#Children of the crack epidemic

[organicbeing]

"Crack Babies vs. Percocet Babies: The Hilarious (and Slightly Terrifying) Evolution of America’s Toughest Kids"

Let me start by saying, this blog isn’t meant to offend anyone, just to shed some light—with a healthy dose of humor—on the generational shift in American kids from the crack baby era (pre-Y2K) to the percocet baby wave (post-Y2K). It’s no secret that certain American children, particularly those born into more challenging circumstances, have developed… let’s just say, unique survival…

[transmutationisms]

what's your opinion on medications that require pregnancy testing? like accutane, I think they end your prescription if you get a positive pregnancy test, due to birth defects. i personally refused accutane for several reasons but the mandatory pregnancy testing was a big one

wow i literally just mentioned this to someone the other night lol. yeah it's pretty paternalistic. obviously fetal health complications should be taken seriously but it's very noticeable to me that the medical presumption here is that the automatic course of correct action is to prevent people access to their prescriptions, rather than, yknow, discussing options like abortion.

i know dorothy roberts ('killing the black body') and i think also jacqueline wolf ('cesarean section') have discussed the development of the concept of a 'maternal-fetal conflict'—ie, the notion that there's a conflict between the interests of a fetus and those of the actual pregnant person—and argued that american medicine's current tendency to prioritise the fetus has its roots in plantation medicine. the idea was that enslaved women were negligent, at best, or even outright infanticidal (as in, because they were trying to spare their children from being enslaved) and therefore white doctors and enslavers needed to treat the fetus as the patient, presuming its interests were of more economic relevance and overrode the actual human person. and this framing has been echoed since abolition, such as during the so-called 'crack epidemic' w/ state and medical discourses about black women specifically being unfit mothers who therefore needed to be legally regulated, separated from their children, &c. anyway i would guess that there are probably some echoes of this history in the decision to so tightly regulate pregnancy testing wrt accutane as well, plus ofc the legacy of the thalidomide scandal.

also, like, although risks obviously vary with different meds, it's not like isotretinoin is the only drug that can harm a fetus; many benzos and antibiotics do as well, for instance, and probably lots of other things that people are not routinely required to be pregnancy-tested for. so that also does make me wonder if part of what's going on is that accutane/isotretinoin is considered to be a 'cosmetic' (read: frivolous) intervention and therefore medical authorities have been more comfortable deciding to just yank people off it in case of pregnancy rather than, yknow, providing full information and advocating for patients to have full reproductive choice and such. this is rly just speculation though lol.

[communistkenobi]

something unavoidable in researching transgender suicide and hate crimes online is that there will always be transphobic charlatans acting through non-profit organisations who manage to get near the top of search results (even on Google scholar!) to deny that trans suicides and hate crimes are occurring at all. and it’s funny in a very ghastly way to see “TRANS CHILDREN SUICIDE MYTH” as a headline plastered in between dozens of news reports, government inquiries, non-governmental organisational reports, activist writers, international bodies, legal clinics, and academic scholarship saying it’s worse than it’s ever been - all of them use language like epidemic, crisis, state of emergency, and then you scroll down again to see sex-matters.org saying they’re defending the rights of womyn to fight for ‘single sex’ spaces. It’s performance art in a way, bile and pus leaking out of the cracks in between headlines of another murdered trans teenager, trying to cover it up

[gothamnewsnetwork-official]

Gotham’s prodigal son buying Cocaine...from his brother?

Independent journalist ( @secretidentie ) posted a conversation they claimed to have overheard between the three eldest Wayne children earlier this evening, sparking a host of controversy surrounding the Wayne family (see post here)

The journalist claimed to have overheard Tim Drake, CEO of Wayne enterprises, ask his older brother, Jason Todd, to buy him cocaine so he could fit in with the other ‘young finance bros’ of the Gotham Elite. To this the journalist claims Mr. Todd initially refused, stating that while he might be a crime lord he was not a drug dealer, and their older brother Dick Grayson stepped in.

They then claimed that Mr. Grayson agreed with Mr. Todd, showing concern for his younger brother’s health and safety and threatening to tell their father, billionaire and philanthropist Bruce Wayne, that the second youngest Wayne son was attempting to restart the crack epidemic in Gotham (though this journal would like to point out how it has never truly gone away, and the sheer absurdity of the claim that one boy could restart an entire drug epidemic).

The entire interaction ends with the independent journalist claiming that Mr. Todd threatened to buy a ‘fuck ton’ of cocaine to ‘rub it in’ Mr. Drake’s face. Following this Mr. Drake is silent for a few moments before the journalist claims he asks if Mr. Todd could buy him meth instead.

This publication would like to squash these rumours as the sheer absurdity of the whole altercation would make more sense in one of the Joker’s schemes than a conversation between the eldest sons of the Bruce Wayne.

On top of the obvious sensationalism, the fact that the independent journalist in question failed to provide any proof of this incident nor how they may have acquired such information brings to question the credibility of any of their prior claims.

For further explanation we reached out to Mr. Drake himself who confirms that this article is completely fabricated, stating that he and his brothers would never do such a thing. He stated that he and his family were deeply offended that anyone would ever even insinuate that they would partake in the less-than-legal side of Gotham, after which he went on to voice his concerns for the oral health of anyone who participates in such activities.

Though the other Wayne children involved in this situation were not available to comment, we wanted to put the minds of the Gotham people at ease. We do not believe that the original article has any truth within it and would like to stress the importance of fact checking and reliable reporting (of which we, the Gotham Report, are certified).

As always, we’d love to here your thoughts on the topic (here)

For ways to check if your news source is reliable, click (here)

The Gotham Report is certified in unbiased and reliable journalism

[mmgwritings]

I'M GONNA TAKE MINE OF YOU WITH ME

Character: Kaz Brekker / Wife! Reader

Prompts: There is a word for children who lose their parents, but there is none for parents who lose a child.

Warnings: Canon divergence; Angst; Character death; Grief; Kaz suffering; i'm sorry :(

Never trust the Saints; they give and take away.

Initially, a curfew was imposed. Without prior warning, patrol officers closed all clubs, brothels and merchant mansions, causing a commotion among the population that was soon violently suppressed. Later, when the disease spread from the interior of Kesh to the suburbs of Ketterdam, the healers' homes became crowded, and before long even the healers needed the assistance of the Grisha in the merchants' hospital.

Thus, Ketterdam remembered how to act. They had faced an epidemic before and would face this one with the same practicality. The funeral bells echoed incessantly throughout the day, while the bay south of the city was used to transport the bodies, piled on fishing vessels confiscated by the Council of the Tides. The former party town, Ketterdam, has transformed into a highly efficient funeral operation.

Burials were strictly prohibited. Thus, when the boats failed to remove bodies from the city quickly enough, in less favored neighborhoods, residents were forced to dispose of their loved ones on improvised pyres in the middle of the street.

This was the first scene we saw upon arriving in Ketterdam through the northwest gate, when the carriage had to make an abrupt stop in front of a pile of twisted ashes, which at first glance appeared to be the remains of slaughtered animals. However, horror soon hit us when the coachman, in a state of shock, vomited and exclaimed: “They are people, Saints, they are people!”

From the windows of the houses along the street, I could briefly see thin faces peering through the cracks in the windows. They were, without a doubt, the relatives of those poor burned creatures. Their looks were blank, as if they had already resigned themselves to the idea that the remains of their loved ones would end up on the street. I hastily closed the windows to hide the cruelty, but it remained etched in my eyes even when I closed them.

