#for the bioethics stuff

[ramblingandpie]

HOKAY SO On the "Pie watches DS9 for the first time" tour, tonight I'm going to ramble about something that's been in my head since I watched it, just, stuff percolating.

Major spoilers for season 3 episode 13, "Life Support," under the cut.

So part of the reason I am loving DS9 is Julian Bashir. They really did say like "Ok take some of Pie's favorite tropes and also favorite areas of academia and roll them up into one (1) repressed twink." And I love that for me.

So for those who don't know me IRL or, like, well over the internet, I fucking love bioethics. It is my jam. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn't even know that "clinical bioethicist" is a job that some people can do until I was in my mid-30's and I don't have enough formal philosophy training to get into a good bioethics grad program. I am an attorney and I work in healthcare regulation, which is close enough, I guess. I've written huge research projects about the history of the eugenics movement on aspects of modern health law. I'm also an MPH student. If I win the lottery and can then not worry about money but just do what I love, that's probably what I'd go back to school for. So, like, when I say that bioethics is my jam, I also am not just being an armchair philosopher. Am I the level of a clinical bioethicist? No. Have I done full bioethics consult simulations? Yes.

And, yes, I do have some spoilers for Dr. Bashir And Bioethics And Maybe Why He Cares So Much About Patient Autonomy and hot damn they really did take my favorite tropes.

AND HO BOY did this episode give me a lot to chew on.

Basically, there are 4 "pillars" of clicial bioethics. Patient autonomy, beneficience (the benefits of treatment), nonmaleficience (do no harm), and justice (what's right for everyone involved [not just, like, patient family, but also things like medical supply rationing]). Patient autonomy is HUGE and IMPORTANT and the biggest thing is like... allowing patients to make their own choices with as much information as the patient can have, even if that choice is "I don't want to know." Which presents difficulties. BUT here, Bareil was like ok yes doc tell me everything ok yep I'm choosing to take this course of action that means I'll probably die. Because it's important to me and my values. Which. LEGIT.

AND THEN I got worried because my man Bashir was like I have concerns but it's your call, dude. AND THEN HE WAS LIKE HEY WINN I NEED YOU TO LIE TO THE PATIENT????

NO??? Don't lie to the patient, Bashir! I'm so disappointed!

... UNTIL he was like "Because you benefit politically if he dies you're not a neutral informant so fuck you." And then I was like OH SNAP!!!! Because! One of the ultimate goals is to try to distill what the PATIENT wants, not what the folks around them (who might have ulterior motives) want!!!! So ok yes in that case you might be like "Hey I need you to balance what you did by doing this other thing so that the patient can look at the situation as a whole without a third party trying to get something out of THE PATIENT'S DEATH."

So basically that episode was like crack to me THE END.

[chialattea]

NYOOOOOOOOO I HAVENT STUDIED ENOUGH DAMNITFTTT THE EXAM IS IN (checks the time) EIGHT HOURS AAAAAAAGH

[noblemalone]

This is not about DAV this is just about solas and the bio ethics course i took in university and why i disagree with him

And i think it begins with... Acknowledging or at least discussing Solas' skewed self-perception. Solas insists he is not a God, just a Man. He says he is no more important or special than anyone else, and yet... He believes he has the authority to change the fabric of the world, right his wrongs in a way that will prove deadly for many, without their assent or input. And sure you could say that that's true of the inquisitor too, of any Leader of a Movement... But idk for me there's a paternalistic quality there paired with a myopic hypocrisy... And if i were to view him thru a lens appropriate to his context, where so many people's lives are at the whim of rulers and leaders, would i be kinder to him? That's why Sera is such a good foil to him...

But at least the kings claim the Divine Right of Kings as reasoning for their ability to make those kinds of decisions, right? At least Gods acknowledge they are Special and Above and that Gives Them The Right. I have to wonder, if Solas sees himself as typical, average, just a man, how does he justify his plan? Is it just the Utilitarian idea that the Goodness of tearing down the veil will outweigh the death and suffering it causes? It must be it must be that for him to believe he is Just a Man and also In The Right, right?

Like... The narrative my prof used was, imagine you could end all suffering, bring about a utopian world of joy, but to do so, you had to assign all suffering forever to one child. Everyone else gets to live happy fulfilling lives but that child who is whole innocent must, by necessity, suffer and only suffer, forever. I think Solas would unequivocally agree that that child is a necessary sacrifice.

But is tearing down the fade a guaranteed end to suffering? Or just an end to the world Solas finds himself out of step with, one he personally does not find appealing. Was it better then, or just different? Better for who? And after a thousand years of wandering and dreaming and reminiscing, is his judgement not clouded by nostalgia? If he is no god but mere man, does he not suffer from imperfection of memory? And if it was better, what gives him the right?

