#alliance medical

[keladryhawklight]

The Storm

27 Nov, After Midnight Kel stepped out of the Hospital, moving to a bench just outside of the doors. A cup of coffee was clutched in her hands, her beaten tin mug that accompanied her just about everywhere. Dropping onto the bench, she let out a long low sigh and set the cup down on the arm of the bench. Her scrubs were splattered with blood, dried and drying, her hair was sweat stained, and her hands shook like the very devil. It had been a very long night indeed, one filled with the screams of pain, shock, and fear of the injured souls streaming in from another attack on the city.

Dracthyr, humans, worgen and elves had littered the floor of the hospital, triaged in the first ward and then passed into level one care, which was the easiest of wounds to treat, level two care, which included burns, shrapnel injuries and wounds to suture and stitch, and then the level three critical care, which included immediate and emergency lifesaving surgical intervention. She had spent hours in the Level Three critical care ward, up to her elbows in innards. Patient after patient, they had meticulously rotated the room within minutes, every one of the pitching in to re-sanitize the room after every patient had been transported out. They had about ten minutes to turn the room around, take a breath, and start it all over again. But done it they had.

Her head fell back against the wall the bench sat against, and she closed her eyes for a brief moment of repose.

Hopefully, the violence would de-escalate again. It had to, she reasoned.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aaron Kimberly

Published: Dec 18, 2021

Between 1995-2006 I was a part of the butch lesbian community. During those years, despite my life-long and sometimes intense gender dysphoria, I hadn’t given any serious thought to medically transitioning. It wasn’t even on my radar as a possibility until after 2000. The idea of medically transitioning seemed fringe, far-fetched, and risky.

Most of the butches I knew also had gender dysphoria (GD) or rather, Gender Identity Disorder (GID), as it was called then. Many butches I knew in Winnipeg, Halifax, Toronto, and later Vancouver, were strong, stoic people. I admired many of them. I know that their lives weren’t always easy, but they carried themselves with dignity. They had butch “brotherhood” and femmes who adored them. Many were “stone” which meant that their GID made it difficult for them to relate to their female anatomy so didn’t allow themselves to be touched by anyone, or rarely. They were often harassed and abused for being masculine women, as I was. It was often stressful using female public washrooms, because our gender ambiguity made people so uncomfortable. There was a term “butch bladder” to reference the ways we’d avoid using bathrooms in public.

In the early-mid 2000s, more and more FTMs were appearing in the community, alongside the butches. Many lesbian spaces welcomed them, some didn’t. It seemed to me at the time that butches were presented with two options: we could choose to be butches, or we could choose to be FTM “trans guys”. Why people chose one or the other...that was very individual and personal. It really came down to which option solved a problem and made life easier. The problem could be homophobic parents, fatigue from being harassed, differing degrees of dysphoria and bodily discomfort, not understanding what GID is, poor social or occupational functioning, trauma, other mental health challenges like depression or the anxiety that seemed inevitable for us. Some transitioned but still identified as butch women. They chose medical interventions to look more masculine, not to identify as men. Some trans guys said they never had GID at all. I don’t know what their motivations for transitioning were. Some said “political reasons”. There were some who were big fans of Queer Theory icons like Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam. Those women adopted male personas - intentional “female masculinity” - as an expression of Queer Theory, not to be men/male. I chose to transition soon after a gay man was beaten to death in a nearby park.

If kids with gender dysphoria today are anything like who we were 20 years ago, I feel saddened by their trajectory. Others see benefits: Access to medical interventions has been made easier. They no longer have to do a “real-life test” (live their life as the opposite sex for 2 years without medical assistance). They don’t have to go through months or years of therapy and assessment. More is now known about the effects and risks of hormones. The surgeries have improved, are easier to access and now paid for by insurance. (I paid for my own mastectomy out of pocket, and was on the SRS surgery waitlist for 10 years.)

But, what have we done? Have we eliminated all of the conditions for why a butch girl would find their innate masculinity hard to live with? Have we made the lives of butch women better and safer? Have we eliminated homophobic families, communities, employers, clinicians and policies? Are we educating young people what gender dysphoria is, in evidence-based terms, supporting them to integrate that into a healthy identity and self-image? Do we tell masculine girls how attractive they are? Do they have an abundance of healthy role models? Are they fully embraced and integrated into their workforces, educational settings, faith communities… or, are butches still getting weird looks from strangers? Are they still getting yelled at in public bathrooms? Are young, obnoxious young men still yelling slurs out their car windows as they drive by a butch woman? Do gender non-conforming women still fear for their lives in some places? Can they get Brandon Teena out of their heads? Can they travel the world freely? Can they find clothing they like that fits their bodies well?

I’m not convinced we’ve made any real progress at all. I think we’ve just made it easier for people to jump ship, younger and faster, and gave it a different spin. We now call that “self-actualization”. We’ve facilitated a better illusion. We’ve convinced more and more people that the illusion is real. We continue to push for better surgeries. Penile and uterine transplants are on the horizon. Young people are flooding into clinics. They can’t keep up with the demand. Activists have pushed Queer Theory as an explanation for our difference, displacing evidence-based clinical definitions of GID/GD. It’s no longer talked about as a condition that requires treatment but a natural human variation that requires affirmation in whatever form we demand (often life-long medicalization). I’ve travelled that road to its end, and its hurt just as much as it’s helped.

The surgeries available to FTMs right now are awful. A double mastectomy and phalloplasty or metoidioplasty are gruesome procedures to go through. The US surgeon I went to for metoidioplasty boasts low complication rates, but the anecdotal evidence I’ve witnessed (myself and everyone I know who had the procedure there and elsewhere) is close to a 100% complication rate. One guy at the surgical recovery centre I stayed at started to hemorrhage and was laying on the floor unable to reach the call bell when another FTM patient found him and advocated for him to be rushed to hospital. Fistulas and strictures are the most common problem. I chose metoidioplasty because it’s thought to be the less risky of the two options. I immediately developed two large fistulas (meaning that my urethra burst open in two places) that needed additional surgery to repair. I couldn’t bathe or go swimming for a year until those openings were repaired. I have chronic perineum pain, altered bowel function due to changes in my pelvic muscles, and no sensation in most of my chest. When we have complications, local physicians and surgeons don’t know what to do. So we have to wait, and travel to whoever can help.

Listen, I don’t doubt that sometimes medical transition is helpful for people. It’s not my place to say they can’t or shouldn’t. But let’s not sell this like it’s a Disney park ride. The marketing of everything trans is ridiculously misleading. Don’t put sparkles and rainbows over real pain as though that helps at all. It’s insulting.

If we really want to help these kids, we need to make it easier for lesbian kids. Butch kids. All gender non-conforming kids. The quirky and awkward kids. Kids who feel they don’t fit it. Let’s get better at working with parents and preserving families. Be honest about what medical transition is really about. No one really changes biological sex and these procedures are really hard to go through. Why are we putting all of our resources into escaping brutality rather than eliminating brutality? We’re cutting up our bodies because our lived reality is worse. Why do we celebrate that?

Medical transition is but one option for those with GD. We need to reclaim our understanding of GD as a condition so that we can have reality based-conversations and solve real personal and social problems. “Trans” as a concept, masks many underlying issues. A queer theory-based understanding of myself worsened my GD. Medical transition became an addiction. The illusion only works if we’re lucky enough to pass and everyone else plays along perfectly. It’s an exhausting game of whack-a-mole to dodge the reminders of my female past and female biology. How is that kind of dissociation desirable? Some people may benefit from medically transitioning, but we still need a reality-based understanding of ourselves, to keep our feet on the ground.

Our children deserve better. If this sounds transphobic to you, you’re a part of the problem. Owning our reality for what it is isn’t self-hatred. It’s self-acceptance. Having different ideas and a different vision of how to move forward isn't hatred. Hatred was the skinheads who circled around us at the small 1992 Winnipeg gay and lesbian march, long before Pride was a parade. Hatred was the men who drove from the suburbs into Vancouver with the intent to "kill a fag" and murdered Aaron Webster in Stanley Park. I’m well acquainted with phobia. This isn't phobia. This is love.

[i-eat-worlds]

A Late Night Discovery

This is a crossover with @pigeonwhumps ‘s story Immortal Cannon Fodder, who Phoenix and Aaron belong to. Set during Joseph’s time working in Hero Alliance London’s medbay.

cw: medical whump, depictions of wounds, discussions of abuse; primarily denial of medical care and fear of punishment, hospital setting, author’s questionable knowledge of British English

Joseph sighs as he finishes organizing the last shelf of supplies. His shift has been pretty slow, and he’d spent most of the time doing housekeeping. They’d gotten a shipment of supplies, and since he had nothing better to do, he ended up restocking the supply rooms. That was how he’d ended up in the fifteen hundred hallway supply room with twenty minutes left in his shift.

If Joseph is being honest, he doesn’t know why the fifteen hundred hallway even has a supply closet. The old patient rooms had been converted into office space, but the supply closet still needed to be stocked, for some reason. When he’d done inventory, most of the stuff had only ever been touched to move it somewhere else. So, he is very surprised when another person walks in.

They’re wearing a battered HAL uniform, minus a mask, arm wrapped protectively around their waist and panting heavily. It’s obvious that they’re injured and in pain. His medic mode kicks in as he steps out from behind the shelf and moves closer. “Hey, are you okay?”