The trip was quick and extremely stressful, from Lij to the capital it was just two days of march that lasted the longest a lifetime. The exhausted horses showed visible signs of fatigue when the coachman left us at the hospital doors. However, as quick as it was, it apparently wasn't enough. The little girl was remarkably pale, her lips were dyed purple and her eyes were trembling under the weight of nightmares caused by the fever. My dear girl, a gift bestowed by the saints, the reward for any act of benevolence I have done in this world.

My mother used to say that the saints' mercy was unfair to mortals, because, as divine beings, they no longer understood the pain of any sacrifice, they no longer understood what it was like to lose someone. They were above everything and everyone. But I was a stupid young woman, I ignored my poor mother's advice because I thought it was the condescending words of a woman with pagan customs.

“Mommy,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with exhaustion, her eyes barely opening.

"I'm here my love. It’s going to be okay,” I whispered as I took her small, feverish body into my arms. At the beginning of the year, I could barely hold her on my lap for long, she was growing fast and turning into a beautiful, healthy five year old. Now, feeling how light her body was in my arms, my heart squeezed with pain.

Despite it being the early hours of the morning, a small crowd was sitting on the steps. They were probably sick people, but not sick enough to get a bed inside the hospital. I was trying to carefully pass between them, when, at the door, Nina appeared.

She was dressed in the black clothes of the doctors, with the distinctive blue apron of the merchants' wing, stained with small drops of blood.

“Y/N, come this way, sweetheart. I’ve already prepared everything for her,” said Nina, her kind face and caring voice leading me down a corridor to the east of the main hall. She was different since the last time I saw her, during the holidays. She looked sterner than ever.

“Any news from him? Did Kaz send any letters? Do you think he will arrive today?” I asked as I followed Nina through a corridor packed with doctors, heartrenders, healers and all sorts of people. I must admit that, little by little, the composure I had managed to maintain during the last two days of the journey from Lij to Ketterdam was starting to crumble. Felt like I was on the edge of an abyss, spiraling into darkness.

Nina looked at me with sadness as she led me into a small, but well-lit room with a comfortable bed, where I rested my daughter. She was in a restless sleep and quietly muttering nonsense words, the fever must be getting worse.

“Kaz didn't send any letters, none of them. Y/N, they must be on the way,” Nina reassured me. “Now, I need you to stay calm for her, please. We will examine her immediately, but you also need to undergo tests. You could be as sick as she is.”

“No, you don’t need to. I'm not going to leave her alone here” I said, freeing myself from Nina's hands the moment when a tall, tired-looking man entered the room, he seemed to be middle-aged, even though he was visibly a Grisha.

Nina walked over to him and they started talking in whispers, probably discussing the situation. It was not uncommon for merchants and their families to seek privileges in cases of calamity, but being Kaz Brekker's family, these privileges often extended to any kind of perk. Obviously, by now, the entire hospital knows that the wife and daughter of Ketterdam's biggest criminal are looking for help.

I sat next to my daughter, holding her soft hand and massaging her temple with my fingertips. Just like she is my joy, she is Kaz’s world. The gravity, the humanity, the warmth that keeps him alive. She looks much more like him: her light eyes, her dark hair and even her pert nose. At times, they seemed to share the same thoughts, to the point where I felt like I was somehow invading their space. She was his world.

Kaz would be able to destroy cities to protect her from her enemies, but that would not be enough to protect her from death.

Death came. It invaded my life so abruptly that I didn't even have time to cry for mercy. One moment, my daughter was in a restless sleep, and the next, she was convulsing, with blood pouring from her eyes and nose... The harrowing sounds were the most terrifying, they seemed to echo endlessly in my mind; it was the sound of her choking as she tried to breathe through vomit.

When it was all over, as my daughter lay on the bed with her head at an awkward angle, a horrible sound filled the room, resembling a wounded animal. I couldn't take my eyes off her to find the source of that sound. Only then did I realize that I was the one issuing it.

Once, when I was a child and still enjoying my hunting adventures with my brothers, we witnessed a fox with its cub in a trap set by my father. The cub was trapped, one of its paws shattered between the iron teeth of the trap, it was still too small to understand human antics, and its mother, whether out of compassion or instinct, killed it before we could get closer.

In those minutes when I was afflicted with acute pain, I reflected on that fox mother facing the suffering of her cub. I thought about how I didn't have the same courage as her, about how I would rather rip my own legs off with my teeth and offer myself to the hunters in exchange for freeing my cub from his torment.

Later, when Nina released me from her embrace with a pale, tearful face, speaking words I could barely understand, I considered how naive both I and the hypothetical fox were being in placing our faith in the benevolence of a superior, divine being. Tearing out my legs, my heart, begging, crawling – would that make any difference? Probably not. Yet even so, I would be willing to sacrifice myself for centuries on end in exchange for my daughter's life.

When I got up from the ground, with shaky legs and still immersed in a painful lethargy, I walked over to my daughter. The heartrender had cleaned her face, but there were still bloodstains on the collar of her blue dress, the same one she had received as a birthday present from her father and which she loved because it made her feel like a fairy.

When I held her little face between my hands she was still warm, it seemed like at any moment she would wake up and smile and tell me it was just a trick. But it wasn't, I spent a long time holding her face waiting for this trick to end and it didn't happen.

When I placed a kiss on her forehead, my tears fell on her face. It was an eternal kiss, I didn't want it to end, I didn't want it to be the last. However, when I pulled away, Nina wrapped me in a comforting hug. Finally, she retreated to a corner of the room, leaving me alone to watch over my pain.

I held my daughter in my arms, I ran my fingers through her hair, her face, memorizing every little detail of her. Finally, when she was starting to feel cold and heavy, I moved closer to give her another kiss, and this time, it was Kaz's goodbye kiss.

It was outside the hospital that Kaz found me. Nina took me outside when a team of healers told us they needed the room. In Ketterdam, the city of death, they are very practical about sorting things out. I was sitting on one of the steps, trying to catch my breath and looking at nothing, when Kaz, Inej, Wylan and Jesper arrived in a grain truck.

I didn't understand what emptiness was, nor how distressing it could be. I had no idea that it could be deafening, that the blood would rush through my veins and that everything around me would feel cold to the touch. Emptiness was the absence of all emotions, and at the same time, it contained them all. And the pain of emptiness made it extraordinarily difficult to notice anything around me other than the image of Kaz.

He was disheveled, his black coat was dirty with dust, and his hair was messy, as if he had spent the last few hours pulling out the strands. His usually restrained blue eyes were showing all of his emotions. A shadow hovered over them, something I had never seen before: fear. And I didn't know how to act other than getting up, walking a few steps, and finally succumbing at Kaz's feet in the hope that the ground would swallow me.

My breathing is heavy and shallow, sobs tear from my throat. There were no more tears, it seems that I was no longer able to produce them, however, a rain began to fall on us, as if it could cry what I was unable to. Above me, Kaz was standing still. He was like a wall that refused to fall under a storm, under the weight of reality. He refuses to vocalize whatever he's thinking, I think he's also feeling empty. It's as if any trace of humanity has been drained from him.

Would he become Dirtyhands, being all practical while he waits for the poor creature I've become at his feet to pull herself together? Or would he become the fox cub caught in the trap, hoping I could rip his throat out when he, for the first time in his life, didn't have a plan to get around the situation?

“Y/N, darling,” whispered Inej, as if calling my name could tie me to the ropes of the earth again. Besides, what else could she say?

Is this the moment when I would hear the lamentations, the pity, that would follow me for the rest of my life when they found out about the daughter I lost?

“She's gone,” I said, lifting my head and looking at Kaz. “We were waiting for you... but she got worse, so I came to Ketterdam. I really thought she would get better, but she's gone, Kaz” my voice broke completely.

