#and i have less links to deal with

[revehae]

wondering if i should post the fics as a series like i intended or just post them as i finish them, bc it would have been a series but there’s not really a theme connecting them. other than the fact that like 3/5 of the bg fics are stepcest

[nenoname]

stan twins the canon cptsd brothers i will always think about all your unaddressed issues that would make perfect plot fuel for your spinoff

and also the whole 'stan getting that poem by bill via a website which contrasts with bill getting one from the axolotl via a website' foreshadowing thing

like idk i would love something like su future but like more optimistic, aka not an accumulated breakdown that has to be mostly resolved off screen at the end :/// but something thats being kinda addressed throughout? (although would love to see one of them turn into a monster thats always fun lol)

stan having severe issues from his dad and those years of being homeless that we keep on getting more info on but never really getting confronted on (the drifter catalogue and tijuana incident...), him being completely alone for like twenty years when running the shack before soos comes along to the point that 1998 is noted as his low point, and him not really learning about bill+what he did to ford until ages after he killed him if he ever did get the full context

while i think amnesia and everyone seeing him as a hero actually helped with stan's 'i'm a worse version of my brother' thing its still a lingering issue too and we now got him being insecure over his own hands

ford being immediately thrown from 'being tortured by bill' to 'being stuck in the multiverse and being chased by bounty hunters constantly', him fully expecting himself to die when destroying bill, and him only now being safe for the first time in 30 years ....relatively safe, he's still in constant danger because of course he is

idk in the end the series wants them to be happy and they deserve it, its why i wasn't too worried about the book being like 'ooh bill is back!! and the book is haunting ford' thing cos i knew they'll be ok

[greatgoddyke]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[askthehylianchampion]

hero!! hero!! what is your relationship with the princess!! weve heard rumors that you two are romantically involved, would you care to confirm this for us?? *frantically writing in a notepad*

No! No! We are not involved like that!! It would be completely inappropriate due to my position and hers! She is completely above my station! I would not have much to offer to her!

Besides she is nearly three years younger than me and still a child. She reminds me more of my sister and I see our relationship more akin to that than anything else.

[ncat]

This next homebrew is on the edges of being upload-to-here ready but I've reached the point of "I have to outdo myself" that I've made a document big enough I genuinely do not know how I'll even upload it to tumblr.

[phoenixcatch7]

Man I am just SO CONFUSED. About the time line of this game.

No one is telling me how long links been gone! Or how long the botw-totk timeskip was! They all just started selling my stuff again lol. I'm going to have to get everything redyed!

Me: hey random stranger! Lore dump? You look like a lore dumper.

Kindly npc: why hullo there, link ^^! My, I haven't seen you in a while since the calamity ended! I was so worried when they said you and the princess had gone missing! But it's good to see you're well.

Me: aw, thanks. How long has it actually been tho.

Kindly npc: ^u^

[arolesbianism]

Doodle I did of my girl Juliet earlier

[waywardsalt]

linebeck is probably so god damn paranoid all of the time

[mamba052]

Current progress on a beholding painting I'm making, because I graduated from highschool 3 days ago and have two weeks vacation before I begin work, which means the adult thing to do is stay up late and make a painting dedicated to a fear god.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

i love breath of the wild but ngl its zelda's voice is so ridiculously annoying to me... girl stop telling me quest shit via telepathy i'm trying to find my 754th korok seed

[starpros-sunshine]

I can now do piracy on the TV and actually properly enjoy the films :3

[frozenambiguity]

Very long Initial thoughts and first impressions on the Caribert Archon Quest in the tags. Spoiler alert!!

[bluevveather]

Autistic spaces are getting so much more hostile towards people with low empathy, and it sucks

There was a subreddit I really liked, people were chill, and then there was a sudden influx of people making posts like ‘Autistic people have empathy! Saying we don’t makes us seem like monsters! Thats not a symptom!’ And people making posts explaining that no, actually, some of us do have low empathy got attacked and told they were wrong or ableist? And it sucks, because its just so hard to find a place to exist where you can be seen as not evil? I don’t know, it just hurts a lot to be told that

[great-and-small]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)

[sarcosmiiic]

PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND:

we, as fans, do not have a right to private information. anything shared with us on this is a privilege. please do not abuse it. the cc's could shut down and never talk about it if we overwhelm them.

also, please keep in mind that ONE HERMIT and THE ENTIRETY OF HERMITCRAFT are NOT THE SAME THING. the entire fandom is not 'ruined' or 'completely unsafe' because of the actions of one person.