The hero jolts when they see him, scampering away into a corner of the room. Joseph would’ve sworn he’d seen them before, but he couldn’t quite place where. He squats down in front of them, keeping his expression neutral. “Are you injured? I’m a medic, I can help.”

The words seem to make them more nervous. “I’m sorry,” they blabber, “I didn’t mean to intrude, please.”

Joseph sighs. This is going to be complicated. “I’m not going to hurt you. You look like you need some help, that’s all. Do you want to go to the medbay?”

This helps even less. “No, no, I wouldn’t do that.” They shake their head vigorously. “I don’t-I don’t wanna waste.”

So no medbay. At least not yet, though it’s an odd response to the question. He can see the long, bloody gash on their side from the other side of the closet, though. They need help, sooner rather than later. “Can I take a look?” He offers instead.

The hero hesitates before nodding yes. They seem to be in a state of petrified silence, eyes following Joseph as he opens up one of the brand-new boxes of gloves he’d just placed on the shelves and pulls a pair on, then kneels down next to them. “I’m Joseph, by the way. Do you have a name?”

“Phoenix,” they say quietly.

So that’s where he knows them from. The name is all it takes for him to finally recognize them. They’re the poor kid who came in a couple of weeks ago with their mouth stitched shut, the one who apologized continuously for just existing. He’s pretty sure they’re on one of the teams that Aaron does medical for. “I’m gonna pull your hand away so I can look, yeah?”

Phoenix nods, letting Joseph carefully move their hand away from the wound. “Sorry if this hurts,” he says as he inspects it, trying not to poke or prod too much.

It’s not as bad as he’d thought it would be, especially considering Phoenix's healing abilities. It’s about six inches long, but he can’t see any lobules of fat sticking out, so it probably won’t need stitches. The bleeding isn’t horrible, and he doubts Phoenix will notice by the morning. Still, he’d like to clean it out, get something on it, and maybe get them some antibiotics.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” He asks as he tears open a package of gauze and presses it into the wound.

Phoenix barely inches at the pain. “No, sir. I’m not.”

“Alright,” he says, keeping pressure as he speaks. “I’m going to need to clean this out and bandage it up, and I’d like to do that somewhere a little nicer than a storage room floor.” Phoenix is looking up at him with the same fear filled eyes he’d seen a few weeks before. “Can you walk to the medbay, or do I need to get some help?”

Their eyes go wide at that. “I don’t need the medbay.” He’s never seen somebody shake their head so much. “I’m immortal, I’ll be okay. We can do it here.” There's a couple seconds of silence, then Phoenix speaks again. “I’ve been to the medbay too many times recently. Abbie says I can’t go anymore, or else-or else I’ll get punished.” They speak very quietly.

So that’s what’s going on. Aaron had warned him about Abbie when he first arrived, and now he knows why. She’s an abusive asshole. “We don’t have to tell anyone,” Joseph says. “I can’t tell anybody anything without your permission, and the medbay is pretty empty right now.”

Phoenix hesitates before answering. “I’ll go. I’m sorry for disagreeing.”

“It’s okay,” He says, using one hand to keep pressure while he unpackages a roll of bandages. “I’m going to wrap these around you, okay?” Phoenix nods, repositioning themself so that it’s easier. “Does anyone else know that Abbie would punish you for going down to the medbay?”

“Aaron, and Kai,” They say, voice shaky as they speak. “Please don’t report it. I’m getting a transfer. It’s just for a little bit longer.”

“I won’t,” he says, and he means it. He will talk to Aaron about maybe expediting that process though. “Let’s get you up.”

He helps them to stand, then wraps their arm around his waist-Phoenix is too short for his shoulders-and guides them out the door.

The halls are all pretty much empty, and most of the staff is used to seeing bleeding, injured heroes around, and they probably wouldn’t have batted an eye at Joseph helping Phoenix down the hallway anyway. As they get closer to the medbay, things get busier. He can feel Phoenix leaning into him, and he can hear the way their breath hitches with every step. “We’re nearly there,” he comforts, “Just a little bit longer.”

Finally, they arrive in the heart of the medbay. The room is pretty calm, some nurses bustling about, a couple gathered in the break room. Tori, the charge nurse, is sitting at her desk, busily typing away. She looks up when she hears him walk in “I thought you’d left…”Her voice trails o when she sees Phoenix leaning against him, bandages wrapped around their abdomen. “Treatment six is open.”

“Thank you, Tori,” he says as he walks through the nurses station to get to the room. “Can you page Dr. Thomas?”

“No problem,” she says, already reaching for the phone.

Joseph thanks her before pulling the curtain around treatment six closed and getting to work. “Can you hop up on the table while I get some things ready?”

Phoenix listens, paper crinkling as they pull themself up onto the exam table and carefully lay down. “I’m sorry for making you work late.” They swallow nervously, watching as Joseph replaces his soiled gloves with fresh ones.

“Don’t worry about it, I don’t mind,” he says, grabbing the blood pressure cuff from the basket on the wall. As if he, or really any decent human being, would’ve left them bleeding in a storage room because their shift was over. “I’m gonna take some vitals, and then I’ll treat your wound. Aaron might pop in soon, is that okay?”

They nod, but their eyebrows furrow like they’re confused. It’s quick and painless; first temperature, then blood oxygen, heart rate and respirations, and finally blood pressure. He’s typing it in their chart when Aaron walks in.

“Good evening, Joseph,” he says as he rubs some sanitizing gel on his hands. “How are you doing, Phoenix?”

“I got hit, I’m sorry, sir,” they say with a hint of shame in their voice.

“It’s not deep. It’ll be okay.”

“We’ll get it taken care of,” Aaron says, then turns to Joseph. “Obs?”

“Pretty much normal,” he reports, “Pulse and bp are elevated but that’s not surprising.”

Aaron nods, and he’s about to ask another question but Phoenix starts first. “I tried to deal with it myself, sir. Mr. Joseph caught me. It’s my fault, I know, but please, please, please don’t tell Abbie.” The words fall out of their mouth in a panicked string. They sound like they’re pleading for their life. Joseph worries that it’s not far off from the truth.

“I won’t do that, Phoenix, I promise.” Aaron is seething right now, and Joseph can tell, even though he’s got his doctor face on. “I’m going to take a look at your wound now. It might hurt a little bit, but I’m not going to cause more pain than I need to, alright.”

Joseph hands him the scissors, and he quickly cuts the bandage away. “Oh yeah, that’s not too bad at all.” Arron sounds pleasantly surprised. “You feel okay with Joseph closing it? I need to go get you some antibiotics.”

“Yes,” Phoenix says, though Joseph can see them shift towards Aaron. They look less nervous when he’s in the room.

“It’s okay if you aren’t. Nobody will be angry.” Aaron assures them.

Their bottom lip starts to tremble a little bit. “Please stay,” they whisper, desperate. “I-I’m sorry. I know it’s stupid because it's not that bad and I’m gonna be fine, but please stay.” They sniffle, trying to keep the tears in. “It’s okay, I can stay,” Aaron says, squeezing their shoulder. “How about I hold your hand while Joseph takes care of your wound. Would that be good?”

They nod tearfully. “Thank you. ’m sorry for causing trouble.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not your fault.” Aaron moves over to Phoenix’s uninjured so Joseph can get to work. He takes their hand, smiling comfortingly.

Joseph steps up to their side. “I’m going to have to clean it out first, and after that, I’ll use some strips of silk tape to keep it closed,” he explains.

Phoenix watches in what looks concerningly like awe as treats their wound. Joseph apologizes in advance before he flushes it out, and he can see on Aaron's face how tight their grip is during that part. The flushing doesn’t knock too many clots loose, and it doesn’t take him very long to get the bleeding back under control so he can close it. It’s not deep enough to need stitches, which makes Phoenix very happy, and the process of taping it closed is almost painless. The look on their face when Joseph says that he’s done makes it seem like they were expecting something a lot worse. After he’s done with his notes, Aaron reminds him that it’s about an hour or so past his shift change and that he should probably go home. After he leaves, he presumes that Phoenix gets the “please seek help from medical staff when you are injured” speech. He’s given that one a few times, but never in a situation like theirs.

When he showers that night, he scrubs himself extra hard, eager to remove the icky feeling that hearing them beg caused. Because they weren’t allowed to get medical treatment. They were afraid that she’d do who knows what to them, because they got medical treatment, and it makes his blood boil. Abbie is a pathetic excuse for a team leader, heck, she’s a pathetic excuse for a human being. He promises himself that if he ever gets the chance, he’ll make her regret every single thing she’s done to them. Every. Single. Thing.

[yr-hen-ogledd]

Mostly quick & dirty paint jobs on these rebel droids for SW Legion, with the occasional flourish.

[vwooped]

constantly going insane about the fact that rendog consistently makes up roles to fill . this guy is so devoid of internal feelings of fulfillment that he must seek it externally and try to make himself needed by others. because if one is not needed how could they ever be wanted . and people keep going along with it for varying reasons and he's completely aware that it may or may not be genuine but the utter feelings of desperation and the manic highs of these acts of loyalty and whatnot makes him cling to whatever he can get. every time he is saying "look at me, look at me, look at me"

[askthesmoltitans]

Do you guys have cabling inside you? Like blood streams but with electricity?

There's a few mumbles before a medic cam answers as there's been debates on what exactly is their blood system.