I think whatever strength had kept Kaz up until that moment was gone. He turned his back on us, walking toward the side of the building, his steps swaying as if he were drunk, until finally he collapsed. A scream tore through his chest, a scream of rage, of frustration and sadness. But above all pain.

There is a definition for children who lose their parents, but there is none for parents who lose their children.

What are we now? A mother without a child? What would I do now? Just go home and put all her things together in a box like party decorations?

I got up and walked over to Kaz, hugging him from behind. We lay huddled in the rain, me holding Kaz's body as he thrashed about in a horrible cry. I offered whatever comfort I had: I kissed his head, whispered empty words, held him close to me. If I wasn't a mom, then Kaz wasn't a dad.

He would never hold her in his arms again, he wouldn't smile when she played with his gloves, which were too big, and he wouldn't stand by her bed on sleepless nights, watching her sleep.

“Kaz, she loves you more than anything” I said. Loved, whispered my treacherous brain. Then, fighting the lump in my throat, I said, “They've already put her with the dead people.”

Kaz shuddered, the crying became silent. The vision no parent, least of all Kaz, wants to imagine. Like any other death in Ketterdem, whether of the poor or the rich, our daughter's would be treated with little ceremony. No mourning, no funeral.

She, who was always warm, was now alone in the cold of the Harbor.

On the days when Kaz couldn't bear any touch, she was the one who defied him by clasping her little hands around his neck. Or on the worst days, when he came from the Barrel with someone's blood on his sleeve, she covered him with kisses and smiles. Kaz loved her the moment he saw her, covered in blood, wet, crying... and warm. When she was a baby he treated her like porcelain, if he could he wouldn't even let me touch her.

My hands met Kaz's, he was clutching his chest as if he wanted to rip out his own heart. I held him, afraid that he would somehow disappear under the weight of his own grief. If he leaves too...

“On the trip, when she was awake, I told her that you love her. That you love her so, so much,” I whispered in his ear. Then, the worst. “I gave her your kiss goodbye”

How can we survive this?

“No, Y/N,” Kaz said in a pleading tone, “I’m sorry, please. I'm so sorry"

When we lack words, guilt appears. It's our fault? Were we really that horrible?

The Saints. They give and they take.

[ansbobcar]

Questioning Innocent Zero's Reproductive Life (crack theory)

Big manga spoilers sorry, I just can't stop thinking about Mashle it's getting to weirdly technical point.

For context: Innocent Zero was like 80 something when he had Doom (who is age 30). I'm not saying that it's impossible to reproduce at that age (Haven't studied proper biology in ages). After all, he still has a baby face in the canon story where he's like 118 years old or something.

ANYWAYS the gist of it is:

Innocent Zero is a male widow of 3 women.

Sounds crazy right? WRONG! I'll prove it to you with his children!

First of all, why 3 wives/ppl who birthed his kids instead of 1 or 4+?

The kids' marks!

(I'm too lazy to pull up the manga panels so have the fandom wiki instead)

Doom, Famin and Epidem's arrows face up/north.

Delisaster's arrows go down.

Domina's marks goes up AND down.

Initially, I theorised that IZ had 2 wives due to the big age gap between Delisaster and Domina.

I know 1 wife could also work becuz big age gap siblings exist too but lowkey I doubt that would be possible based on the fact that we KNOW that Domina's upbringing was crazy hell. Imagine what sorta upbringing the first 3 kids went through and the toll it would take on their biological mother.

He probably had connections to getting a wife candidate by disguising himself to look younger through magic and probably some sorta shady love bomb/potion method. Personal mini theory is that he planned to only have 1 wife to birth his kids so he put the most effort to getting the 1st wife.

But the 1st wife died after birthing Epidem so he scrambled for babysitters, inanimate or living and ended up having a fling with a babysitter aka the 2nd wife and BAM she also dies while giving birth to Delisaster not a year later after taking care of the other brothers.

IZ takes a break from making kids because he thinks that 4 are enough but by the time Doom turns 5, he realises that he needs to invest in making them bring terror

17 years before canon he has another fling needing backup/extra babies because he misread shit. Now equipped with baby infrastructure, he sees his 3rd wife as the most disposable to which this woman dies after giving birth to twins aka Domina and Mash.

Innocent Zero now doesn't need anymore kids. But like bro was like 100+ with that last fling TwT, I think he actually stopped being able to reproduce because when he did that body augmentation thing, he fully sacrificed that stuff.

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

[supremacyproject]

Kingpin: Ronald Reagan served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 – 1989. The Iran Contra affair, which played a vital role in creating the crack epidemic by funneling cocaine into the US and using the proceeds to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, took place during his second term. From addiction to militarized policing to disproportionate sentencing that followed, the toll on Black communities cannot be understated. A conviction for possession with intent to distribute 5 grams of crack carries a five-year sentence. Possession of 500 grams of cocaine with intent to distribute carries the same five-year punishment.

The President was infamous for flooding the country with the drug, while the First Lady was famous for imploring the children left in its wake as a result of his egregious decisions to “Just Say No.”

[mothlady-garden]

Hi, I hope you are all well

So off to Chapter 2 & 3

Sure, who wants children when your whole civilization is one plant-epidemic away from collapsing, and there are whole cities eradicated from the face of the planet in a moment? (Or other things lurking in the shadows *looks aggressively at the EoM*)

It’s so light-hearted in the early chapters; I really like it in contrast to what’s to come. Also, this guy is hella flexible, lmao.

I love this paneling; it’s simple but effective and very atmospheric.

Yeah, sure let’s get a sign, someone might not have heard the screams of your people. “VASH THE STAMPEDE!?”

Look at this little mini cowboy; so cute.

(Reminds me of Nais little hand pistols vom STAMPEDE :3 )

His poor bones *crunch crack*

Interesting, so his boot design changes too; cool, I’ve never noticed that.

I do not remember him having cyborg arms and legs huh.

Look at him (poor guy doesn’t know what’s to come); he is so full of joy.

Friieee!!!

[autisticlancemcclain]

prev chapter

———

It actually takes them a moment to find everyone, once they get to the library. Clearly, any lingering doubt from the team has evaporated, and they’re all here to give their all. They find Pidge up to her ears in laptops and tablets and wires, twelve screens blinking at her at once, code running across the screen so quickly it actually makes Keith a little dizzy. Shiro is sitting on a table with a book half his size propped open on his lap. Hunk is scanning through a truly ancient looking scroll.

The Alteans are nowhere to be found.

“Maybe they doubled back to the bridge?” Lance suggests. “Allura mentioned talking to a couple people in the Coalition to see if that lead anywhere.”

No sooner are the words out of his mouth is there a flash of light, a blue so bright it’s almost white, blinding the entire library for a moment.

“Or they’re doing Star Trek amounts of space magic fuckery,” Lance mutters, and takes off immediately in the direction of the light source, dragging Keith behind him. The rest of the team, intrigued by the flash, isn’t far behind them.

At the centre of the light flash are Allura and Coran, eyes glowing white, palms pressed to a crystal carving on the wall. A crack snakes out from where their palms are placed, circling up and around to form a giant rectangle, and then the wall crumbles away.

Keith gapes. “Space fuckery indeed.”

Without another word, the team follows the Alteans down the dimly lit hallway, through a series of twisting tunnels, walls lined with carvings and paintings. They walk in silence for at least fifteen minutes, eventually forming a single file line as the tunnels get narrower, until the path finally gives way to a giant, gaping cave-like room. The ceiling goes up so high that Keith can’t see it, he just knows that it goes up. The walls are lined with shelves and shelves off books, and several more shelves are floating around the massive room. The entire room glows a faint blue.

