then always backpedals with “but Steve’s taking it to more intensive training!” when they make noises of concern. It’s not like it’s just him, either. The only other people the dog seems to like are Natasha and Thor. He sticks to the workshop unless Steve is home with the dog because he’s too scared to see it alone and makes Thor (or Natasha, on the rare cases she isn’t with him) take care of it while Steve’s on missions. It’s fine. It’s Steve’s dog! He asked for it! Tony knows if he complains, Steve will never feel safe enough to ask him for anything again. It’s fine.

8) “I can’t take this anymore,” Tony whispers, feeling like he’s about to break apart as he stares at the jagged wounds where Steve pried the dog’s teeth out of his hand as he and Thor try to wrestle it into its kennel. Bruce stands between them as he carefully escorts Tony to medical. Tony dreads seeing Steve after. Steve must know he’s going to have to make an ultimatum after this. He’s not going to allow a dog to attack him twice in is own home, not with how viciously it had attacked him this time. (He doesn’t hear how many stitches he needs, or how long the cast will have to stay on. He just sees Bruce go a little green around the edges before he takes his good hand between both his own, and at that point, he’s scared to ask the doctor to repeat herself.)

9) Steve immediately rehomes the dog. He doesn’t tell Tony how, or where, or with who. He just packs up everything dog-related into a box and leaves for a few hours. It’s like there was never a dog at all. Tony somehow feels worse than when the dog bit him, remembering the way Steve had pressed a stoic kiss to his forehead before he’d left. Maybe he should have offered to stay on a different floor while the dog was there, cited nonexistent allergies. The dog had been… it had really been good for Steve.

10) “Why didn’t you tell me to get rid of the dog?” Steve asks when he gets back. He wonders what he did to make Tony think he didn’t have a say in what lived in his personal quarters. Why didn’t he feel secure enough with Steve to admit the dog’s attitude toward him scared him? He would never have kept it if Tony had shown even an inkling that he felt unsafe. “It was the first thing you ever asked me for,” Tony whispers, ashamed. “I knew if I said I didn’t like it, you’d never feel safe enough to ask me for anything else.” Steve looks like Tony shot him, eyes darting from his face to his still-bandaged arm and back again.

11) Steve says they should go to therapy. “It’s not healthy, that you would let me hurt you, even via a dog, just because you think I want it. I would never want something to hurt you, Tony.” He’s man enough to admit, if only to himself, that he’s only going to go because it seemed hypocritical, telling Tony he needed help when Tony’s desire to please him had been borne out of his own issues. Maybe next time he wants something, he’ll be able to see how that affects Tony, and not just himself. He should have realized something was wrong. Tony gets along with Lucky just fine, even after being bitten. He should have realized the way the dog was reacting to Tony wasn’t normal.

12) “I found a stray dog on my run. I’m going to take it to the shelter,” Steve says. “I wanted to tell you, so you don’t think I’m standing you up for brunch.” Tony looks up at him, blinking slowly, before looking down at the dog cowering behind Steve’s legs. Squats. Holds his shaking hand out. The dog looks at him with big, wet eyes before darting out its tongue to swipe between his fingers. “Maybe you weren’t meant to get a dog. Maybe the dog was always meant to get you,” Tony says after a moment, and Steve lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Yeah?” Tony reaches out, wincing, but relaxes when the dog patiently lets him scratch behind its ear. “Yeah.”

13) “I’m naming him Dodger because I found him in Brooklyn and at least he seems loyal to the borough,” Steve mutters darkly even as he reluctantly tuned into an LA Dodgers game, and Tony chokes on his coffee laughing.

[fireheartedpup]

I think my birthday has become a trigger for me. There's no one to invite. It's nice that my parents still want to go all out, but I don't know what to tell mom because I don't want to do anything.

No one here cares about the pandemic and I'm not even sure how much to care anymore because they stopped caring when it was still in full swing. I haven't gotten covid even though I haven't avoided my family, who stopped taking precautions a few months in and think masking is stupid, so what have I even been doing? Has it done anything at all?

I'm still happy that I haven't gotten sick other the built in body issues in... how long has it been? Five fucking years? But I miss feeling normal.

I don't want to live here and I don't want to do this and I don't know what to do even when I know what to do. The only thing that really motivates me is being angry. I hate being angry.

I don't want to live in this reality and I don't have enough money to move and whenever anyone tries to change things here, they're met with a bunch of people saying you can't change things here because we haven't changed things here so you can't change things here.