"We do have cabling but we're also a bit more complex as we have electrical cabling but also coolant tubing which in all retrospect the coolant and energy are both blood lines for us. We can't exactly go without one or the other since we do produce a lot of heat and need energy to function." The Medic Cam answers while being teased for his original panic when the question came through the tablets.

[highoctanegem]

Bloodbound alliance pt. 1 || Jade & Vic

TIMING: Current. LOCATION: A warehouse. PARTIES: @natusvincere & @highoctanegem SUMMARY: Jade and Vic find themselves in the same place for very different reasons. CONTENT WARNING: Medical blood & head trauma. The thread contains descriptions of people being used as blood bags and mentions of dismemberment (doesn't happen in the thread).

Vic gazed at the address she’d typed into her notes app, looking up at the building she’d found to confirm this was in fact the location she’d been looking for.  Through some pretty efficient eavesdropping (some vampire traits did have their quirks), she’d heard about this place years ago- before Rosie and her change of heart and all.  She had originally written it down because it seemed like the exact type of job she’d be into- a regular hangout for vampires that she could infiltrate, convince to trust her, and then turn into slayers for a pretty penny. This place… a rundown warehouse- it certainly picked her former assumptions of where vampires might choose to spend their time.  Slayers didn’t tend to ask how she got her information, and so jobs like this in the past had been easy, stress-free money.  Of course, with everything that was changed, the plan here wasn’t to infiltrate at all.  

She was learning rather quickly that rehabilitation was difficult without, well…friends.  Vic had decided recently that the best way she was going to prove to herself that vampires weren’t all monsters was to be around them more… let them prove it to her.  The therapist quacks would have called it ‘exposure therapy’.  So she was planning on infiltrating this group not to betray them, but to befriend them… or something like that.  Hopefully they would have tact, and be worthy of friendship.  She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.  Just as she raised her hand to knock on the door (a secret knock she was sure she remembered hearing about), she felt a presence behind her.  Dropping her hand, she turned around, both shocked and dismayed (and just a little frightened) at the sight she saw behind her.  Still, despite her fear, she wouldn’t let this person know how she felt.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

—

It didn’t get any more evil than a warehouse, right? Like, surely nobody would oppose her taking down the knuckleheads using this place as headquarters for their shady business. Jade could do this. Nope, she would do this. Clan-associated vampires were still on everybody’s naughty list, regardless of what some felt about the way she fulfilled her duty. And yup, there was that annoying voice in her head pointing out the fact that she was letting others dictate how to do her job. Which she hated, obviously, it was something she had been trying to nip in the bud for the past couple of weeks. Er…months. She would manage. There was nothing wrong with doing the basics, taking out the cartoon villains, (which, she always did anyway), while she sorted herself out. 

Jade strutted toward the rusted door that worked as an entrance, her weapons concealed inside her coat. It was a little warm for that kinda outfit but she was trying to infiltrate first, swing later. (As in, fighting) (She didn’t think this place doubled as a dance club). She wasn’t shocked there was already someone waiting to go inside, it actually made a lot of sense given the whispers she’d heard about the place. Maybe she could strike up a convo with the lady, lay on the charm, and sneak in as her BYOB (bring your own blood bag). She was already brainstorming her backstory (nothing too extravagant this time around), when it dawned on her that the woman standing outside the warehouse was super familiar. 

Penny. The same Penny she had spotted at the park, and messed with her Spidey sense. The one who was somehow a mother. The one Amber knew especially well. Ew. Which, as a sidenote, it turned out… Amber didn’t know any Pennys, so Jade wasn’t even sure who was lying. (The vampire was the obvious option, but her sister did like to keep some secrets) (Unlike her, an open book). But anyway, Penny didn’t seem as thrilled to see her, which was so freaking rude actually. So she only liked her features in one woman and one woman only? And forget about that nonsense, was Penny associated with this clan, then? Was the human baby in actual danger? Her face turned hard as she regarded the other woman. 

“Not even a hello, huh? I hope you teach your baby better manners,” normally, she would’ve wrapped the jab around a daring smile. She would’ve taunted the other woman, except she couldn’t bring herself to joke. Jade felt on edge now, wondering why a mother would try to associate with the type of vampire inside the warehouse. If there was such a thing as good monsters, why wouldn’t Penny choose those? Without taking her eyes off the woman, Jade lifted her hand and rapped the secret knock. (Shave and a haircut, so actually not so secret) (Which was kinda genius). A gray-faced vampire came around a few beats later, revealing himself a short king when the door creaked open. “Who—” Before he could speak and ask for a password or something else that would put her on the spot, Jade chimed in. “Good evening, sir. I’m sure you’re busy, doing your thing,” she turned to Penny, raising an eyebrow at her. Play along, was supposed to mean. “Here’s my aunt, Gertrude. You can probably sense she’s one of yours, right?” the man opened his mouth, but Jade filled the silence quickly. “We’re new in town. And… Oh. I’m her midnight snack,” he also must’ve sensed her very human heartbeat. “She’s old you know… my aunt. Whew, she tells me all about doing shots with Dracula,” she chuckled, hooking her arm with Penny’s. “We can’t let her out without a human by her side in case she gets, ya know… hangry” her free hand motioned two fangs sinking into skin. “She’s supposed to be on the list of guests for tonight’s shindig. Why don’t you check?”  

—

Vic huffed, shaking her head at Jade’s incompetence.  “I don’t know any babies.  My toddler has just fine manners, but knows not to say hello to people who openly threaten our lives.”  Once, she read in a book that treating a child as if they were at a younger stage of development than they actually were could severely stunt their intellect and confidence.  God, she was going to have to come back another time to find some vampire friends.  There was no way that she and Baby Bloodworth were here for the same reason, and no logical way that either of them could stay now.  She was about to turn away when she heard the tell tale knock rapping from Jade’s knuckles.  She turned back toward the door, barely able to have a reaction to her counterpart’s boldness before someone opened the door in front of them.  She cleared her throat, ready to speak on her own behalf, when the loudmouth next to her immediately started yapping.  

It was all she could do to keep her composure.  If she weren’t trying to make friends, she might turn around right now and give Jade a good shake, just to shut her up, but she knew how important first impressions were.  She had to decide rather quickly if an old aunt named Gertrude was more or less impressive than a woman named Vic who shook curly-haired ravens.  She had to blink away the jolt she felt about this man in front of her suddenly knowing she was a vampire- except that was the whole point, right?  She smiled awkwardly at him as Jade continued, hip-checking her at the comment about her apparent hunger.  What a joke.  She was the most well-fed vampire in all of Wicked’s Rest.  

As the vampire looked down at his list (after looking between the two of them suspiciously, of course), Vic pulled her arm dramatically away from Jade’s, wiping off whatever stench she might have left behind there. Jade clearly wanted into the warehouse for more nefarious reasons than she did, but there was little she’d be able to do once a clan of vampires surrounded her.  Perhaps she would have to work with her before she turned away while they drained the life from her.  It was almost like killing two birds with one stone, when she thought about it- finding some like-minded friends and getting rid of the threat that was Jade.  “Actually…”, she said, putting on her most charming voice, the one she used to use with vampires in quite the opposite context.  “My niece here, Bertha, she gets confused quite easily.”  The vampire looked up at them again, and Vic patted Jade on the top of her head in mock sympathy.  “I told her that taking a shower once a day helps to jog those thinking muscles, but you know how stubborn stupid people can be.”  For a split second, Vic got a good view at the top half of the list, and her eyes focused on one of the names toward the top that hadn’t been crossed off yet.  “The name I was invited under is actually Greg”, she said, only realizing how ridiculous it sounded when it was too late.  She coughed, elbowing Jade in the side. “It’s a family name.  Gertrude and Bertha Greg- did I forget to mention my plus one in my RSVP?”

—

Sneaking inside was really riding on the coattails of Penny’s ability to spin a good lie. Which like, most vampires were expert manipulators anyway, so it shouldn’t be hard, right? With a sneer, the man peered down at his list, where he would definitely not find a Gertrude and would end up putting both of them on blast, so Jade was gonna have to think fast (or rather, act fast) if she wanted a chance to see whatever nefarious business these folks got up to inside. Her fingers skirted along her belt looking to draw one of her blades, but before anything could happen, Penny spoke up.

Jade chewed the inside of her cheek so as not to ruin Penny’s attempt at selling this lie to the man, but it sure was hard to stay quiet! She faked a big grin, as she figured that was what stupid people would do upon being called stupid. Bertha wasn’t even a good undercover name, ugh. Whatever, if it got them inside, maybe Jade would consider sparing Penny a second time. But don’t get her wrong, she was definitely taking care of her eventually, cause this kinda company? Nope, it was horrible for the baby. (Which, in this sentence referred to little Sammy) (But spiritually, it also referred to her. She was the baby too). 

And alright, she wasn’t familiar with Penny’s game, but Jade noticed her sneaking glances at the list and she nodded her approval. Huh. Maybe they did have a chance after all. Oof, the elbow to the ribs was so unnecessary, she almost stepped on Penny’s foot in retaliation but restrained herself in favor of the lie they were trying to sell to get inside. (Why would Penny not have an invite already?) (What was she here for, exactly?). “Bertha Greg,” Jade nodded, with a blank expression. And well, actually she could lend her expertise to fill in the blanks. “From the Gregs back in California? I’m sure you’ve heard of Ezekiel Greg, if not… they should open the vampire schools again, and teach you all a bit of history” Jade scoffed, quirking her right eyebrow and tilting her chin up. She’d learned a few Karen tricks from Regan, she had this in the bag. 