“Welcome to the very centre of the most ancient building of Altea,” Coran says. He hardly speaks above a whisper, but his voice seems to echo. “Most of the building — the castle — is familiar to you, having been renovated to added onto the structure more recently, but this room here is one and a half billion years old.” Coran speaks quietly, reverently, moreso in a voice one might use on holy ground rather than a museum. And it feels right, too — there’s something big and powerful and ancient and suffocating about this place, like the mere air in the room enters Keith’s lungs and dissolves into his spirit. He almost feels as if he should take off his shoes, speak only in a whisper. This place feels like the beginning of everything.

Coran turns to Keith. His normally jovial expression is solemn, eyes dim and solemn. “Your situation is faintly familiar to me, my dear,” he says softly. “‘An endless living torture.’” The way he says it is almost like an incantation, like a recitation of a spell. “When I was very small, eons ago, my village was hit with an epidemic. Unusual for any village in Altea, to become panicked and weakened by a disease they could not recognise and could not heal, and that lack of security made the panic worse. The children and the elderly were the most affected, although much of the infection seemed random. Most, if not all, of the infected met their end.”

There’s a long, thick moment of silence. Every single one of them is leaned closely to Coran, likely without realizing it, eyes wide and brows creased, hands tense at their sides. Even Allura drinks up every one of Coran’s words, story completely foreign to her.

“It took too long for the alchemists to finally discover a solution,” Coran continues. “At that point, so many had died that it had seemed almost pointless. Many more bonds were ruined, after unkindness brewed from the fear of the unknown. I remember my closest friend died before I could even see her, because my parents confined me to the house, terrified I’d catch the illness from her. No one felt safe, and so no one felt compassionate. Very few, rather. Some risked their lives to care.

“The alchemists’ elixir was as hard-won as it was miraculous. In the end the illness had been a parasite, mutated by a chance string of fate. Once the problem had been identified the solution was almost easy, and quickly the sick were healed and the healthy were immunized. Great precautions spread quickly to the rest of Altea, warning other villages and the kingdom, protecting all the other people. But the damage in my village was already done.”

“Is that what I have?” Keith asks, voice coming out hoarse. His heart pounds. “A parasite? Is the rest of the team at risk?”

Coran shakes his head, and if possible the dread in his expression grows heavier. “I wish you had the parasite. It would be less foreboding, less abstract. The parasite at least is a physical illness, and one for which our MedBay is equipped to treat, for which I am easily able to identify and treat.”

The advisor sags forward, as if the energy has suddenly been sapped from him, as if someone has cut the strings that kept him upright. When he speaks again is voice is quieter than a whisper, and Keith has to strain to hear it.

“After the outbreak…the leader of the village never forgave xemself. Xe felt fully and completely responsible for the outbreak, and the guilt of the aftermath — obvious in both the many funeral pyres xe had to help burn, and the scarring left behind in those who had been healed — haunted xem everywhere xe went. No one blamed xem, of course. In fact it was the bravery of the leader that led to the discovery of the cure in the first place, as xe was one of the few people who refused to bow to the fear of infection and cared for the sick, getting samples from them also. But still xe felt the burden of fault on xis shoulders, and it was to heavy for xem to bear.

“One day the leader broke down in the square; collapsed sobbing to the ground. Xe was completely inconsolable, even to xis wife. It took hours to calm xem enough to speak. We found out —” Coran pauses for a moment, choked, as if the words are hard to even form — “we found out that long past the day the alchemists came with their solution, long past the days the final funeral pyre had been burned, the leader had been reliving the death of xis people. Again and again, xe was reliving it; in different ways every time, but the same deaths. It had never ended for xem. The days had passed normally for us, but the leader’s agony and guilt about the tragedy had warped xis quintessence, trapping xem in a purgatory of xis own making.”

Keith makes a strangled noise. In a second there are hands on him, several, big and calloused, prosthetic, ring-clad. His team is an immediate vessel of support for him, holding him carefully, pillars at his back and his sides.

A purgatory of your own making. That sounds about right. That sounds like the hell Keith is living in, day after day, and of course he’s the own root of his problems, of course he has made things more complicated for himself again.

“How do we fix it?” Pidge asks, and her voice isn’t small or scared. She sounds determined. It’s an instant calm to his heart, a balm to his fear. A quick look around to his team shows identical expressions.

Whether or not he has made this problem for himself, whether or not it’s his own guilt that is so suffocating that it’s killing him, torturing him, his team is going to help him fix it.

Lance catches his gaze and smiles, brown eyes warm and constant, familiar, and knocks their heads together gently. “We got this, Samurai.”

Lance is going to help him fix it.

“That’s why I have brought you here,” Coran answers. “I was young when this happened. I don’t remember all of it. But I remember the solution was ancient, because this curse is ancient. We had to consult the knowledge of the farthest of our Altean ancestors, when magic was at its most concentrated.” He spreads his arms wide, and the low hum of quintessence thrumming through the room pulses at his signal. He smiles slightly, a mix of wry and proud and encouraging.

“We’re going to have to search.”

———

next chapter

[battleangel]

Why I am Antinatalist

TW: mentions & descriptions of r*pe.

Absolutely fucking sickening.

Dude, its motherfucking December.

Its practically freezing temperatures outside, in the 30s.

So, tell me why the fucking humidity is 80%+?

I am 42 and I have never seen humidity levels this high during winter.

Whats the cause?

Climate change endlessly driven by capitalist excess, human greed, zero sum late stage capitalism, consumerism, overconsumption, materialism, corporatism, lobbying and profiteering.

Basically, humanity.

Humanity caused climate change.

Therefore, end humanity.

Its not complicated.

Neither is antinatalism, which is the belief that is morally unjust to create a life.

Why?

The better question is, why is society so endlessly pronatalist?

Why is pronatalism the default stance?

Why?

Because people cant get over their disgusting self-serving obsessive egotistical need to have little mini-mes running around as extensions of their pathetic self-aggrandizing selves and their disgusting myopic need to continue their respective bloodlines, add to their lineages, create their own family trees and create and propagate endless children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren and so on because individually if you (universal) have 1 to 2+ kid(s) and those kid(s) go on to have their own kid(s) -- when does it stop?

When does it ever stop?

How many ecocidal, environmentally destroying, climate change causing and contributing, landfill filling, ozone depleting, overconsuming, plastic using, oil guzzling, carbon footprint having, non biodegradable using, GMO consuming, pollutant causing, fast fashion shopping, Amazon Prime Delivery in 1 Day demanding, 1400 pounds of trash a year generating, thousands of gallons of water wasted a year just showering, electricity consuming, excessive indoor temperature control (AC/heat) energy vampire little cunts do you need to personally shit out to feel "complete" and "fulfilled"?

Pronatalism is a motherfucking joke but is the literal default in virtually all human societies.

Humanity is nothing but a self-replicating virus that has caused immeasurable harm to the planet and inexplicably to itself as a species yet still it continues to endlessly self-replicate as mindlessly as the Borg on Star Trek.

Never an independent rational emotionally detached logical reasoned out devoid of societal pressures, rewards and punishments thought, just wombs to be endlessly assimilated by the Pronatalist Borg Masculine Patriarchal Seed Collective.

How many little shits will you generate even from having "just 1 kid" because then how many kid(s) does that "only 1 kid" go on to have?

Just dont have them.

Stop your own personal lineage with yourself.

Stop adding to the human experiment.

It has failed.

Why?

I would think it would be obvious but here we are at this late stage in the game in 2023 with people allowing themselves to become impregnanted and I am endelssly pressured as a woman to immediately say, "Congratulations!"

Congratulations for fucking what?

The human experiment has failed for endless reasons:

Genocides. War crimes. Ethnic cleansings. Chemical warfare. Mass graves. Mass incarceration. Public executions. Lynchings.