PLEASE DO NOT ASSUME THAT THE OTHER HERMITS KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT WHATEVER'S GOING ON WITH ISKALL. this is not some big conspiracy, it's the consequences of one person's actions. they weren't hiding this from us, that's not how hermitcraft works, they truly didn't know. they probably knew as much as us about this, so making it an 'us against them' situation is immature and shortsighted.

ALSO, I AM BEGGING EVERYONE TO PLEASE NOT SENSATIONALIZE THIS. PLEASE DO NOT TURN HATING ISKALL INTO A MEME OR A JOKE.

mcyt'ers being revealed to be less-than-great people is not a rare thing, sadly, but i've seen it turned into a joke/meme/trend in other fandoms. this both minimalizes the actual people's/victims' struggles, makes the entire situation feel less serious than it is, especially to outsiders looking in, and makes everyone in the fandom look immature, petty, unable to take anything seriously, and genuinely harmful.

this server, fandom, and community are not dying, it is not ruined forever, this is one (major, i'm not trying to minimalize it) issue that we're currently dealing with. it will be okay. we will move on. this is not the beginning of the end. please calm down. i love this fandom, god bless all of you. <3

edit: doc has said on stream that we will likely get more information as time passes. like i said, this is a PRIVILEGE. we are not OWED information. please be grateful for what we're given, and POLITELY ask questions if you must. if a cc doesn't give you the answer you want, or doesn't answer at all, LEAVE THEM ALONE. THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO HARASS PEOPLE. the hermits are likely just as stressed out as us, if not probably more so, so please keep that in mind when contacting them.

don't freak out, we'll be okay, this is not the end of the world, nor is it the end of Hermitcraft. we will be okay.

second edit: please remember that (at least as far as we know) ISKALL AND STRESS WERE NOT KICKED OR BANNED. THEY LEFT OF THEIR OWN VOLITION.

ALSO!!! VERY IMPORTANT!!!

WE. DO. NOT. KNOW. EXACTLY. WHAT. HAPPENED.

PLEASE DO NOT ASSUME ANYTHING SIMPLY BASED OFF OF OTHER MCYT'ERS PAST ACTIONS/SCANDALS. WE DO NOT KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. WE MIGHT NOT EVER KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. WE NEED TO BE OKAY WITH THAT AND NOT DRAW OUR OWN CONCLUSIONS.

TWITTER LINKS TO VICTIM RESPONSES:

https://twitter.com/Kasszi_/status/1860670647946604985

https://twitter.com/emoslab_/status/1860697161245323559

[harfblarf]

Also, countries with universal healthcare that aren't the UK and Canada exist...?? You can't "prove" universal healthcare is an inherently bad idea with a sample size of... two. And you especially can't do so without examining the underlying reasons for the issues in those samples??

Anyway I got VERY passionate about this topic, including talking about the common problems in universal healthcare in other countries, similar existing issues in the United States' private healthcare, the relative costs of private vs public healthcare, and how dismissing the issues of other countries' universal healthcare is actually harmful to the campaign for universal healthcare in the US, so I'm putting my long post under a Read More. With headers for each section!

I'll repeat here what I say later in the post, too: it's not an issue of "why should I pay for some random's medical treatment?", it's "why should I pay my government to take care of its citizens?" The provision of services is one of two reasons a population will cooperate with its government. (The other is the threat of violence.) If you are okay with the government spending billions and billions of dollars on a military force and speculative military technology and making weapons that could kill literally all human beings on the planet, all in the name of protecting the land and physical well-being of its citizens from hypothetical future threats, the idea of the government spending money to protect its citizens from very immediate and present threats to their physical well-being via medical care should not be so appalling.

> Universal Healthcare in Other Countries <

Now, I only did a little preliminary searching, but the common trends I saw in searching "[country] healthcare issues" for other nations with universal healthcare were typically: poor integration of technology at the current time, costs, and low numbers of medical staff due to harsh and unappealing labor conditions.

> Healthcare in the Current United States <

The first and last points are already major issues in the United States. Technology integration is a huge undertaking; locating, organizing, and digitizing decades of physical patient records while balancing patient privacy and the inherent need to use third-party (usually produced by for-profit private companies) software to do so, all while also retaining access to both physical and digital records so the medical centers can continue to function, is grueling and expensive.

Private healthcare does not fix any of this.