The man’s eyes were fixed on Jade’s, his expression unreadable… but she wouldn’t be deterred, she tilted her chin even higher, waiting. And then he slowly glanced down to check his list, where (thanks to Penny, alright?) Greg would be invited. Actually, everything about the way he moved looked in slow motion, vampires were supposed to be agile, come on! He dragged his eyes back to Penny, regarding her with a little more respect than he did Jade (rude!). “Very well, Miss Greg. Everything appears to be in order, yes. Please, why don’t you and… your meal follow me inside?” the door creaked some more as he welcomed them inside with a wave of his hand. Jade felt the onrush of relief once the hard part was over, but it didn’t last a second, when ahead of her, the bouncer spoke. “I will lead you to the lobby, where you may leave your coats and weapons.”   

—

Vic gave Jade a scolding side-eye, worried her rambling might insult their only entry to this clearly very exclusive club.  Perhaps she should have done more research before she arrived.  A guest list?  A lobby?? This place was higher class than she anticipated.  She almost felt bad that Jade was about to make such a fool of herself.  Almost.  “Yes, yes, we are so pleased to make your acquaintance.  Us Gregs have been meaning to check out your very refined get-togethers, and today just seemed like the perfect day to join!  Didn’t it, Bumbling Bertha?” She touched the vampire on the shoulder as he walked ahead of them, though his reaction was rather stiff and cold.  Rude.  “Oh, that’s a nick-name she just loves.  She’ll practically insist you call her Bumbling Bertha, so please remember to take heed”.

The vampire, for his part, gave a stiff huff in response to whatever the vampiress behind him was saying.  He didn’t care much for small talk, and tended to ignore whatever the new club-members were saying.  

As they entered the lobby (a little run-down, if you asked Vic… it was more of a supply closet than anything), Vic finally registered just what the registration vampire had said, her eyes widening in response.  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, kind sir, as we are all friends here, no?”

“I’m afraid policy, in this case, trumps friendship”, he replied, looking between the two of them.  “Now please, empty your pockets before we continue into the meeting room.  You can place your things here on this table, I’m sure you understand.”

Vic shot a look to Jade, who probably had about 17 stakes shoved in any crevice she could muster, like the murder machine she was.  She widened her eyes at her, signaling her to please not be stupid enough to take anything out that might blow their cover.  Now that their lies had grouped them together, this lot finding out that Jade was a slayer was a bad idea, at least until the jig was up and Vic could tell them the truth.  Unsurely, she emptied her pockets of a few knives and a rogue pair of handcuffs, hesitantly putting her most favorite dagger on the small table as well.  “We didn’t bring much with us today, did we, Bumbling Bertha?”  She let her eyes widen again, signaling Jade to lie.  

—

Okay, Penny was doing a little too much now, cause what was that about Bumbling Bertha and trying to touch the receptionist? Jade rolled her eyes, giving the other woman a dirty look. “Only if you remember to call her Gaseous Gertrude! You’ll realize why later. It comes with age” she put on a saccharine tone, and hid all the passive aggressiveness in a smile. The vampire ahead of them only grunted in response. Not too chatty, huh? Actually, he was chatty enough to let them know they were supposed to leave their weapons behind. Ugh. That was like, standard procedure for shady clans like this, Jade was kinda prepared for it. Even if like, she believed no one should be doubting two innocent ladies walking through the front door! (Patriarchy was supposed to be working for them, come on). 

But whatever, it was prevention and stuff. Cause every weapon had the potential to harm one of them… no matter how good or safe they looked, it was better to eliminate the threat. (Huh…) (Why did that sound kinda familiar?). Jade had shoved a few of her more important weapons into places that should be hard to find. (Mind out of the gutter, she meant the double fold in the band of her bra, where she stashed her narrowest stake). Unless they were like, about to pat them down. Shoot. They weren’t gonna do that, right? Jade sauntered into the small room with an easy going smile on her face. There were a few other vampires in the room, doing office things by the looks of it. But only one of them was paying attention to them, the one by the table, waiting on them. The glances Penny shot at her didn’t go unnoticed. How dare! Did she think she was gonna give them away? (Like she was an amateur?) (Don’t roll the tapes!) 

Jade gave the woman a second eye-roll (about to reach all-time records, if she did it a third time), noticing the kind of stuff Penny was leaving on the table. “Auntie… I didn’t know it was that kinda shindig” she winked at her, eyes sparkling playfully. Penny was pretty fun to mess with, really. She pulled out a knife she had strapped on the side of her leg, and a thin dagger from the sheath on her belt. “Nope, we’re traveling light today, fellas! And… ma’am” she turned around to address the only other woman in the room. She had an interesting look in her eyes actually, and not for her, for Penny. Which like, fair. She wasn’t gonna pretend the other woman wasn’t easy on the eyes. Except she wasn’t ogling, she was… weird. Jade focused back on the table, pretending to do a thorough pat to find other things on her. Oooh! Some pepper spray. She left that too. “We’re all set!” she intoned, smiling up at the guard. He grumbled something, and then walked over to their side of the table, motioning for them to lift their arms. Oh. Nope, she didn’t like this. 

She glanced back at Penny, eyes widening to let her know she totally had a few more weapons left, but they needed to get going now. And like, she only needed her help on this one thing. She figured once they got past the hallway they should be able to split and do whatever they wanted. So what if she batted her eyelashes in a pleading way? “It’s policy, lady” he shrugged. At least he was polite? Anyway, thankfully Penny didn’t need to do any more of her over-the-top acting, cause someone barged into the room right in that moment. Whew. She felt a little sweaty. Was she sweating? That was close. The new vampire beelined to the one attempting to pat them down, and started talking in a hushed tone. Jade didn’t snoop (shocking), cause she was busy looking around the room, just in case things went sideways and they had to improvise. They had some chairs (metal, sadly), a few notebooks and pens, and like a computer. It was pretty barebones for a fancy vampire operation. Maybe they spent their big bucks on the insides. Leaning by the doorframe were two new goons. Some type of bodyguards, she figured. One of them, with impressive dark eyes, kept staring at her. Nope, he was like, studying her. Um, first of all, she was happily taken, second of all, even if she weren’t she’d never do that with a clan member. Ew. And why was this the second vampire who took a weird interest in them? Were the ladies in their clan lacking?

“Go inside, we’re done here,” the first vampire barked at them. Woah. Sudden. He sounded a little stressed out. Like, some real stuff was going down. Did someone try to sneak in and infiltrate their circle? That would be so bad for them. Both big vampires left in a rush, followed by the goons by the door. Jade didn’t need to be told twice, she let the weapons at the table to be confiscated by the vampires working at the lobby and dashed out the door, turning just for a moment to check on Penny. “What do you think that was?”

—

Vic was glad she couldn’t see her reflection, because she didn’t want to witness the bright red color her face must have turned when Jade insinuated she had a flatulence problem.  How humiliating.  Vic shot her a look of warning, her lips tight together and ready to spill out insults.  If Jade was going to be such a trouble maker…, then so what if these vampires had to have their way with her? “Like I said, Berth here gets confused.  It’s best just to ignore her all together, we try not to play into her fantasies.”  Vic was having all sorts of fantasies at that moment, and most of them involved Jade and some sort of large spike.  Yea, that would be nice.  

But, despite, well… everything that was wrong with Baby Bloodworth, the emptying of their weapons seemed to have gone relatively smoothly.  Well, it was about to, at least, until they were asked to raise their arms for a pat down. Jade, thank god, had clearly kept some of her more vampire-free weapons tucked away, but a pat down was about to make them both liable for her crimes.  Perhaps she should turn on Bloodworth now, abandon Jade before they found her out so Vic herself wouldn’t seem responsible.  She cleared her throat, deciding against it.  Abandoning ship now would look too suspicious.  “That’ll hardly be necessary.  I patted her down before I brought her in here.  It’s actually better you avoid it, since the stench that came from being that close to her was just… it was no fun.”

But then the threat of a pat down and any more interrogation was over in a flash, and Vic was… confused.  Groups like this were nothing if not thorough, so something really big must have come up to interrupt them.  “Unsure…perhaps luck is on our side today”.  There was a cliche somewhere in the air about luck coming with a friend by your side.  She wanted to scoff, Jade was the opposite of a friend.  “You don’t think they’ll try that again, do you?”

As they walked through the threshold into the next room, Vic found herself…underwhelmed.  She thought for sure the decorations would be opulent, but there were no decorations, not except for a seedy whiteboard with KILL COUNT written in big letters at the top.  The tally marks underneath were too much to count.  In addition, there were a few couches with holes in them, a broken step ladder, and some dingy curtains that looked older than she was.  “Doing some renovations?”, she asked aloud to the other vampires in the room.  No one had really acknowledged their entrance, at least not on purpose.  Some seemed to be secretly watching them while pretending to remain busy, while others were grouped up, whispering to each other.  Probably about some important plans.

“Seems this club has some sub-clubs”, she whispered to Jade.  “Exclusivity atop exclusivity.  That’s how you know we’re in an important place.”  But this place didn’t feel important at all.  It actually felt like the opposite place she wanted to be in.  For the first time, she wondered if she was going to need to look for vampire friends elsewhere.  