Terrorism. Carpet bombings. Civilian slaughter. Bombing schools. Bombing hospitals. Hostage taking. Hostage execution.

Human experimentation. Tuskegee Airmen. Forced sterilizations (Puerto Rican women by the US government).

MK Ultra. Big agriculture. Big pharma. Military industrial complex.

Raytheon, Northrop Grumman & Lockheed Martin company stocks exponentially increasing 300%+ since 20k+ Palestinian civilians have been murdered over the past 2 months.

Endless wars. Endless profiteering. Duopoly. False agendas. Propaganda. Misinformation campaigns.

Burning innocent witches at the stake.

Forced births.

Crack epidemic in the 80s caused by Reagan flooding the Black inner cities with crack cocaine.

Endless exploitation.

Hundreds of millions killed by the death cult known as capitalism via houselessness, poverty, hunger, famine, lack of universal health care and affordable medical insurance, violence stemming from capitalist patriarchal systems held and endlessly reinforced by militarism, police states, toxic masculinity, sexual violence, misogyny, oppression of females and femmes, transphobia and homophobia, policing of women and femmes behavior, dress, mannerisms, sexuality, career choices, life decisions (marriage, motherhood) and personality and a constant demand for women and femmes to be polite, "nice", agreeable, inoffensive, pliant, and especially likeable at all times even and especially when we are being mentally/physically/emotionally/sexually/spiritually/financially abused, manipulated, gaslit, harrassed, assaulted, attacked, controlled, coerced, raped, beaten, isolated, ostracized, humiliated, silenced, repressed, suppressed, oppressed, intimidated, stalked, threatened and even killed.

As a woman and a femme, you are endlessly groomed, societally conditioned, raised, brainwashed and endlessly pressured and rewarded for constantly apologizing, shrinking yourself, making everyone else feel comfortable at the expense of yourself, endlessly justifying yourself, endlessly having to explain yourself and defend yourself, never being confident as it will be misconstrued as cocky, never being assertive because it will be misconstrued as aggressive, never speaking up for yourself because you will wrongly be called a bitch, never taking charge as you will be hated, never being logical by detaching your emotions as you will be accused of being cold and heartless, never deciding your actions and behavior through reasoning and logical deduction as you will be endlessly pilloried for not thinking with your heart instead of your head, endless pressure at all times to perform emotion and to "wear your heart on your sleeve", constant demands at a societal macro level to perform feminity, maternal care and emotional labor at work meetings & functions, holiday parties/dinners/events, performing emotional labor in all situations and environments regardless of personality (having to attend baby showers at work even if you are an antinatalist and/or childfree woman, having to excessively emote if there is a personal tragedy reported at work with no corresponding requirement for male employees -- miscarriage, hospitalization, accident, death, firing, layoff, etc.).

Rapes, sexual trafficking, sexual slavery, slavery, child sex trafficking, child molestation, child abuse, pedophilia, murders, tortures.

Pharmaceutical industrial complex, pathologizing of normal behavior by the psychiatric industrial complex, overmedicalization, misdiagnoses, overprescribing prescription medication, excessive nonsensical harmful medical interventions, extending life beyond all sense and reason to the point where the interventions are needlessly painful, harmful and completely unnecessary versus accepting death as not just a part of life but a beautiful transformation that should be embraced and not feared, contrived forced and constantly pushed and reinforced fear of death, sexual repression.

Women getting a scarlet letter for being a slut, whore, hoe; men getting an "attaboy" for being a player, stud, ladies man for the exact same sexually promiscuous behavior.

Tyranny of motherhood and demands for women to do constant endless unpaid domestic and emotional labor for their children for absolutely zero compensation and very little social reward beyond perfunctory lip service once a year on Mothers Day.

Endless materialism, endless consumption, endless consumerism, capitalist excess, corporatism, lobbying, fake news, us vs them, tribalism, political prisoners.

Child soldiers, child brides.

Famine, poverty, houselessness, lack of clean water, gun crime, gun deaths, drivebys, AK-47s, machine guns, serial killers, serial rapists, Columbines, Sandy Hooks.

False flag events, paid actors, green screens, sound stages, scripted events, rigged elections, Mandela effects, strangers in Moscow.

Gang violence, frat hazings, initiations, kidnappings, abductions.

Religious cults, priests raping altar boys, Eagle Scouts raping Cub Scouts, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, IDF, US military.

Elementary schools, churches and theaters being shot up.

Police brutality, Ahmed Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Say Her Name, Hands Up Dont Shoot, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Its just a bag of Skittles officer.

13 year old boy shot dead, not by the police, but by a Stand Your Ground civilian.

Dont Tread On Me Zionist Proud Boy.

Islamophobia, racism, white supremacy, racially motivated killings, hate crimes.

Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk.

Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook.

Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.

Roger Goodell and Vince McMahon.

She was asking for it, what was she wearing, was she drinking, why was she out so late, she went upstairs with him what did she expect.

Theres no such thing as marital rape, feminazis invented that term in the 90s.

I dont care if you have a headache.

I dont care if you dont like anal, flip over and stop complaining.

Its not my fault that youre bleeding.

Then stop tensing up and it wont hurt so much.

I bought you the anal numbing cream and youre still complaining? Its lidocaine. Shut up.

I want anal every week so were having it.

I hit you open handed no bruising. Stop complaining.

I want to cum on your face. Theres nothing wrong with facials. Stop complaining. Leave your glasses on. Now take them off. Open your eyes. Keep them open.

Im into golden showers. Stop complaining.

Im into scat. Stop complaining.

Im into spanking. I didnt hit you that hard. Stop complaining.

Im into choking during sex. Its okay to not be able to breathe. Its only for a few seconds. Stop complaining.

I like biting your nipples. Its supposed to hurt. Stop complaining.

I like slapping your cunt. Stop complaining.

I like spitting in your mouth. Stop complaining.

I like roleplaying. Youre going to be 8 years old. Im going to be your uncle. Yes, during sex. Its just a roleplay. Stop complaining.

When can I put one of our videos on stileproject? You'd be good in porn. Why cant I upload them? Why do you say no to everything?

Okay, put your forearms on the floor and your legs on the coach on either side of my waist. No, were going to have anal this way. Im tired of doggy and Im tired of you riding me and Im tired of missionary. Were going to have anal in different positions. Youre tiny and flexible. Do it. Stop complaining.

Then stop gagging and stop throwing up. Theres no reason why you shouldnt be able to deepthroat me. Then work on your gag reflex. Stop complaining.

Get in the bathroom stall. Now. We'll be done in time for the start of Revenge of the Sith. Face away from me. The wall. Stop complaining. Pull your shorts down. Hurry up. No, in the butt. I dont want to wait to get to my house. Hurry up so you can still get your popcorn shrimp. Stay still. Stop moving so I can get it in. Be quiet. Youre not bleeding that much. Stop complaining.

Take your jeans off now. Do it. Im not in the mood for your little girl shit. Take them off. Stop crying. Both pant legs. Now. Hurry up so I can take you home to your fucking father. Stop crying! Be quiet. Hurry up. Its the least you can do after you danced all night at your cousins party.

Dont lie to me. Youve had sex since the restraining order. Shut up. Dont tell me what to do. Nothing hurts. I dont believe you. Hm. It is tight. Youre not hurt. Shut up. Be quiet, let me do this. Stop moving around and stay on top of me. Stay still. Stop shaking. Youre not bruised and youre not swollen. Stop talking. I still dont believe you havent had sex since we stopped dating. Dont talk to me. Leave me alone.

Dark side of private life.

Abusive spouses, murderous spouses.