Huge portions of the medical field in the US are also wildly inhumane to their workers, especially emergency workers. Burnout and physical consequences are common. This is also not something private healthcare fixes. Actually, it complicates treatment and patient intake, as information like which private insurance they have and if they have it at all bloats overhead and results in payments going to collections or going unpaid entirely. Really the only medical positions that are remotely cushy are highly educated specialists, who still deal with high patient load because the number of USAmericans who can afford to pay through the nose for several degrees-- since our educational system is private at the university level-- is exceedingly small. Since medical students are notoriously badly treated and subjected to grueling and miserable courseloads, it is also not very appealing, further shrinking the pool of prospective doctors.

Private healthcare not only does not fix any of this, it is also exacerbated by private higher education.

> Healthcare in the United States: Private VS. Public <

Carrying on: Cost IS an issue relating directly to the public versus private healthcare decision... but the cost exists either way, it is purely a question of who is paying it. I could simply argue that public healthcare is a cost the US is more than equipped to pay, given its exorbitant and often pointless military spending, but let's actually set that aside. I am instead going to argue that private healthcare is already creating costs for the US government, and it's a way shittier deal than public healthcare.

If healthcare is private, cost is concentrated on those most in need of help, which in the economic system of America inevitably results in loss of life, as well as more indirect consequences, like people becoming disabled due to inadequate care and thus being forced out of the workforce, and so on. These consequences directly impact the economy: reduced workers (including experienced and skilled workers), reduced monetary flow, and unnecessarily increasing the expense of public welfare services. People die and require funerary services; the sick continue about their daily lives and jobs out of necessity due to the lack of resources and treatment, leading to increased spread of viral and bacterial diseases (we saw with COVID how much a sick population stresses normal function and increases cost of living); people die alone and without treatment in their homes, leading to mandatory police investigations and often crime scene cleanup crews to handle biohazardous materials from decomposing bodies; people are rendered unhoused-- by developed disability, medical costs, or even simply inadequate medical worker's compensation during their illness or injury--and increase the costs of public services like shelters and food banks, while the government typically responds to unhoused populations with acts of institutional violence that cost substantial amounts of money (development of hostile architecture is frequently paid for with grants; installation of such hostile architecture in cities is often government-funded and more expensive than non-hostile designs; police action to evict and dismantle encampments of the unhoused tends to be expensive and cruel, paying for specialized equipment as well as armaments like tear gas and the budget for the police department itself).

If healthcare is public and free, cost is distributed, and the most vulnerable populations have better (if still not perfect) odds of receiving adequate care, saving lives and bodies. Loss of life and ability is decreased. Fewer people have to reinjure themselves or exacerbate their illnesses for fear of the cost and inaccessibility of treatment. "Why should I pay for some random person's healthcare?", I hear the conservative in you cry out, indignant over anything that feels like an imposition on your rights. Well, let me reframe that. What you are actually asking is "Why should I pay my government to take care of its citizens?", which I would argue is rather the point of the government, at least ideally. Laws and their enforcement, the military, infrastructure like roads and the USPS-- they're all services the government performs for its citizens in order to justify its existence. We need and thus accept the government and its authority because, at least in theory, these are valuable services that keep its citizens, us, safe and comfortable. (The relative success of these services and the theories behind them are more debatable.) If you believe that it is better to live in a place-- city, state, nation, planet, any scale at all-- where people with authority over you leave people to rot rather than provide for their needs, just because that's simpler or cheaper, I have no idea how to talk to you. I cannot find an angle to convince someone who prefers a world of greater suffering and arbitrary subjugation that maybe that isn't a great idea.

Additionally, on a more concretely pragmatic note, costs are hiked by privatization and restriction. If companies that produced, say, medical equipment like MRI machines, medication like insulin, and supportive medical equipment like auto-injectors/blood pressure cuffs/wheelchairs were disallowed from being for-profit and forbidden exclusive rights over life-saving technology (via their patents), costs for these things would drop.

But fine, maybe you value the right to intellectual property and profit over the preservation of human life. Your hyperindividualism is concerning, but even neglecting the private companies squeezing profit out of the sick with the actual equipment and medicine: Private insurance also earns a profit. They charge more than they pay out to the insured. That's their entire business model, and they have done their best to reduce the inherent high-risk high-reward nature of it by hiking insurance costs and minimizing the payouts, as well as complicating the system to make it necessary for a patient to put in excruciating hours (days and weeks, with wait times and phone tag, and occasionally months when it escalates to legal proceedings) of work to get the coverage they are actually owed. While sick and hurt. Cruelty of that aside, the overall cost of insurance is incomparable to the cost of the actual medical treatments. Government-funded universal healthcare is simpler (reducing overhead), does a better job of guaranteeing actual payment to the doctors and hospitals, is less expensive per individual because it doesn't have to turn a profit, and can lighten the overall cost of medical treatment in its area because adequate medical access early and consistently reduces the incidence of more severe medical problems with higher costs.