—

“They could try…” Jade glanced back at Penny who finally caught up. And actually, it was fair game if they wanted to split now, right? (Right?) Why was she following her? Did Jade grow on her so fast? (It happened, she couldn’t blame her). She figured it would be smart to play up the auntie and niece charade for a little longer, after all. “It’d be kinda amateur of them to have just one check. I bet they have people at every door. Especially if they have game rooms,” cause… they had game rooms right? Where was the poker and the… maybe she heard wrong and this was not a casino style warehouse? UGH. Right when she thought vampires might be a little fun after all, it had to be cause of a misunderstanding. “What did you hear about this place?” she wondered in a more contained, professional tone. While she had Penny with her, might as well squeeze some info out of her, right?

No one took notice of them as they entered their next room. (A little rude, come on, they were pretty cute!). And what even was this room supposed to be? Were they even walking in the right path? Actually, if she wanted to suss out this whole warehouse might as well play the role of the clueless bimbo just waltzing into places apologizing for her terrible spacial awareness. She took notice of the whiteboard, and the tally marks and the totally awful interior design. She wasn’t sure which part was worse. (Oh, right. Maybe the kill count tally. Yup) (But like, those couches could totally put Emilio’s to shame). And… curious looks came eventually. Jade didn’t wanna stay in one place for longer than necessary. A light, dainty laugh left her lips (who was she?), and she pressed a hand to her chest before blurting out. “Whoopsie, my auntie and I are looking for… the main event,” whatever that was. A vampiress took pity on their poor navigational skills, jutting her thumb to the left. “Through that door, down two flights of stairs, then through the hallway to your right. You can’t miss it.” Oh, she had no idea what Bertha and Gertrude were capable of. They were most definitely going to miss it. Jade swooned, jerking Penny’s arm to follow her. “Thank you, babe. If I wasn’t already a promised meal for my auntie, I’d be all yours.” She didn’t stay long enough to see the befuddled look on the vampiress’s face.

They had places to go. They… they? Right. Until they reached the big gathering. That’s where she’d leave Penny and go check around the warehouse on her own. “I say we don’t go into rooms unless I say so, how about that?” she lifted a perfect eyebrow at her… current partner in crime (ugh, it was so weird), her steps gaining speed as she walked around a warehouse that was starting to feel more like a maze. And… whoever was in charge of decorating this place had like, a crypt core Pinterest board somewhere, for sure. Like why not just get a crypt if they loved the aesthetic so much? The staircase was poorly lit by candles that didn’t even have to be there in the first place. And she was pretty sure the cobwebs were from a costume shop. 

But like, the further they descended into more obscure corridors the more Jade could just… smell the scent of decay and blood and… she didn’t feel like bantering with Penny so much anymore. The little game she’d created in her head began to slip away. The desensitizing could only work so much.There were human lives on the line, and Jade was never not aware of it. (Some would accuse her of only caring about said human lives). This was what she fought for.

The echoing of their shoes against the concrete was replaced by her own heart drumming in her ears. And then the sound of something leaking, dripping, followed by what Jade discerned was tired whimpers of pain. A barely open door beckoned her at the start of the hallway meant to lead them to the ‘main event’ vampires congregated for. It was so tempting, to peer inside. Like, it wasn’t locked, so these vampires had no shame about whatever was behind that door. (She had a guess. One which made a shiver run down her spine).

Nope. They were going to the casino, or well the gathering. Jade couldn’t stop to… wait, wasn’t this exactly why she came around? To see what shady things they got up to? Right! She couldn’t not take a little peek. She motioned Penny to slow down for a moment, and she inched to the small opening, willing to glance without touching the door. She wasn’t counting on the extra footsteps coming down the stairs, disrupting the tense silence that had created between her and Penny. She had like, a two second window to look inside, then twirl around and pretend she tripped or something and resume their path. She could do it. She could!

It was only a glimpse, but it was enough for Jade to paint a picture. Her heart jumped to her throat, but her brain was sharp due to years enduring similar horrors. It processed everything in a beat. The weak sounds of pain that had drifted to the corridor belonged to people, of course. Two young men hung upside down in the middle of the room, tubes and wires plugged to... Oh. They were real, human blood bags. The candlelight was a paid actor in all this, reflecting on pale, clammy skin, wounded skin, making the sight that much more tetric. A few other bodies lay on the ground, face down. By the way they were completely motionless Jade couldn’t tell if they’d already been drained, or if they were to be hung after. So this was pretty much their bar storage, wasn’t it? Except instead of barrels of booze it was... And if this wasn’t something they cared to conceal with a lock, what other horrible things hid behind closed doors? She glanced at Penny, genuine fear in her eyes cause she was positive the other woman also had a chance to look inside. And, she couldn’t blame her if she wanted to go have fun with her vampire friends instead. Cause Jade was staying behind. She had to make this right. So this was where they parted, after all. “I should… I have to help—”  

“There,” a deep, cold voice cut through the air. And at the top of the stairs? The owner of that bone chilling voice, along with two statuesque vampires flanking him. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was not the welcome committee.  

—

Vic looked toward Jade with a huff, rolling her eyes.  What did it matter where she’d heard about it?  It wasn’t like they were actually working together here.  Still, she offered an answer- true, but filled with omission.  “I have intel everywhere, and last I heard, this place was filled with reputable potential companions”.  Friendship, that was what she was here for.  But it felt embarrassing to say out loud.  They continued to walk deeper and deeper into the warehouse, and Vic was beginning to feel swellings of anxiety that usually accompanied a loss of control.  She wasn’t sure she could navigate her way out of this place if she tried (not that she’d need to, right?), and then there was that new, annoying feeling of guilt that was worming its way in, the one that told her how wrong it would be to let these vampires have their way with Jade.

After everything that happened with the Good Neighbors, what even was wrong or right, anyway?

She didn’t have time to think on it, anyway, because just as she was about to tell Jade that Vic was the one who would decide what rooms they would go in, because Vic was older, and wiser, and smarter in every way, something in the rooms they were passing nearly stopped her in her tracks.

It was the smell first, of blood, fresh and tantalizing and ever so tempting, that got her attention.  And it made sense, right?  That she’d smell blood in a place where vampires chose to congregate.  It didn’t make them at fault, morally- there was a huge chance that they ethically sourced their blood, like she did.  But if the kill count board from earlier didn’t tell her that that fantasy was far-fetched, the sights just beyond the viewpoint of typical human eyes would have done just fine.  For in nearly every room they walked by, Vic noted a sickening, stomach turning sight:  body parts, left strewn about as if they were child’s toys and not formerly part of actual people.  And the volume of them didn’t seem to end, either.  A foot here, fingers there, a leg, propped up against a wall somewhere else.

Perhaps Jade didn’t notice because she was so focused on her goal, whatever it was, or maybe Vic had underestimated how advanced her sight actually was, being a vampire so long, but regardless, she stopped in her tracks, holding Jade’s arm tightly interlocked with hers, hoping the slayer would get the hint.  But Jade, ever surprising, seemed to have other ideas herself, and had found particular interest in one of the rooms at their side.  Vic chanced a look in herself, and her stomach turned even more at what she found there.  She shook her head at Jade, her eyebrows furrowed, because staying here and trying to help without a plan was asinine.  They were vastly outnumbered, they knew nothing about this group, and they needed to leave, fast.  She whispered, trying to talk some sense into Baby Bloodworth.  “This is stupid.  We can come back with backup, we need to-”

But a booming voice interrupted her, and she dropped Jade’s arm, suddenly feeling guilty for some reason.  Whoever was walking toward them was clearly some sort of leader- the others respected him, and as he approached her and Jade, the other vampires seemed to turn toward them with attention.  Shit.

“Apprehend these two at once.  They’re not who they say they are”, the voice boomed, even more commanding now that he was closer.  Before Vic could think of an excuse, there were two vampires at each of their sides, holding their arms in place until they were told where to take them.  With an unrelenting guilty conscience, she felt the need to explain.  “We’re obviously not aunt and niece, that’s simply how we describe each other to strangers.  It’s much easier than saying we’re unlikely companions ever since Bertha became obsessed with me back in 2015.”

What the fuck was she doing?  She was supposed to be throwing Jade under the bus, right?  Out her as a slayer so she can have new vampire friends and forget about the Bloodworth threat altogether.  Weakness was winning over again, and it was in favor of an idiot.  She thrashed under the grip of her captors, and noted the vampires that had been in surrounding rooms were getting closer, their faces a mix of sneers and frowns.  They all looked at them with recognition, as if they were seeing right through them.  “We were just leaving, anyway.  Let us go this instant!”

—

Jade would have to judge Penny for her choice of reputable potential companions another time. Provided there was another time. Cause right now, as three giant figures descended that last flight of stairs, all Jade could hear was the battle soundtrack about to go off in her head. She hoped it sounded a little more Dark Knight and a little less Everybody was Kung Fu fighting. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, so whatever got Jade out of this pickle, she’d take it. She also couldn’t show her shock at the fact that Penny had tried to pull her out of danger. Or that she’d offered to come back with backup and help those being drained in that room. (What did she mean? Wasn’t she in cahoots with these people?) Too many things were happening at the same time. 