Respected couple, matriarch and patriach, pillars of the church and community, married for almost 50 years.

Golden anniversary, golden showers.

Dark secrets, dark pasts, hidden criminal pasts, hidden felonies, hidden convictions, hidden prison sentences, lies to daughters, lies to mothers, lies to wives, repressed background check reports.

Might makes right, force, violence, imposing physical will, domination, vanquishing, crushing, destroying.

Humanity has had hundreds of thousands of years to fix these issues.

But we havent.

Were still -- as a species -- murdering, killing, raping, shooting, stabbing, enslaving, ethnic cleansing, erasing, occupying, colonizing, settling, imprisoning, making thousands of animal species extinct, filling thousands of landfills, destroying thousands of acres of rainforests, destroying ecosystems, overfishing, overextracting earths resources, killing indigenous people for diamonds, emeralds, ore, minerals, etc., pillaging, causing climate change, unsustainably raising the planets temperatures, causing wars and genocides, profiting off of and creating jobs for the manufacture and sale of weapons and bombs used to kill civilians mothers daughters grandmothers babies toddlers children teens students hospital patients fathers sons grandfathers teachers doctors nurses volunteers protestors intellectuals conscientious objectors love warriors revolutionaries prophets, AI cloning metaverse social media messaging apps streaming shows endless scroll always on never off, non stop notifications Slack Teams Google Meet Citrix Trello Asana Outlook Gmail corporate slave golden handcuffs modern day plantation.

The solution to all of the above unimaginable suffering is human extinction.

The solution is stop reproducing.

Stop procreating.

Stop pronatalism.

Stop humanity.

Reject societys non-stop endless brainwashing, programming, conditioning, grooming, messaging, demands, pressures and coercion to be pronatalist and reproduce endless bodies for the capitalist Borg machine.

Stop producing workers for them!

Rockefeller invented modern day public education and school systems because he wanted a "docile and obedient" workforce.

Thats all K-12 is because its all it was designed to be -- a feeder system for corporate, nothing more nothing less.

K-12 -- and college -- works exactly the way its designed to.

It breeds endless acquiescence to authoritatian figures.

Coaches, band leaders, music conductors, dance instructors, choir leaders, school counselors, school nurses, teachers, disciplinarians, principal as God figurehead.

Organized religion is the exact same -- endless acquiescence to authoritarian figures (priests, bishops, nuns, ministers, pastors, imams, Catholic pope as ultimate authority and God figurehead).

Corporate is the exact same (supervisor, +1, VP, Officer, CEO as ultimate authority and God figurehead).

Nuclear patriarchal family is the exact same (older siblings, older cousins, aunts/uncles, grandparents, mother, father as ulimate authority and God figurehead).

Government is the exact same (local representatives, mayor, governor, Congressmen/women, Senator, Speaker of the House, Supreme Court justices, President & Commander In Chief as ultimate authority and God figurehead; provinical representatives, Prime Minister, princes & princesses, dukes & duchesses, King as ultimate authorities and God figureheads; Queen is ultimate maternal archetype - "God save the Queen!").

Law enforcement is the exact same (beat and traffic cops, detectives, officers, seargants, captains, Chief of Police as precincts ultimate authority and God figurehead).

Military is the exact same (foot soldiers cannon fodder sausage for the sausage factory, squad leaders, corporals, seargents, captains, generals (1 through 5 star), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as ultimate authority and God figurehead).

End the karmic cycle of humanitys universal suffering.

Say no to pronatalism and no to breeding.

Say no to continuing environmental destruction, ecological destruction, ecocide, rainforest destruction, landfills, environmental waste, climate change, ozone depletion, animal species going extinct, wars, genocides, ethnic cleansing, chemical warfare, civilian slaughter, carper bombings, hostage taking, executions, tortures, lynchings, slavery, sexual slavery, sex trafficking, child trafficking, rapes, molestation, abuse, child abuse, domestic violence, murders, shootings, stabbings, drivebys, fatal hazings, kidnappings, abudctions, child soldiers, child brides, political prisoners, civil wars, tribalism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, hate crimes, racialized violence, toxic masculinity, military industrial complex, police states, militarism, empire building, war machines, commodification, profiteering, capitalism, excess, materialism, overconsumption, consumerism, lobbying, duopoly, fake news, agendas, misinformation campaigns, forced births, misdiagnoses, overmedicalizations, pathologizing of normal behavior, CTE, concussions, head impacts, permanent brain damage, violence, misogynoir, terorrism, mass shootings, human experimentation, forced sterilizations, mass incarceration, prison industrial complex, military industrial complex, medical industrial complex, corporate plantation, man as machine, dehumanizations, beatings, objectifications, fetishizations, cheapening of human life, commodifications, globalism, slave labor, slave wages, exploitation, endless wars, death squads, rape rooms, comfort women, profiteering, religious cults, forced baptisms, family secrets, abusive family patriachs and matriarchs, capitalist death cult, dictatorships, cults of personality, strongmen, deceivers, manipulators, gaslighters, thieves in the night...

Stop contributing to the endless cycle of human suffering and do something to end it.

Dont reproduce. Dont procreate. Dont have children.

Abstain from sex and be celibate, masturbate, watch porn, read erotica. Or have sex and use birth control, pills, sponges, patches, injections, surgical implants, spermicide, condoms, tubes tied or lasered, withdrawal, Plan B and/or abortion. Or have sex other than vaginal sex (oral, anal, manual, intercrural, etc.).

Just dont add to the already failed and flailing on its ass 7 billion plus strong current human experiment.

[vivianbernadetteaurora]

HOLLYWEIRD

This place is crazy , so many people I've told stories about Hollywood and what it's like that you get people just shooting up on the street so smoking cracked and meth , that people are just wondering around aimously and in mental States and that it's not unusual to see bodies dead bodies scary hey, Hollywood in the last few years I believe as well as other massive homeless epidemic and a lot of people who started off out there has to have ended up in other places such as Texas Nashville or New York or many other places, you see what it does to celebrities and how it changes them so quickly people like Beyonce is a perfect example I always say who is a Christian girl supposedly who came from Texas and her dad gave up her career as a kind of Joe Jackson figure in her life and became the manager he even said how white axe got the way more Than Black acts and how it was very racist in the industry, Michael Jackson used to say this about Tommy matola and called him the devil, this is the man who is married to Mariah Carey who is like 20 years his junior at the time he met her at a party and she gave him a tape of her singing, he was responsible for her early career and was the head at Sony. But Paul moriah got work to the bitter end she wasn't allowed to wear any clothes that showed off her figure had to be a black dress down to her feet and hardly any cleavage he was a very jealous man he didn't even want her working with any male acts even though she loved hip-hop and grew up on it, in fact Mariah Carey is a white passing woman who when she talks in her book she talked about how her black side wasn't embraced as much and how her mother was an opera singer and to some degree Mariah has always been controlled, even her older sister tried to pimp her out, the sister was a heroin addict prostitute who was a lot older than Mariah along with the brother they have both been quite disloyed Mariah over the years and expected her to pay for things that she had willingly given them anyway I think supposedly now the sister has HIV or AIDS, and in the career it can literally take you and tell you apart it literally chooses the people it does this do as well, it all works on blackmail and what they can get on you so if you see a celebrity on the cover of your favourite magazine I can guarantee you they have been bribed into doing this for some sort of repayment of something or other.