I think my dog deserves better and I don't have enough money to pay off my debt, much less a specialist. She's not neglected or anything I just have higher standards now. I'm probably still alive because of her. If I die, no one will know for days. Maybe a week or more. No one's coming to check on me.

Mom might come eventually but mom comes sporadically because she tries to give me space. I flip between wanting to cut my parents out entirely and just wanting to see them. They're still conservative and I can never trust them the same way again, but they've supported me the entire time.

I did beg for some of it. But they have supported me.

Dad's cranky because prices are going up and he didn't plan on supporting me this long and he's in the same position I am. I inherited the no friends disease. I'm fucking pedigreed in mental illness. He likes drinking wine even though eating makes him throw up now. He doesn't want to see a normal doctor.

His mom has had many cancerous growths removed. I should probably get ready to deal with his stuff.

Mom clearly wants to leave and doesn't feel she can. It's tough when being with someone makes your life harder, but you can see them actively getting better. I think it's one reason she wants to keep her flight attendant job even though she's becoming less and less physically able. She can just pick up and leave whenever she wants.

I feel stupid and useless for not earning enough by now. I know that's not entirely realistic because I read it takes two years to get over an abusive environment and it's only been one. My parents love me, but living in that house put me in fight or flight mode every time I went to the kitchen.

I feel paralyzed and when I try to look up jobs I want to break down entirely. I've made half-hearted attempts to build my own thing but it feels like I'm never able to pick the right thing, that I'll always burn out, that I can never tell what's going to work, that every thing I'm actually excited about is doomed to fail.

Sometimes I don't even want to support people because it feels like my support is the death knell for their cause.

I'm trying to restructure my thinking. I spend almost all of my time doing that. It's difficult to escape the social media whirlpool when social media is so attached to so many different forms of monetary income these days.

I thought I could get free therapy with my insurance so I could bounce this off of a therapist instead of tumblr or a random person but I'm not sure anymore so I gave up.

I feel like I'm overwhelmingly tired and negative and hurt and angry and that no one should have to deal with that.

I'm trying to make friends with my neighbors, but either I don't text back in enough time or they just don't respond. I don't know why or where or when it goes wrong. I start avoiding everyone because I'm waiting for it to go wrong.

I want to get on medication but I just saw that thing about the autistic licenses in MY state. The government doesn't want me. They don't even want me to exist. I don't want to give them the option of using it against me in any way.

It's very hard to get myself out of a spiral. I should probably look into ocd help a bit more. I don't know if that's me or if this is an offshoot of something else, but either way it's connected.

The recent blog thing has just reinforced me feeling stupid and isolated. I'm very grateful for the people who've been here for me. I don't want anyone to ever feel obligated to support me. But I'm having a really hard time.

And it feels stupid to be having a hard time. I have more than most.

I want to live in a different reality.

[bobatelevision]

i had to put my sweet baby down yesterday...

on thursday morning he was fine, eating and drinking fine. nothing out of the ordinary. thursday night he seems to have trouble breathing, he had discharge around his eyes, and kept making these pained noises I've never heard him make before. he had no appetite and wasnt drinking water. i bought some critical care to try force feeding him but he wasnt accepting it at all and tried to give him a mix of pedialyte + water to get him fluids and he accepted some but not a lot. i thought he maybe had some upper respiratory infection and maybe needed antibiotics, so i started calling some veterinarians in my area.

it was really late at night too so i called around and had such a hard time finding a vet to treat him bc most of the animal hospitals either:

-serviced guinea pigs

-their exotic vet wasnt in that night

-serviced guinea pigs but was closed

i was scared to even go to sleep that night bc his conditioned looked so bad, i didnt think he would even make it to the morning. but he managed to survive the night, so i called around again and was able to find a vet about 40 min away that could take him. we enter the hospital and they immediately take him in and i was in the waiting room. the doc comes out to talk to me to explain what was happening.

he had a stone in his bladder that was blocking his urethra and he couldn't urinate. bladder stones can be very life threatening bc if an animal cant pee, it can develop an infection (sepsis) and even get a heart attack. when she examined him, everytime she palpated his bladder he would be in pain, so they gave him a pain injection. they lead me into a room to explain what his treatment would consist of, and i was fucking shocked.