The person in charge of hitting play on the music had to wait for a moment, cause Penny wanted to try diplomacy. Ugh. One of the vampires had already gripped her bicep and Jade knew, immediately, by the way fingers dug into flesh that she would have a bruise later. “Listen to my auntie! Does she look like she’d ever do anything wrong ever? She’s never had so much as a speeding ticket!” She chimed in, giving this peace thing a try. Cause neither of them might like it, but they were kind of a team at the moment, and Jade knew all about being a team player. (If her solo career was anything to go by, some would say, being a team player was the only thing she was good at). Oops, apparently, they were not auntie and niece anymore, Penny was getting rid of their backstory, choosing something way less credible, but whatever. Time to lie. “Right! She’s kinda like my auntie. My aunt figure. It’s just easier…” Even as the vampire held her hands behind her back to restrain her, even as he manhandled her, Jade had a moment to throw Penny a dirty look over her shoulder. Obsessed with you? Puh-lease, she said without words. 

It wasn’t completely stupid, what Penny was trying to do, despite. Cause why would two innocent people try to fight three strong vampires, right? Except if cornered, wasn’t like, the most natural reaction to defend yourself? Especially if it was totally unfair? The team leader remained untouched, like the perfect baddie, giving instructions instead of getting his hands dirty. “Enough with this. Bring them into custody, they want to ask them questions about the leak,” he gruffed, and Jade blinked at that, cause… huh? Like sure, keeping them alive served the plot, but… what was the other thing about a leak? And actually, she didn’t like the whole getting captured as much. Getting killed would’ve been quicker, but if she got caught that meant she wouldn’t get to go home to Regan, and that was just… irresponsible. (It made sense in her head, go with it).  

Tussling time it was. Quirky battle music went off. Jade thrashed against her captor, pushing backwards until he crashed against the wall. She smashed again, upwards and with intention, hearing the back of his head connect with the surface. Good. But it wasn’t enough to knock him out. He let go of her hands and reached in front to put her on a chokehold. She wriggled and jerked, trying to shove his hands away while her air supply got increasingly low. If she could just… She needed too… She choked, the sight of Penny battling her own vampire in front of Jade blurring as tears reached her eyes. She needed her knife. The one hidden in her belt buckle, but if she let go of his arms he’d end her. She threw her head back, hitting him in the nose, and with the beat of respite she was given, Jade plucked her small knife. She jabbed repeatedly into the vampire's thigh, and he growled, letting go of her. 

She almost fell face forward onto the floor, but her reflexes came through in time. She gasped, getting as much oxygen as she could into her lungs and turned to face the vampire. Except, right! She’d forgotten about the third one with conveniently free hands and a bossy tone. Who now wanted to join the fun. She sensed him draw close and Jade spun again, plunging the knife into his neck, then tackling him to the ground. (She was a one trick pony, but if the trick was failproof, why change?) Pinning him with her legs, she knew she wouldn’t be able to reach for the stake inside her bra, so like… if their plan was to make a run for it, the best chance they had was to knock out all three of them. 

Big boss didn’t wanna go out fast, obviously, that would’ve been so embarrassing for him. But as he tried to overtake her (a mess of swiping limbs and grunts), Jade stood her ground, getting a hold of his face and smashing it against the cold floor. The thrashing beneath her stopped. And Jade got a beat, two beats where relief washed over her, and adrenaline made everything seem possible. There were two left, they had this. 

And then something hard hit the back of her head and everything went to black. 

—

This is not how Vic envisioned new friendships would start.  But then, these vampires weren’t friends, were they?  They were bad.  The kind of bad that the Vic from a few years ago assumed all vampires were, the reason her own kind was monstrous and needed to be eradicated.  Back then, she wouldn’t have needed to see the sights she had seen today- the blood or the gore, or the goddamn body bags hanging around like decoration, because she already knew what they were capable of.  How dare these assholes perfectly fit the stereotype that so many had in their minds about vampires? They had a duty, maybe even more than humans and other undead, to be pillars of society (to make up for their bad names, of course), and still these jerks were flouncing around like some cheesy villains in a horror novel. And Victoria Larsson did not make nice with villains, vampires or not.

“Fuck this”.  Vic’s docile, apologetic nature seemed to flip in an instant, and thankfully, the other vampires were caught completely off guard.  She slammed her right foot down onto the foot of her captor, then raised her left arm back as he was caught off guard.  Vic used that distraction to her advantage, using her elbow to jab into the vampire’s side, then punching him square in the jaw, officially jetting forward from his grip afterwards.  Looking over to her side, it appeared baby Bloodworth had had the same idea, and Vic took a moment to nod in solidarity, before turning back to her dumbfounded captors.

Because she hadn’t expected a fight, Vic had obediently left all her weapons back at registration, and so she needed to think fast.  The vampire tried to take advantage of her assumed distraction, reaching to grab at her again, but this time, Vic was ready.  Just as the other vampire reached for her, she grabbed the dagger holstered at his side with one hand, grabbed his arm with another, and pinned it behind his back, holding him against her with the knife against his neck. “Don’t make another fucking move, you stereotype sellout, or your unkept, hairy neck will end up with more holes than that cheese from Switzerland”. Rosie had a current fascination with Swiss cheese, so the analogy just seemed incredibly apt.   She didn’t want to kill him, really, she didn’t, because she was still feeling too many feelings about all the carnage she’d caused at the keep, and she had been calculating for weeks now how many good deeds and citizen’s arrests she needed to do to make up for it.  But before she could weigh if just one more death was worth it, the vampire took advantage of her hesitation, using his free hand to try to reach around and grab the knife positioned at his neck.  Vic would have been impressed at his lack of fear of the pain that grabbing a literal blade might cause, but there was no time to think on things like that.  Instead, she pulled the knife downwards, her ears perking as it sliced through his palm, then reared up and stabbed it into his side as many times as she could muster. An anger took over her, one she hadn’t been expecting, at this place and these vampires who were hurting people for no good reason, and so scruff neck was getting the brunt of it.  And hey, it was only one death, right?  So she continued to stab and stab and stab. Even as he fell to the ground with pain, she continued to stab, ignoring the dark blood that spattered her face and the odd, misplaced sound of a door closing behind her, followed by two thumps, one after the other. She continued to stab, too, as soft footsteps approached behind her.  The stabbing only stopped momentarily when she realized something was amiss, that there were no more sounds of fighting from Jade, and that the person behind her had gotten incredibly close.  But she didn’t have time to think about it before the world around her disappeared.

[zinniajones]

Tell the Florida Board of Medicine to stop the trans youth care ban

It's now Dec 5, but public comments are still open on the Florida Board of Medicine's trans youth care ban and can be submitted via this form: https://www.flrules.org/Gateway/View_notice.asp?id=26536889

If you're not sure what to say, feel free to refer to this remote copy of our complaint: https://transgender.agency/files/GenderAnalysisFLBOMcomplaint1.pdf

[fragmentedblade]

Criticism about Yingxing using the power of Abundance being ooc, as if he hadn't done it before. As if it weren't common practice in the Alliance, despite themselves

[lovecolibri]

Me, relistening to EOS 10 from the start because I saw some new episodes drop and wanted a refresh: man this show SLAPS! So much fun! 🤣🤣🤣

Me, relistening to episode 4x08: 😭😭😭😭😭😭 nooooooo, I blocked this ending from my brain!

[keladryhawklight]

Art of Keladry, AI Generated.

Following the Storm Chapters RP.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andra Watkins at How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life:

Regarding mifepristone:

[Reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start. The FDA failed to abide by its legal obligations to protect the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women. It never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use, ignored the potential impacts of the hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls, disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than surgical abortions, and eliminated necessary safeguards for pregnant girls and women who undergo this dangerous drug regimen. Furthermore, at no point in the past two decades has the FDA ever acknowledged or addressed federal laws that prohibit the distribution of abortion drugs by postal mail; to the contrary, the FDA has permitted and actively encouraged such activity. Project 2025, page 458]

Pay attention to the highlighted language. Republicans have made no secret of their goal to use the Comstock Act to outlaw the shipment of chemical abortion pills and abortion supplies. Both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito name-checked Comstock during oral arguments in the recent mifepristone case.

[...] Republicans WILL define hormonal birth control as an abortifacient (“abortion drugs”) using the methodology outlined by Human Life International above. They WILL use the Comstock Act to ban the shipment of oral contraceptives by calling them “abortion drugs.” I’m not making a stretch for shock value. It is impossible to follow these breadcrumbs without arriving at this conclusion.

Be aware: Project 2025 planners seek to ban mifepristone, birth control, and contraception under the broad redefinition of the term “abortifacient”. Their goals also include the enforcement of the mostly-dormant Comstock Act.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Hadley Freeman

Date: Feb 11, 2023

It wasn’t easy for Hannah Barnes to get her book published. As the investigations producer for Newsnight and a long-term analytical and documentary journalist, she is used to covering knotty stories and this particular one, she knew better than most, was complex. She had been covering the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London — the only one of its kind for children in England and Wales — since 2019 and decided to write a book about it. “I wanted to write a definitive record of what happened because there needs to be one,” she tells me. Not everyone agreed. “None of the big publishing houses would take it,” she says. “Interestingly, there were no negative responses to the proposal. They just said, ‘We couldn’t get it past our junior members of staff.’ ”

Whatever their objections were, they could not have been about the quality of Barnes’s book — Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children is a deeply reported, scrupulously non-judgmental account of the collapse of the NHS service, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with former clinicians and patients. It is also a jaw-dropping insight into failure: failure of leadership, of child safeguarding and of the NHS. When describing the scale of potential medical failings, the clinicians make comparisons with the doping of East German athletes in the 1960s and 1970s and the Mid Staffs scandal of the 2000s, in which up to 1,200 patients died due to poor care. Other insiders discuss it in reference to the Rochdale child abuse scandal, in which people’s inaction led to so many children being so grievously let down.