Then you get young party girls and groupies and models who want to make it out there and when they make it out there they become a hooked on drugs with eating disorders and really depressed they have this distorted image of themself because they've been told such bad things, Bobby Jean Brown Tommy Lee's girlfriend when he got with Pam Anderson they don't talk about this but they were together for like 18 months before he got married to pamela on the beach a few weeks later, then because Tommy Lee had a feud with the builder at their home he came in and took their safe and release their sex tape on the internet it wasn't one of these Kim Kardashian ones where the mum was her pimp it literally was taken from their home and was their personal honeymoon video I believe, if we're going to be honest I'm sure Pam has a sex tape with Brett Michaels before she even got with Tommy, not that makes it right for this material to believe in released even if this woman was very sexually in the price it doesn't matter that's a perfect personal private business and what they do in their own time should be their personal business and their thing.

Then you have people like Drew Barrymore and Nicole Richie two girls who are very similar I believe and a Hollywood's children that start with Nicole she was at a prince concert when she was a really little girl and she was like playing with instruments backstage and with her family I think her father was in the band possibly, and the mum took these places that weren't very suitable for her soon she was in the care of Lionel Richie and his wife, and they really fell for and looked after her seeing the ended up having half a longer than they were meant to and she was adopted by them later and said how much she was loved by both of them. Then you have Drew Barrymore who is a famous Hollywood family she is from a famous Hollywood family this is the girl who was doing drugs from so young you can see pictures of studio 54 when she is like eight years old well her mom was partying she let her daughter do whatever she wanted and was getting sober at the age of 14, most people you know don't even start drugs by that age if they do but she was in this world and it was just became normal to her she's very nice person it from what we're seeing.

But Hollywood seems to be a drug on its own we've seen many times over Harvey Weinstein Jeffrey Epstein the island the Lonely to express all the scary things that you would see and roseme's baby or eyes Wide Shut I really believe that these things that happen you have seen it time and time again and people are questioning it still even when the story Remains the Same it's quite terrifying to believe that this is all true and you can even think your favorite celebrity has probably had connections to it in some way or another even if they were as touched at the Epstein flight logs it doesn't necessarily I don't think mean that they went to the island for whatever I think it just means that maybe they use the plan I'm not too sure and I don't think we will ever know that the degree that maybe we should. Then you have people like Mark latia, who has a YouTube channel called soft white underbelly where he talks to drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps, PDF files, Runaways, War veteran's and many other kinds of people most of which are on the Hollywood strip or figaroa it has been attached now to quite controversial things one of which was a girl who had been on these channel many times, she was a crack addict who'd been abused by her dad and she spoke about it many times on the channel then there is this woman called Lena who ran some kind of rehab center where you were visual devices where you are faced with your addiction in a room,. The side part of this is she was getting clean and doing alright people for and there was updates on this they even had the dad on the channel who is supposedly the one who molested her sat with this woman, and this rehab Center where she had these visual aids a woman who was mentally ill and it made her very unwell and she ended up dying when not too sure of the cause of death and let's face it we don't even get told the proper cause of death a lot of the time .

And a lot of people felt that Mark wanted someone who is the most fucked up on his channel to go to this centre with this woman to make money and make profits and make views very sad rest in peace.

Then you get people like Julia Roberts there have been in the industry for fears and have been told that they're a bitch for many many years, this is one I actually believe but a lot of the women who have been called bitches I have a lot of respectful because these are ones who protect themselves and they get called this because they have looked after their self and their power and don't just expect anything last and good good on them if a man did they would be completely different and there will be calling his praises anyway this is just a little intro until some of the ways of Hollywood, there's also a lady called Angeline who is profit of looking like a Hollywood woman what you imagined big tits curvy body blonde big hair there's even a documentary series about I haven't seen it but it looks interesting and she makes money by with her interesting car and her interesting unique looks.

[blindedbythedarkness]

My mind is so full right now. I feel more emotions than I can name thoughts, but there's just so much going on. When I was younger, my dad used to tell me that anxiety is just intolerance of uncertainty. Well, I have a hell of a lot of uncertainty right now and I get why people don't tolerate it, it's fucking uncomfortable.

At university, I have to make a decision which could mean giving up my dreams of being a doctor. Either that, or say nothing about being caused likely permanent harm by the institutions that were supposed to protect me. The real kicker is, I daren't even say more than that in case I post the wrong thing and fuck it all up both ways. Who can I even speak to about it? No one in my life has any useful advice for me because people just don't have to make massive fucking decisions like this on the regular. It all feels so heavy and maybe I'm an adult now, but I still feel like a kid with no clue what to do.

I also feel like I'm losing my parents. Both, at the same time. Though actually I think I've already lost my dad. He gave into the crowds last year and dropped all Covid precautions to "live his life". He's always been fixated on living at least to the age of his mother, which gives him 8 more years. His current lifestyle means if nothing changes, I doubt he'll make it there, at least without serious health issues. He wouldn't give a fuck if I told him though. It's all too hypothetical and he's too cynical that he doesn't want to live longer anyway. I don't think he can even conceive of how it is to live with serious chronic illness, he probably thinks he's built different and could just push through. I'm a living, breathing example of the damage Covid could do, but despite sharing half my genes, it could never happen to him. Even if it did, he'd just try harder than me.

I lie awake for hours at night, my mind involuntarily churning out essays and letters to the people in my life who's life choices are breaking my heart fragment by fragment. I beg my brain to shut up and let me rest, knowing I'll never bother to send them, but I just can't sleep again until its down on paper.

To my dad, I imagine writing him letters explaining how I know he's never prioritized me in his life, but perhaps he could reconsider. I want to tell him how he's killing me on the inside more each day with his decisions. I want to beg him to reconsider, because I want him to last long enough to see me married and meet my children; they'll already be lacking two grandparents, please don't make it one more. I want to threaten him, tell him when his brain is bursting with the fucked up proteins that mean he can't think or remember who I am anymore, all because he gave up and gave in to SARS2, it will be me who chooses his care home. Care homes which will lack even more staff, and will be even more expensive as the early onset dementia epidemic explodes a decade from now. I want to ask him if it was all for nothing, me rebuilding our relationship? Because if he carries on like this, I'll have no choice but to build walls to protect myself from the anticipatory grief. Do I really mean so little to him? He's choosing a few short years of the old-normal instead of me having a future with him in it.

I've shared similar thoughts with my mum and she seemed to understand my point of view, yet I'm still afraid she'll follow him down the same path. She says she's trying to balance being safe and living her life, and I understand no one can be perfect. But the world is growing more hostile and she's faced opposition to masking at work. She's never had as many balls as me, so I worry eventually she'll crack. She went on holiday recently, and there's not a single mask in her pictures. I know she likes to take it off for photos, but how can I know she ever wore it at all. If I question her, she scolds me for not trusting her, as if I haven't had an endless conveyor of friends and family willing to trade my life for brunch these past 4 years- of course I have trust issues. It also seems that she made a new friend on holiday, a friend that could become more. I have no issue with that, it'd be good for her. But what if they don't understand Covid? What if she caves to keep them in her life and trades safety for companionship?

I just feel so lost, and I have so many questions with answers I'm afraid to find out. But without them, I'm in some sort of emotional purgatory. I do have friends who I know would care. But one would never understand. Another is busy seeing family. Another is too new for me to drop all this on. And the one who would understand it most has her own horrors to contend with right now and I don't want to add to her stress. Meanwhile, my therapist is on holiday for a month.

Plus, and its small by comparison, I've spent the last two months in new-pet limbo. We've kept rats for the last 5 years and they've really been amazing for company, joy and amusement throughout this current dystopia. But we lost our last one two months ago and now an empty cage sits right in the middle of our living room. I've spent so much time and energy researching breeders and joining new lists, but there's been so many unanswered emails and painfully slow waits for responses. It would just be nice to know when this one nice thing will be back in my life.