nearly $5k for his surgery and treatment, i couldn't fucking believe it. the worst part is there really was no plan b on his treatment that wasn't euthanasia. i felt so fucking sick, but i had to think on it more. i thought about maybe calling other animal hospitals but i already had a lot of trouble trying to find anyone to treat him at all, and even if there was a miracle situation where i could afford his treatment, it would not guarantee that he wouldnt fall ill again. on top of the fact that guinea pigs are really fragile creatures and dont have very long life spans. the procedure is incredibly invasive and could put so much stress on his little body. i didnt want him to be in more pain than he really was.

so i made the tough decision on putting him down, because i didn't want him to suffer any longer. i'm so heartbroken bc although i knew we would part ways one day, i didnt imagine it would be so soon. we spent past 3 years together, i adopted him mid pandemic bc being stuck in a different country from the rest of my family is incredibly isolating. i gave him so much love and spoiled him so much. he ate veggies & hay to his hearts content, would start cui-cuing at the sound of a bag being opened, he got to sleep in the largest and comfiest pet beds. he used to sleep on my nap while i gamed or watched shows. he was very skittish with people, except for me bc he knew i would give him the world. i'm feeling so defeated rn. i stayed with him til the very last moment, he was very sedated but soo cuddly in the last hour. the only thing to bring me peace of mind is knowing he was relaxed and in no pain in his final moments.

he doesn't know the amount of people that love him around the world, even as far as Australia. he had an impact on many people. all my irls and my online friends absolutely adored him. even my mom, who is deathly afraid of rodents, thought he was so cute and precious bc of how fluffy he is. his departure left a huge hole in my heart. when i got back home, i bursted into tears looking at his empty enclosure. im so used to him jumping around and getting quirked up when he hears me enter my room. i just cant believe i'll never get to see him, or hold him, or even feed him again.

Rest in Peace, my beloved Taro.

I love you so dearly, you may very little but you had a very huge heart.. and appetite. You will always be missed and I hope you are enjoying large quantities of lettuce in cui cui heaven.

[dopaminestarvedsim]

Thanks for the tag, @ethicaltreatmentofcowplants!

What's your Resolution for your Simblr?

First of all, to be very honest, I just want to keep doing this! I've had so many lil side hobbies end up in the ADHD hobby hopping graveyard, but this has been so fun for me and I've already seen my building get better. Something about having some community (hi, mutuals! thanks for interacting! you give me motivation!) to share my creations with keeps me excited about trying to get better at building - which would be my other resolution, I think. Building and exploring challenges & rotational gameplay.

What do you want from the Sims Franchise?

[Confession: The Sims 4 is the first Sims game I've ever played. I actually never played video games as an adult (beyond the random testris/solitaire on my phone) until the pandemic hit when I got a switch to play ACNH and my brother-in-law told me if I liked that I needed to play The Sims. And it's been ridiculous since then, to the point that I have all the freaking DLC and everything. 🤦🏼‍♀️ With that being said, I feel so new to the Sims community, that I've never been very critical about the game. Most of the time, I find the glitches hilarious (see my last post with the infant spider arms from hell) and I don't have anything to compare the gameplay to that would make me feel disappointed. I can DEFINITELY see the criticisms and agree with them, but I guess I'm more easily able to take the game for what it is and mod the shit out of it to play how I want to be able to play. And since I didn't play the older games, I don't spend much time pining for other elements that are missing in the Sims 4. I just don't know what I'm missing. There's also still SO MUCH I haven't even played with in the DLC I've already bought.]

I do think fairies would be fucking cool though. 🧚🏼‍♀️

And it would be even cooler if my sims didn't get burnt out on their second days of work. Especially when they're in a career that matches their skills and interests. Like tf? We need some realistic tuning to some of these gameplay mechanics, for sure.

Oh, oh, and I really hope they continue to collaborate with Simmers. I think that's really cool, because they know what the average Sims player wants more than anybody.

Any other New Years Resolutions?

First and foremost, my focus is to keep my nervous system better regulated. But I also want to get outside in the sunshine and move my body more. I've been so sick the past few years that I've become very deconditioned, so the goal is to very carefully start to build my strength back up. 🥲

I also want to get to the point where I'm able to save money again. Specifically, I would like to get to the point where I can afford to start a separate savings "pocket" in my business account to save for EMDR training!