Gids treats children and young people who express confusion — or dysphoria — about their gender identity, meaning they don’t believe their biological sex reflects who they are. Since the service was nationally commissioned by the NHS in 2009 it has treated thousands of children, helping many of them to gain access to gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists, known as “puberty blockers”, originally formulated to treat prostate cancer and to castrate male sex offenders, and also used to treat endometriosis and fertility issues. The service will shut this spring, following a deeply critical interim report in February 2022 by Dr Hilary Cass, a highly respected paediatrician who was hired by NHS England to look into the service. Dr Cass concluded that “a fundamentally different service model is needed”.

Gids should be an easy story to tell: many people have been trying to blow the whistle for a long time, but Anna Hutchinson, a clinical psychologist who used to work at the Tavistock Centre, told Barnes that those who spoke up were “always driven out one way or another”.

“It is really not normal for mental health professionals to talk to journalists as openly as they talked to me, and that shows how desperate they were to get the story out,” Barnes says. The clinicians struggled to be heard, just as Barnes later struggled to get her book out; some people prefer censorship to the truth if the latter conflicts with their ideology. And yet, concerns about the service had been in plain sight for years: in February 2019, a 54-page report compiled by Dr David Bell, then a consultant psychiatrist at the trust and the staff governor, was leaked to The Sunday Times. Dr Bell said Gids was providing “woefully inadequate” care to its patients and that its own staff had “ethical concerns” about some of the service’s practices, such as giving “highly disturbed and distressed” children access to puberty blockers. Gids, he concluded, “is not fit for purpose”. Many of Bell’s concerns had been expressed 13 years earlier in a 2006 report on Gids completed by Dr David Taylor — then the trust’s medical director — who described the long-term effects of puberty blockers as “untested and unresearched”.

“Taylor’s recommendations were largely ignored,” Barnes writes, and, in the decade and a half between Taylor and Bell’s reports, Gids would refer more than 1,000 children for puberty blockers, some as young as nine years old. It’s impossible to obtain a precise figure because neither the service nor the endocrinologists who prescribe the blockers could or would provide them to people who have asked for them, including Barnes. One figure they have given is that between 2014 and 2018, 302 children aged 14 or under were referred for blockers. It is generally accepted now that puberty blockers affect bone density, and potentially cognitive and sexual development. “Everything was there — everything. But the lessons were never learnt,” Barnes says.

Because this story touches on gender identity — one of the most sensitive subjects of our era — it has been difficult to get past the ideological battles to see the truth. Was the service helping children become their true selves, as its defenders contended? Or was it pathologising and medicalising unhappy kids and teenagers, as others alleged?

This reflects the fraught, partisan ways people see gender dysphoria: is it akin to being gay and therefore something to be celebrated?; or is it an expression of self-loathing, like an eating disorder, requiring therapeutic intervention? This has led to the current confusion over whether the planned conversion therapy ban should include gender as well as sexuality. “Conversion therapy” obviously sounds terrible, and politicians across the spectrum — from Crispin Blunt on the right to Nadia Whittome on the left — have loudly voiced their support for the inclusion of gender on the bill, which would thereby suggest that therapy for gender dysphoria is analogous to trying to “cure” someone of homosexuality.

But many clinicians argue that including gender would potentially criminalise psychotherapists exploring with their patients the reason for their confusion; after all, a doctor wouldn’t simply validate a bulimic’s desire to be thin — they’d try to find the cause of their inner discomfort and help them learn to love their body. Gids itself has long been conflicted about this complex issue. Dr Taylor wrote in 2005 that staff didn’t agree among themselves about what they were seeing in their patients: “were they treating children distressed because they were trans,” Barnes writes in Time to Think, “or children who identified as trans because they were distressed?”

How did the country’s only NHS clinic for gender dysphoric children not even understand what they were doing, and yet keep doing it? Thanks to Barnes and her book, we now know the answers to those questions, and many more.

Gids was founded in 1989 by Domenico Di Ceglie, an Italian child psychiatrist. His aim was to create a place where young people could talk about their gender identity with “non-judgmental acceptance”. Puberty blockers were available for 16-years-olds who wanted to “pause time” before committing themselves — or not — to gender-changing surgery. (Gids never offered that surgery, which is illegal in England for those under the age of 17, but it did refer patients to the endocrinology clinic, which provided the blockers. Blockers stop the body going through puberty, thereby making it easier — in some ways — for a person later to undergo the surgery.) In 1994 the service became part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which was known for its focus on talking therapies. By the early 2000s those working within Gids noted that certain gender activist groups — such as Mermaids, which supports “gender-diverse” kids and their families — were exerting an “astonishing” amount of influence on Gids, especially in regard to encouraging the prescribing of puberty blockers. Barnes writes in her book that Sue Evans, a nurse who worked at Gids at the time, asked a senior manager why Gids couldn’t just focus on talking therapy and not give out body-altering drugs. According to her and another clinician, Barnes writes, the senior manager replied, “It’s because we have this treatment here that people come.”

In around the year 2000, the trust asked Di Ceglie to draw up a report of who its patients were. The results were astonishing. Most of Gids’s patients were boys with an average age of 11. More than 25 per cent of them had spent time in care, 38 per cent came from families with mental health problems and 42 per cent had lost at least one parent, either through separation or death. Most had histories of other problems such as anxiety and physical abuse; almost a quarter had a history of self-harm. No conclusions were drawn and Gids continued to treat gender dysphoria as a cause, rather than a symptom, of adolescent distress.

It was a gender identity clinic in the Netherlands in the late Nineties that came up with the idea of giving blockers to children under 16, and in doing so furnished Gids with the justification it needed. The Dutch clinic said that 12-year-olds could be put on blockers if they had suffered from long-term gender dysphoria, were psychologically stable and in a supportive environment. This was known as the “Dutch protocol”. Pressure groups and some gender specialists encouraged the clinic to follow suit.

Dr Polly Carmichael took over as Gids’s director in 2009 and, in 2011, the service undertook an “early intervention study” to look at the effect of blockers on under-16s, because so little was known about their impact on children. Instead of waiting for the study results, Gids eliminated all age limits on blockers in 2014, letting kids as young as nine access them. At the same time referrals were rocketing, meaning clinicians had less time to assess patients before helping them access blockers. In 2009 Gids had 97 referrals. By 2020 there were 2,500, with a further 4,600 on the waiting list, and clinicians were desperately overstretched. “As the numbers seeking Gids’s help exploded around 2015, there was increased pressure to get through them. In some cases that meant shorter, less thorough assessments. Some clinicians have said there was pressure on them to refer children for blockers because it would free up space to see more children on the waiting list,” Barnes says.

Clinicians were seeing increasingly mentally unwell kids, including those who didn’t just identify as a different gender but as a different nationality and race: “Usually east Asian, Japanese, Korean, that sort of thing,” Dr Matt Bristow, a former Gids clinician, tells Barnes. But this was seen by Gids as irrelevant to their gender identity issues. Past histories of sexual abuse were also ignored: “[A natal girl] who’s being abused by a male, I think a question to ask is whether there’s some relationship between identifying as male and feeling safe,” Bristow says. But, clinicians point out, any concerns raised with their superiors always got the same response: that the kids should be put on the blockers unless they specifically said they didn’t want them. And few kids said that. As one clinician told Barnes: “If a young person is distressed and the only thing that’s offered to them is puberty blockers, they’ll take it, because who would go away with nothing?”

Then there was the number of autistic and same-sex-attracted kids attending the clinic, saying that they were transgender. Less than 2 per cent of children in the UK are thought to have an autism spectrum disorder; at Gids, however, more than a third of their referrals had moderate to severe autistic traits. “Some staff feared they could be unnecessarily medicating autistic children,” Barnes writes.

There were similar fears about gay children. Clinicians recall multiple instances of young people who had suffered homophobic bullying at school or at home, and then identified as trans. According to the clinician Anastassis Spiliadis, “so many times” a family would say, “Thank God my child is trans and not gay or lesbian.” Girls said, “When I hear the word ‘lesbian’ I cringe,” and boys talked to doctors about their disgust at being attracted to other boys. When Gids asked adolescents referred to the service in 2012 about their sexuality, more than 90 per cent of females and 80 per cent of males said they were same-sex attracted or bisexual. Bristow came to believe that Gids was performing “conversion therapy for gay kids” and there was a bleak joke on the team that there would be “no gay people left at the rate Gids was going”. When gay clinicians such as Bristow voiced their concerns to those in charge, they say it was implied that they were not objective because they were gay and therefore “too close” to the work. (Gids does not accept this claim.)

What if becoming trans is — for some people — a way of converting out of being gay? If a boy is attracted to other boys but feels shame about it, then a potential way around that is for him to identify as a girl and therefore insist he’s heterosexual. This possibility complicates the government’s plan — which has cross-party support — for including gender alongside sexuality in the bill to ban conversion therapy, if enabling a young person to change gender is, in itself, sometimes a form of conversion therapy.