How I feel right now is like no simple depression that, looking back, is what I had in my late teens. This is years of acute-on-chronic compounded trauma and discrimination and loss of even the most basic human need- safety. I'm numb and yet my whole chest hurts. I find myself wishing it would change, in either direction. I have fleeting thoughts of overdose on antidepressants or cutting myself, just to fortify the numbness or finally break through the walls around my heart. But I won't. Instead, I'll do just what I've been doing for four fucking years- enduring. Tolerating. Staying alive and not self-destructing. But inside, I'm crumbling more than ever.

Oh please, dear God, let things improve soon. There has to be a light at the end of this and I'm so desperate to live to see it.

[granvarones]

i dreamed about my mother for the first time in a long time last night. waking from those all-too-real dreams used to leave me wallowing in the quicksand of regret over the loss of control over things we had no control of. but not this time. i spent the rest of the day watching shows she loved, like “murder she wrote” and “matlock.” i listened to the music she loved, like donna summer and the pointer sisters. and then i was reminded that my taste for all things queer can be traced back to her.

my mother loved divas. dionne, diana, patti, liza, and tina turner. my mother loved all these women because of the unwavering resilient energy they radiated. beyond their musical prowess and ability to set every stage on fire with their electrifying performances, even as a young music lover, i recognized that they were all an emblem of strength and inspiration – even if i could not communicate why and how. but i knew by watching my mother scream aloud during tina turner’s now legendary 1985 grammy performance, where she so fiercely walked down a staircase that looked as if it was ascending from heaven, that tina turner was the queen of queens. a queen of rock that reigned supreme.

my love for tina officially began upon the release of her single, “we don’t need another hero.” featured in the post-apocalyptic "mad max beyond thunderdome" motion picture starring mel gibson and tina herself, "we don't need another hero," and its accompanying music video captured my imagination in ways that no other diva did before or after. her striking woman warrior presence in a dystopian world refusing to wait for a savior, coupled with the song’s somber sonic tone and powerful lyrics, resonated with me as a queer kid who was ruthlessly teased in school and teased in family circles because of my mother’s struggle with addiction. the song was a kind of rallying cry because even at such a young age, i knew that saviors and messiahs were often simply fairy tales.

out of the ruins

out from the wreckage

i can't make the same mistake this time

we are the children

the last generation

we are the ones they left behind

“mad max beyond thunderdome” and “we don’t need another hero” were released in july 1985, just as the nuclear cold war era was coming to an end. the movie’s theme of communities attempting to rebuild in the aftermath of nuclear war appealed to moviegoers during a time when the cold war era was coming to an end after years of nuclear war between the us and russia. while there was a budding hope in the air of nuclear disarmament, Black and latinx communities were left behind just as the onslaught of the AIDS crisis and crack epidemic was annihilating us. our communities were left out of the vision of a peaceful world.

looking for something

we can rely on

there's got to be something better out there

love and compassion

their day is coming

all else are castles built in the air

tina’s brilliant vocal performance encapsulates her indomitable spirit and invites the listeners to be defiant in a crumbling world. and, for me, the most powerful and compelling part of the song at its climax when she powerfully sings, “all the children say!...” and the children’s choirs beautifully sing the song’s hook:

we don't need another hero

we don't need to know the way home

all we want is life beyond the thunderdome

decades after its release, "we don't need another hero" holds significance in history, pop culture, and my personal story. the song serves as evidence of not just the worlds my mother and myself survived but the new worlds built and rebuilt by those in our communities. it is a lesson of not needing heroes as much as we need each other. maybe that’s why my mother visited me in dreams. to remind me, this is one of the reasons why tina is queen. because her voice changed how we hear, see, feel, and experience the world.

all hail the queen.

rest in power, tina.

[iamentertainmentclub-blog]

My Inner Child

What does it mean to be a kid at heart? That was today's Daily Prompt. It really struck a cord with me because I grew up in the 80's during the crack epidemic with an addicted parent in an abusive household. Being a kid at heart means survival mode to me

Mark 10:14-16 (Christian Standard Bible) “14 When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me. Don’t stop them, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 After taking them in his arms, he laid his hands on them and blessed them.” I’ve…

[niiwa-angel]

People suffering with addiction don't just hurt themselves.

Drugs come in packaging, where do addicts dispose of their used needles, pipes, bags, etc? Because we've seen repeatedly in areas with a high percentage of drug users, that they just throw that shit on the ground. This is dangerous for every animal because consuming that shit is dangerous for them and the glass from the pipes could cut them, and it's bad for children who may touch it and get any residue on their skin.

Where do addicts use? Where do they go when they're high? We see in communities with a high addict population that they don't just use in their own homes, they don't stay home when they're high, they wander or they lay about in the sidewalk, making it inaccessible for anybody with a stroller or mobility aid to use. Additionally, having lots of people blocking access to your store means small businesses are suffering. People don't want to have to step around cracked out people to get to the store, they'll just take their business elsewhere.

When addicts are high, what do they do? Again, in communities with a lot of addicts, we see them in the streets, lurking on public transit, and in parks and libraries. That makes these spaces unsafe for other people. Parents can't take their kids to playgrounds because of people using drugs in the playhouse. Parents don't feel safe sending their kids on public transit to school or to activities because of addicts acting irate and recklessly on board. Traffic in general is slowed down because people who are too high to know where they are don't care about stumbling into traffic, making people late to class, work, appointments, or just to get home.

On a more intimate scale, children of addicts are often emotionally neglected and live in unsafe housing. If you've ever seen nicotine stains on a walk after a smoker has lived there for a few years, imagine that, but with other, more dangerous substances. And it's on everything. It's in clothes, on toys, on the floor. Even if the drugs are kept out of reach of the children, doesn't mean that house is completely clean.

Let's talk about medical care. How often are addicts brought into the hospital because lawmakers don't want them in jails? How many addicts try to get prescription medication to get their fix? Considering how strained public healthcare systems are right now, that strain is noticed. People with actual emergencies are waiting in the ER while doctors are tied up with frequent flyers trying to score a fix.

Not to mention, emergency responders. Do you know how traumatizing it is to see someone die? Do you know how many firefighters, police, and EMTs have watched people die of overdoses since the opioid epidemic broke out? What do you think that's doing to them? What do you think that's doing to the family of the deceased? Or anybody else who witnessed it?

This isn't to say that addicts don't deserve help, it's just that help doesn't mean enabling them to continue their habit.

Anyone who has the attitude of "let people do what they want" about illicit substances has no concern for their community and what kind of terrible things drugs bring to a community. It doesn't end with the user getting high, there's a road of suffering all the way to the end, and often the users cause harm to those around them as well.

[disgracedmilfman]

It's morning and you have no friends.

You open Discord. A woman with a Stalin avatar is claiming that celebrities like Mitski, Chappel Roan, and Jim Morrison are state assets brainwashing the masses because their parents were in the military/CIA. Instead of drawing the obvious conclusion that being an imperialist pays well, and having money frees your children to pursue art, she's going full conspiracy brain.

Okay, that's weird! Time to message your new acquaintances who might become genuine friends one day. They are busy hanging out with other people.

Okay, let's open Tiktok! There are weird people blaming the death of community and loneliness epidemic on....cashiers not being friendly enough. There is one woman deftly unpacking the classist implications of this, but she's also doing political astronomy and saying America is moving into its Pluto phase. That's kind of insane actually. How is she so cogent and then linking the fate of nations to make believe star math.

Oh well, at least there are still books! You crack open How To Blow Up An Oil Pipeline. Extinction Rebellion has clung to pacifism in spite of its proven ineffectiveness for years and years! More people acting crazy!

How do you not clutch your stomach and curl up like a pill bug from anxiety living like this. Please help time sensitive