TAGGING: feel free to play along if ya wanna, @acidheaddd, @d4isywhims, @simstrashkingdom

[lsdunesarchive]

Past Lives album notes, by Anthony Green - Apple Music

(video credit)

When Thursday drummer Tucker Rule sent Circa Survive and Saosin vocalist Anthony Green some songs to check out during COVID lockdown, the singer wasn’t aware that he was being recruited for an emo supergroup. “When the pandemic hit, every band out there was trying to figure out how to stay alive,” Green tells Apple Music. “I was freaking out, so I was trying to stay busy. Tucker said he had a project with a couple friends and asked me to sing on it. The songs were really good, so I went for it.”

It wasn’t until after Green had recorded vocals for a few songs that Rule revealed the rest of the band’s lineup: My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero, Coheed and Cambria guitarist Travis Stever and Thursday bassist Tim Payne. “I’m glad he didn’t tell me,” Green says. “I would’ve felt so much more pressure.” Below, the singer details each track on L.S. Dunes’ debut. 

2022

“It’s definitely one of the most personal songs I’ve ever written. I guess all the songs are personal, but the heaviness of that song is about wondering if I would’ve been better off dead than alive. I know a lot of people go through that—it’s not just me—but it’s a hard song for me to play because it makes me feel all the feelings I had when I wrote it. All that insecurity and all that fucking heaviness comes back. If I could not play it, I would, but the band really loves that song.” 

Antibodies

“That was one of the first songs I put vocals to for Dunes. It was at the beginning of quarantine, everyone was isolated and there was a rift between people who were like, ‘I’ll do whatever I can to try to make this thing less brutal on people with compromised immune systems and people that are more susceptible to getting bad COVID’ and people who were like, ‘I don’t give a shit, and I don’t think it’s that bad.’ So, the song comes from feeling isolated and trying to get my head around the idea that some people didn’t give a shit if someone’s grandma or father or mother was gonna die.” 

Grey Veins

“I’ve been in a lot of projects with a lot of people, and when I sat down to write this song, I was thinking a lot about whether or not I was doing too much. Sometimes I wonder, ‘Am I going to make people sick of me? Am I doing too many things?’ I kind of answered that question with this song being like, ‘Fuck, no’. I’m just going to fucking play and make as much music as I can here, and I don’t have to explain it to anybody or to live up to anybody else’s standards. I just need to do what makes me happy and to do it as fearlessly as I possibly can.” 

Like Forever

“I’ve been going through addiction stuff my entire life. As you get older and the more you work on it, you get a little time clean and then something happens, and you relapse. That’s not part of everybody’s story, but it was part of my journey—and man, it sucks. Having to explain it to somebody, having to deal with the hurt and confusion you cause other people when you relapse…maybe some people don’t want to talk to you after that. They don’t want to be in your life because they don’t want to deal with the stress of loving you. This song deals with that shame and trying to figure out how to get back on a healthy path.”

Blender

“This song is so stoney and heavy. Lyrically, it has to do with my mental health issues and being bipolar. It’s funny because the song is bipolar in and of itself because the verses are very low, and then the choruses are at the very top of my range. It’s not an accident that it goes from one extreme to the other. It very much symbolises the theme of the song, which is me wrestling and coming to grips with the nature of my mood swings, my personality and my fears.”

Past Lives

“This song was inspired by the statues of Confederate soldiers and Christopher Columbus coming down, and the idea of history writing itself rather than going down this lane of total bullshit. Being able to change the narrative in schools so that people are learning the truth about the foundation of this country and the violence at the core of it. It should be taught in school that we massacred people and decimated cultures. I have to deal with parents in my kids' school who think that it’s bad to teach kids about slavery. It’s wild that people don’t want to teach the truth about something.”

It Takes Time

“I wrote this song about Frank. He was in an accident and really fucked up his wrist and hand, and he had to get surgery during the recording of the album. We had to take a big break from sharing music because he couldn’t play guitar. I don’t think he knew if he was ever going to be able to play again. So, I was thinking about him and his relationship with his instrument. The song opens up with, ‘Hello? I’m not sure if you remember, we connected a long time ago.’ That’s him talking to his guitar and his muse. I don’t always write a song for someone else from their perspective, but I did that with this.”

Bombsquad

“This is another one that came up around politics during COVID. I was thinking about how people were lying through their teeth about stuff just to save face—just making shit up, essentially. And the ability that some people had to just detach from reality and pretend that their shithead president was actually helping. It has a lot to do with QAnon and some of the people in my life that were falling for that shit.” 