I ask Barnes what she thinks and she answers with characteristic caution: “It’s a bit surprising that the NHS has commissioned one of the most experienced paediatricians in the country to undertake what appears to be an incredibly thorough review of this whole area of care, and not wait until she makes those final recommendations before legislating,” she says, weighing every word. (Dr Hilary Cass’s final review is due later this year.)

The sex ratio was also changing to a remarkable degree. When Di Ceglie started his gender clinic, the vast majority of his patients were boys with an average age of 11, and many had suffered from gender distress for years. By 2019-20, girls outnumbered boys at Gids by six to one in some age groups, especially between the ages of 12 to 14, and most hadn’t suffered from gender dysphoria until after the onset of puberty.

Some said this was simply because teenage girls felt more free to be open about their dysphoria. Some clinicians suspected there were other reasons. The clinicians Anna Hutchinson and Melissa Midgen worked at Gids and, after they left, wrotea joint article in 2020 citing a number of potential other factors: the increased “pinkification” and later “pornification” of girlhood; fear of sex and sexuality; social media; collapsing mental health services for adolescents, and so on. “It is important to acknowledge that girls and young women have long recruited their bodies as ways of expressing misery and self-hatred,” Hutchinson and Midgen wrote. And yet Gids’s response was to send these girls to endocrinology for puberty blockers.

The clinicians knew their patients were nothing like those in the Dutch protocol. The latter had been heavily screened, suffered from gender dysphoria since childhood and were psychologically stable with no other mental health issues. “Gids — according to almost every clinician I have spoken to — was referring people under 16 for puberty blockers who did not meet those conditions,” Barnes writes. The majority of children aged 11 to 15 referred to the clinic between 2010 and 2013 were put on blockers. The clinicians tried to reassure themselves by saying the blockers were just giving their patients time to think about what they wanted. They might even alleviate their distress. But in 2016 Gids’s research team presented the initial findings from its early intervention study, which looked at the effect of prescribing blockers to those under 16: although the children said they were “highly satisfied” with their treatment, their mental health and gender-related distress had stayed the same or worsened. And every single one of them had gone on to cross-sex hormones — synthetic testosterone for those born female, oestrogen for natal males. Far from giving them time to think, blockers seemed to put them on a pathway towards surgery. Clinicians were concerned that the service had abandoned NHS best practice. They repeatedly raised this with Carmichael and the executive team, but nothing changed. In just six months in 2018, 11 people who worked at Gids left due to ethical concerns. People who spoke up, such as David Bell and Sonia Appleby, the children’s safeguarding lead for the Tavistock trust, say they were bullied or dismissed. Appleby later won an employment tribunal case against the trust. Bell has said the trust threatened him with disciplinary action in connection with his activities as a whistleblower. He later retired.

Everything the whistleblowers tried to say has been borne out. A 2020 Care Quality Commission inspection of Gids rated the service “inadequate”, and pointed out that some assessments for puberty blockers consisted of only “two or three sessions” and that some staff “felt unable to raise concerns without fear of retribution”. Around the same time, the former Gids patient Keira Bell instigated a judicial review against the trust, arguing that at 16 she had been too young to understand the repercussions of being put on blockers, and that she bitterly regretted her transition. The High Court found in her favour that children are unable to give informed consent to puberty blockers. The Court of Appeal later overturned their verdict on the grounds that it should be up to doctors and not the court to determine competence to consent, but the damage was done: thanks to Bell’s case, it was now public knowledge how shambolic the service had become, unable to provide any data on, for example, how many children with autism they had put on blockers.

So what actually happened at Gids? And why did no one stop it? Barnes’s book suggests multiple credible factors. Activist groups from outside, such as Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence, came to exert undue influence on the service and would complain if they felt things weren’t being done their way. For example, Gendered Intelligence complained to Carmichael, the Gids director, when a clinician dared to express the view publicly that not all children with gender dysphoria would grow up to be transgender. In 2016 an expert in gender reassignment surgery warned Gids that putting young boys on puberty blockers made it more difficult for them to undergo surgery as adults, because their penis hadn’t developed enough for surgeons to construct female genitalia. Instead, surgeons had to use “segments of the bowel” to create a “neo-vagina”. But senior managers rejected calls from its clinicians to put this on a leaflet for patients and families. In the book, Hutchinson is quoted as saying, “I may be wrong, but I think Polly [Carmichael] was afraid of writing things down in case they got into Mermaids’s hands.”

Susie Green was at this point the chief executive of Mermaids and had taken her son, who had been on puberty blockers, to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery on his 16th birthday. In an interview, which is still on YouTube, Green laughingly recalls the difficulties surgeons had in constructing a vagina out of her child’s prepubescent penis. Green stepped down from Mermaids last year.

Money is suspected to have been another issue. When Gids became part of the Tavistock trust, it was such a minor player it wasn’t even in the main building. But by 2020-21, gender services accounted for about a quarter of the trust’s income. David Bell says this allowed the trust to be “blinkered”. The children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) possibly had similar blinkers. They were so overstretched it appears they were happy to offload as many kids as possible onto Gids, and then disregard what was actually happening there.

“It’s really striking how few people were willing to question Gids. As one clinician said to me, because it was dealing with gender, there was this ‘cloak of mystery’ around it. There was a sense of ‘Oh, it’s about gender, so we can’t ask the same questions that we would of any other part of the NHS. Such as: is it safe? Where’s the evidence? Where’s the data? And are we listening to people raising concerns?’ These are basic questions that are vital to providing the best care,” Barnes says.

And then there was the outside culture. Basic safeguarding failures at Gids seem to have accelerated from 2014 onwards, at the same time that there was a push for the rights of transgender people. Stonewall, having helped to secure equal marriage, had now turned its sights on the rights of trans people. Susie Green, at Mermaids, gave a TED talk that suggested taking her teenage son for a sex change operation was a parenting template to admire. Meanwhile, the TV networks weighed in. In 2014 CBBC aired a documentary, I Am Leo, about a 13-year-old female on puberty blockers who identifies as a boy — mainly, it seems, because of an abhorrence of dresses and long hair. In 2018 ITV showed the three-part drama Butterfly, about an 11-year-old boy whose desire to be a girl is expressed as a desire to wear dresses and make-up. Susie Green was the lead consultant on the show.

David Bell suggests that the Tavistock trust protected Gids “because they saw it as a way of showing that we weren’t crusty old conservatives; that we were up with the game and cutting-edge”. That the Tavistock clinic was briefly, in the 1930s, a place where homosexual men were brought to be “cured” probably also played a part in the trust’s embrace of gender ideology, as if it were an atonement for a past wrong.

As per Dr Cass’s suggestions, Gids will shut this spring and be replaced with regional hubs, where young people will be seen by doctors with multiple specialties. The obsession with gender, and the ensuing lack of intellectual curiosity at Gids about factors that might contribute to a person’s distress and sense of their identity will, hopefully, be gone.

On the one hand, it feels incredible that such a disaster happened. How did an NHS service medicalise so many autistic and same-sex-attracted young people, unhappy teenage girls and children who simply felt uncomfortable with masculine or feminine templates, with so little knowledge of the causes of their distress or the effects of the medicine? And how did Carmichael, still the director of Gids, suffer no repercussions, whereas those who tried to blow the whistle say they were bullied out of their jobs? On the other hand, it is a miracle that the information is now out. For too long, too many people have turned a blind eye to problems arising from gender ideology, including healthcare for gender dysphoric children — because they have been focused on trying to be on the right side of history, they refused to look at the glaring wrongs.

Barnes knows that some will be angry at her for having written the book. But she also knows that she had to write it: “There’s been this idea that the kind of treatment young people got at Gids — physical interventions — is safe treatment for all gender-distressed children,” she says. “But even among the clinicians working on the front line of this issue, there is no consensus about the best way to care for these kids. There needs to be debate about this, and it needs to come out of the clinic and into society, because this isn’t just about trans people — it’s bigger than that. It’s about children.”

[ Via: https://archive.is/Fv41w ]

==

Modern-day Lysenkoism.

[ultraviolet-divergence]

The group released approximately 6,000 crickets from bags hidden on their persons which they snuck through security just before a talk on the “dangers” of medical transition. They made sure to spread the crickets (which do not infest and pose no danger to humans) across the entire hall, in order to ensure the conference could be safely brought to an end. The speech was postponed and later speeches were cancelled.

[talesfromtheenchantedforest]

the great thing about medieval literature is that it returns us to a time when men were men and women were women, *insert gritty realism gif here*, featuring such important and eternal gendered characteristics such as

(M) Why Would I Learn To Think Critically When I Could Find a Random Damsel In The Woods To Tell Me What To Do

(F) Demands To Be Brought The Heads Of Her Enemies

(M, to F) Be Mean To Me, No, Meaner Than That

(F) Meticulous Maintenance Of Social Connections And Alliances Via Writing Letters

(M) Crying

(M) More Crying

(M) Even More Crying, While Being Held Tenderly By Brother In Arms

(F) Necromancy

(M) Meticulous Maintenance Of Social Connections And Alliances Via Mistaking Friend’s Identity, Attacking Him, Then Kissing And Making Up

(F) Expert Medical Practitioner

(M) Self-Care By Episodes Of Madness In The Woods

(F) Owner Of Haunted Castle