> Why Dismissing the Issues of the NHS and Other Negative Examples of Universal Healthcare is Not Helpful <

I'll be using the issues of the NHS specifically as an example, but these points are mostly broadly applicable. This is also the section largely directed at people who already support universal healthcare.

The problems with dismissing the flaws of the NHS and arguing that they're preferable to the current status are manifold, but firstly: it's uncompelling. You approach someone who has only seen twenty headlines complaining about the shit wait times of the NHS, and you go "but it's not a big deal actually". This is not convincing. The wait times sound horrible, they think. THEY don't have to wait that long to see the doctor. THEY would rather pay more so they can see their doctor sooner. And sure, it's only "non-urgent" stuff that has to wait-- which isn't even entirely true, but I'll get to that later-- but that can still be painful, and unpleasant. You say to them, "even a lot of discomfort and waiting is better than the current system", but they shake their heads, because for them it isn't. For them, even if medical stuff can be annoyingly expensive or maybe even stressful, at least they know they can make their appointments and go when they want treatment. Even if you elaborate, try to explain, "our system is killing the poor, our system is cruel, many people cannot afford any treatment at all", to someone who is not in that position, this is intangible, and the blame easily foisted onto the victim. "They should have planned better. They should have gotten a better job. They should have put more effort into their education. How did they even get sick? How did they even get hurt? Maybe it was their own carelessness. Why is their carelessness my problem?" You tell someone to accept something that sucks for the greater good, most of the time they're gonna wrinkle their nose and go "whose greater good? I don't wanna." Not even out of lack of compassion, necessarily. People just can't magically project their perspective into something they've never experienced, and instinctively want to protect themselves.

Secondly, the problems of the NHS are very real, and also result in deaths and horrific suffering. Dismissing the issues as "a bit of a wait" sets us up to repeat those mistakes. The extended wait times of the NHS are YEARS, and urgency is decided at the whim of the first person you talk to about your problem. Crippling chronic issues can be left untreated for years because your doctor didn't think it sounded like a big deal; a problem determined "minor" without full assessment could be the early symptom of something fatal; biases in the attending staff get your problem labeled as minor and non-urgent, or even nonexistent, because you are a woman, or a person of color, or trans; because the doctor isn't familiar with your condition, they miss it, and you are left floating in a waitlist with no visible end date; genuinely minor problems escalate because you are left untreated for years; your doctor is given utter control over your treatment and referrals to specialists, subject to their entirely human whims, their easily flawed judgement. Scores of trans people die in the UK each year on waiting lists or while fighting to get past bigoted local doctors who refuse to provide adequate care, many to suicide from the sheer hopelessness of ever getting the treatment necessary to live in any sort of comfort or stability. Abigail Thorn has a detailed and of course fantastically presented video on her experience trying to receive gender affirming care through the NHS. This issue is not exclusive to trans people. It would still matter even if it was, but it isn't. The comments are full of people talking about how their disorders, disabilities, illnesses, and injuries have been failed by the NHS. Ignoring those people and their experiences only communicates that you either really HAVEN'T done the necessary research to promote functional universal health care, or that you don't care about the consequences of those failings.

Thirdly, accepting the premise that universal healthcare means accepting the flaws of the NHS is shooting yourself in the foot for no reason. You weaken your position in the debate, smear the reputation of universal healthcare, and work within a negative framework, when you do not have to. Understanding the problems of the NHS and other countries should not result in surrendering to the inevitability of suffering. Instead, it should result in saying "and we can do better than that". The issues of the NHS are not absolutely inherent to the basic premise "the government funds healthcare so individuals within that country do not have to front the costs themselves". It's a byproduct of the implementation that government chose and the specific circumstances of the United Kingdom's infrastructure, politics, and culture. Bare minimum, the response to bringing up the NHS should be "and you think we can't do any better than the fucking British?", and ideally you should be able to accurately identify some of the issues in the UK's implementation of universal healthcare and point to potential solutions the US could implement, discuss the differences between the US and UK which will change how a universal health care system performs, or cite someone who has done so.

If you're going to advocate for something, don't undermine it in the same breath.