And there's that thing where like.... I cant for the life of me find it but it's about abortion but i feel it applies here... Like, if we nuked Australia today and killed all Australians, that would be Wrong and Bad... But if we went back in time before anyone ever lived in australia and blew it the fuck up, that would be fine right because there would Be No Australians to deprive of land or life, right? Because they were never born because Australia didn't exist. Like... It's wrong to take a life but there's nothing wrong with removing the possibility of life from some theoretical person who wont have it yk... Like

I think this is a more apt comparison than the trolley problem when it comes to Solas. If we take the Australia thing, flip it twist it... Is it ok to deprive some people of the life they know so that some others may have a life better than they currently know? Like, Solas is the only one who knows what everyone else is missing, hes the only one who knows it could be better does he really owe it to the unaware to bring things back to the way it was? If we could create Australia would we owe it to the potential Australians to do that?

And i guess the black box here or the the the missing piece is how the Spirits on the other side of the veil factor into this. My own personal bias is not to value them as highly as the humanoids (dwarf elf human qunari etc) who are our point of view reference characters and most similar to the people i know and think about in my own life. And how does a spirit of mischief or justice or pride or wisdom or whatever, how does it stack up? Are they owed a lifting of the veil because they are as full and sentient as humanoids? Or are they mere elements of ourselves? How do fuckin souls or whatever part of us wlaks the fade when we dream, how do they factor in?

Are the spirits in the fade the children we've condemned to suffering, not for a utopia but just for a status quo? And even if they are, is it fair to make the masses who have no idea or choice pay the price to tear down the veil? Is there no way to slowly thin it, to quell the angry spirits with a slow fade (haha pun get it)?

Like I'm not a dragon age scholar I'm not 100% certain of what exactly the danger of tearing down the veil is other than all the demons that will kill ppl and the general unrest and violence that will happen as things reset to how it was before... And even then how long will it take for that to happen? If no one dies anymore will those who survive have to live for all eternity remembering their own Before, the familiar life they had and how it was upended to fulfill some guy's expectation of what "Better" is? Like is their suffering worth it? Is subjecting them to short term suffering for a future you never asked them if they wanted worth it?

And like... How much can you respect them or care for them or see them as equals if you never asked them? Its condescending, I think, to decide that what you want, the history only you know, is objectively Better for Everyone and I just...

I think it all boils down to... One of the things i value most, the thing that to me is a direct result of respect, is autonomy. And i just cant square how Solas could say he respects people, sees himself as one of them and not above them, if he is willing to impose his will upon them like ... Perhaps it is the trolley problem. Allow people to scrape by, but they are free within their oppressive system, or free them from their oppressive system by forcing them into a new reality that is more familiar, comfortable, and better to you.

I think if Solas really wanted to atone for what he did, putting up the veil, he would find a way to Hurt People Less. He would sacrifice himself. Or maybe instead of of of doing what he thinks is best, he'd give the elves of today the tools and opportunities to make their own decisions and seek their own liberation...

Or maybe he just cares about the spirits more than the people on our side of the veil. After all, maybe he relates to them more...

Anyway... Yeah i just... Solas is a great guy he makes great points i don't doubt his heart is in the right place but i think he's... He's too proud. He's got too much of an ego and it makes him paternalistic and that, for me personally and my morals and values, is something I can't sit with something I dont agree with. Maybe I think the freedom to choose is more important than freedom from suffering.

Yeah i think that's it.

[kaunisbaby]

it makes my blood pressure rise every time i have a fight with my sister bc her piece of shit boyfriend who i loathe and despise radicalized her and now she thinks like a fascist

[jeans-marrow]

Ma'am he would not practice science in an ethical way.

[antiterf]

Its kind of ridiculous how difficult it is to find critical intersex literature if you don't know where to look.

That said, here are frequently cited things I've found. For the one's that are behind paywalls, I have a Google Drive folder set up to hold them for access. The only things I leave behind a paywall are books by individual authors. They are not organized at all, I'm sorry.