Grifter

“This is one of my favourites. I wrote this song about trying to start over. With each of these projects that I’m doing, I’m digging and I’m trying to find something. Music is a religion to me, and I think that ‘Grifter’ is questioning whether I’ve made it into a religion in a way that’s unhealthy. I centre everything around music and rely on it a lot, and it’s turned into something I worship. I’m sort of questioning whether or not that’s a healthy thing.”

Permanent Rebellion

“This is another song that’s 100 per cent about trying to drop the baggage of our old bands and trying to do something a little bit different with different people.”

Sleep Cult

“I did an interview where I talked a little bit about suicide, and then I realised that my kids were going to see that. There’re things that I’m realising my kids are going to see and hear, and I want to jump in front of it and go to them and explain myself and really let them know me, so they don’t ever see or hear anything where they’re like, ‘Oh shit, this is really heavy.’ I just want to make sure I’m creating an environment for them where they know me and they can talk to me about anything they need, so they don’t ever feel like they’re alone in this world.”

[giantkillerjack]

To give credit to the last of us for its queer rep, it’s not just queer characters who have tragic/bittersweet endings. Literally everyone (siblings, parent and child, heterosexual) queer or not, has tragic endings. The older queer couple gets the best one out of all of them.

I guess? I mean, it is certainly much better than if they were the only characters to die in the storyline. But people were on tumblr talking about how theirs was a happy queer story. And I think it is the misleading discussion around these characters that bothers me even more than the writing. Like if I had watched that episode instead of looking up the plot summary, I would have had a meltdown at the end when they both died because I truly had gotten the impression that it was going to be a happy story.

But now that I've mentioned the writing:

It's nice that they live till their 70s. It's nice that they get 20 beautiful years together. And it's a bit fucked that the writers felt the need to end those 20 long years on-screen with a terminal illness and suicide in the same episode they are introduced. It would have been incredibly easy to just say that those men get to live on past the end of the episode. There are a million reasons those men could have continued living in the story.

But that's the thing about a show like this. I think there is a distinct possibility that this show is actually incapable of writing a satisfying happy ending.

Craig Maizin, the show's writer, gained acclaim recently with Chernobyl, proving that he is apparently excellent at writing a long, horrifying tragedy in which character struggle only to find there is no way out.

(His other main credits are The Hangover sequels and the Scary Movie sequels, most of which I haven't personally seen, so make of that what you will.)

But more than the writer's background, the show itself troubles me. It has this repeated mantra in it that goes, "when you're lost in the darkness, look for the light." Which is a cool phrase.

But I have reason to suspect that this writer genuinely doesn't know how to write the light. I have no reason to believe he does. I hope I am wrong.

But when you write episode after episode after episode that is an endless inescapable slog of tragedy and desperation - and then advertise it to me, a sick queer person actually living through a pandemic and trying to escape disease and poverty - well.

I think a better writer would include moments of light and hope beyond just trauma bonding. Moments that don't end in death.

When my wife writes about characters in awful situations, there are still these moments of genuine loveliness and fun and joy between the characters; these moments remind the reader what is worth actually fighting for, living for. Imagine! Entire chapters in a post-apocalyptic novel in which characters don't undergo a "hacking someone to death with a cleaver" level of trauma!

But the fact that Bill and Frank still had to die even after an earnest attempt to tell a beautiful love story....

I fear that the light the story ends with - if there is any - will be as dim and desaturated as the show itself. And personally, I am at a point in my life where I don't care to see a story like that.

It's fine if you do like it. It doesn't matter to me if you find beauty in a tragic queer love story. There are places for that in this world. But it is tragic. I am sure of that. And I wish I hadn't been seeing posts saying otherwise, ya know?

And I hope I am wrong about the writer. But I see cracks in the premise. Like in Stranger Things. There was always a promise of light that kept me watching, but it never seemed to come. Instead, the misery and trauma continued to stack and compound for the lead characters, like in TLOU. But... does the writer know how to make that worth it, for us, for the audience - for me? I don't think he does.

I think it very possible that the light isn't really coming for Ellie and Joel in a way that provides catharsis because I have noticed that on shows with no intermittent joy and hope, this is too often the case.

But I do hope I'm wrong. Because if I am right, then a lot of mentally ill fans will leave the experience more depressed than if they hadn't watched it at all.

But for my own part, I'll just continue to skim through the show for monster design ideas. And also I'll say that everyone should watch Infinity Train - ESPECIALLY season 2 of Infinity Train, if they'd like to see a story in which people actually DO find a light that makes the whole journey feel worth it.