Intersex Variations Glossary by InterACT

Narrative Symposium: Intersex—Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics (NIB) Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2015.— Trigger warning for intersex genital mutilation (IGM), sexual assault, and medical trauma—it's honestly a lot but incredibly important. (Drive)

A human rights investigation into the medical "normalization" of intersex people - A report of a public hearing by the Human Rights Commission of the City & County of San Francisco

Surgical Progress Is Not the Answer to Intersexuality - Cheryl Chase. - TW for IGM and images of genitalia (Drive)

The Intersex Roadshow, a blog of Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello - Costello is an intersex trans man and tries to bridge the gap between trans and intersex issues

Beyond Binary Sex and Gender Ideology - Cary Grabriel Costello - Chapter 12 of The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Body and Embodiment (Drive)

Transgender and intersex: theoretical, practical, and artistic perspectives (book/textbook) (Drive)

Intersex: Stories and Statistics from Australia (Book) (Open Access)

Fixing sex: intersex, medical authority, and lived experience (Book)

The harms of medicalisation: intersex, loneliness and abandonment (Open Access Article)

Intersex: cultural and social perspectives (Open Access Article)

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) - Technical Note on the Human Rights of Intersex People. Basically, if you want an easy way to say that doctors are going against human rights by performing IGM.

An experimental philosophical bioethical study of how human rights are applied to clitorectomy on infants identified as female and as intersex (Open Access Article) - People were more likely to support the same surgery on infants labeled as intersex than they were on infants labeled as female.

Caught in the Gender Binary Blind Spot: Intersex Erasure in Cisgender Rhetoric by Hida Viloria - About how cisgender often doesn't accurately express the experiences intersex people have. Costello, mentioned earlier with Intersex Roadshow, coined Ipsogender for this reason.

Introduction for Intersex Activism - A guide for allies

Sex, Science, and Society: Reckonings and Responsibilities for Biologists (Open Access Article)

Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis by Georgiann Davis - TW for medical trauma

Spectacles and Scholarship: Caster Semenya, Intersex Studies, and the Problem of Race in Feminist Theory by Zine Magubane (Drive)

Owning Endosex Privilege and Supporting the Intersex Community: WPATH, Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), and Sex Variant Bodies by Margo Schulter

The Spectrum of Sex by Hida Viloria and Dr. Maria Nieto

A long way to go for LGBTI equality from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights - Before the UK left the EU

If anyone wants to add, feel free! This was the non-medicalized stuff I had saved in Zotero, and definitely not all that's out there.

[is-the-post-reliable]

I wanted to practice media literacy, but something that keeps coming up is reaffirming to trust what a majority of scientists and doctors believe rather than the fringe ones who may be trying to sell you something. And I agree with that, but I keep getting this bad feeling in the back of my mind because, well, I remember learning about how a lot of different scientific fields are based in ableism, racism, misogyny, etc. Like, for example, a majority of doctors in the US are in favour of invasive and traumatizing surgeries on intersex infants to "fix" them, while intersex adults advocate against these surgeries.

Will this come up in the later courses and discussions on media literacy? Stuff like, trusting the scientific method even if the general consensus is scewed due to being a part of an oppressive system? Thank you ☆

hi! so first of all, I want to start by saying this is probably outside of the scope of this blog to definitively answer - this kind of issue could be debated forever. Also, I want to clarify that I’m not trying to give a ‘course’ here, I’m not a teacher in any way, I’m just some guy who likes fact checking

So with that in mind, I think we should definitely acknowledge that scientific communites are made up of people, who all have their own biases. Social beliefs absolutely have, and will continue, to affect our scientific understanding. That being said, I don’t think that bias is inherent to the scientific method - in actuality, it’s the opposite. When biases affect the research, that’s bad science, which is exactly what media literacy and scientific literacy helps us distinguish. Essentially, I don’t think that these biases are a reason to not practice media literacy. Media literacy is what helps us to think critically about these things.

To use your own example, surgical intervention on intersex infants was based on little data, and became the normalised ‘treatment’ before any rigorous studies were done. It’s the introduction of proper scientific method in medical care that has helped to change our understanding of surgical intervention, and is now pushing to limit surgeries on intersex infants.

From the American Journal of Bioethics: ‘However, the main empirical premises behind this approach, namely, that significant psychosocial benefits would in fact accrue to the child because of early surgery and that these benefits would, moreover, reliably outweigh the associated risks of physical and mental harm, were never subjected to rigorous testing (Creighton and Liao Citation2004; Liao et al. Citation2019). Rather, standard practice in this area became entrenched and institutionalized long before the advent of modern evidence-based medicine (Diamond and Beh Citation2008; Garland and Travis Citation2020a; Dalke, Baratz, and Greenberg Citation2020) as well as key developments in bioethics and children’s rights (Brennan Citation2003; Reis Citation2019; Alderson Citation2023; Gheaus Citation2024).‘

[highprettybabyy]

Seeing Red

Part 7 - Day One

jenna ortega x fem!reader apocalypse au

summary: how it started

warnings: enemies to lovers, typical apocalypse stuff, violence, blood, zombies, gore, maybe angst... some fluff...

AN: anyone else really craving a hug?

word count: 3k

Part 6

—//—

You’d been doodling in the corner of your notebook.

Some meaningless shapes. A half-finished triangle. Your mind was only half on the lecture. Bioethics. Something about organ trafficking and patient consent. People around you were half-asleep, texting, sipping iced coffees, taking notes like any of it mattered.

It was just another Thursday.

Until it wasn’t.

The speakers cracked overhead. It wasn’t a scheduled announcement. You didn’t even look up until the voice came through - distorted, urgent.

“All students, please proceed in an orderly fashion to the exits. Classes are cancelled for today.”

A murmur rippled through the room. The professor blinked, confused, then chuckled nervously and reached for his phone.

“This must be a drill,” he said. “Let me just-”

He paused mid-sentence. You’ll never forget the way his brow furrowed when he lifted the phone to his ear. He didn’t put it on speaker. But you still heard the screaming.

All of you did.

Raw, high, agonising - the kind of sound you only hear when someone knows they’re going to die.

Every pen stopped moving. Every breath in the hall caught.

Then a shadow passed across the giant glass window next to the door.

One. Then two more.

You didn’t understand what you were seeing until the third one stopped and reached for the door handle.

That was the moment.

Not the screaming. Not the announcement.

The door handle.

You didn’t know her name - the girl who screamed first. But her voice was the spark that set the world on fire.

The lecture hall erupted. Desks slammed. Bags were dropped. People ran. Someone tried to shove through the side exits. Others climbed over chairs, knocking laptops and coffees to the floor. The professor shouted something - but it was already too late.

The first one pushed through the door. Its mouth was open. Its arm twitched. You saw its shirt - stained red. Blood caked across its collar. Its fingers were black at the tips.

Another one leapt - it wasn’t slow. Not like the movies. It was fast, and it didn’t hesitate. It hit the girl who screamed and dragged her down like she weighed nothing.

You saw her ankle twist, the way her fingers clawed at the carpet. You saw her disappear under teeth and blood and limbs.

And then someone pulled you.

You don’t even know who.

Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was survival.

You ran.

The back doors were jammed. Bodies crowded the hallway. Some students fought - shoved desks, blocked the door to buy time for others. You caught a glimpse of a boy from your chem lab holding a chair like a weapon.

You never saw him again.

You sprinted past a girl trying to call her mum. Her phone was shaking in her hands. She was whispering “pick up, pick up, pick up” like a prayer.

Someone shoved you. You fell against the wall. Got up. Kept moving.

You didn’t stop running until you hit the parking lot.

You don’t remember screaming. But your throat was raw when you reached your car.

The keys were in your front right pocket. You’d always carried them there, never liked bags.

It saved your life.

You don’t know how you made it onto the road. The cars in front of the university were already backed up. Horns blared. Someone crashed through the security gate at the staff exit. You followed.

You were crying. You didn’t even notice.

Blood on your sleeve. Wasn’t yours. You still don’t know whose it was.

You drove home.

Your hands never stopped shaking on the wheel.

You didn’t even remember taking turns.

One second you were on the motorway, going twenty over the limit with your hazard lights blinking like it meant anything, the next you were pulling into your street - too fast, too sharp, tyres skidding against the pavement with a shriek that should’ve woken the dead.

But the street was quiet.

Not peaceful. Wrong.

You slammed the car into park and stumbled out, still in your trainers, backpack half open. Your voice was already raw from screaming, and your legs had turned to jelly, but your front door was only a few steps away.

The driveway was empty. No one else had come back yet. No sign of your mum’s car. No sign of your dad’s keys on the hook inside the foyer. Just the silence.

The kind that hums in your ears when something is missing.

You locked the door behind you out of instinct - then again, twice more.

You checked the kitchen. The lights still worked. You turned them back off. Sat at the table for a second. Just one.

And then you started moving.

You don’t know what told you to act so fast. You didn’t think it through - not logically. You just knew. Something had snapped in you. Something ancient and cold and sharp, like it had been sitting under your skin for years waiting for the world to prove you right.

You raided every drawer in the house.

You found a torch. Matches. Batteries. A toolbox.

You pulled the mattress off your bed and dragged it into the hall, barricading the windows with chairs and duct tape and bookshelves until your arms ached.

You emptied out your closet and stuffed a duffel bag full of canned food and protein bars and water purifiers. Things you didn’t even know you had until you started tearing the house apart.

You called your sisters. No answer. You called again.

Then your mom.

Then your dad.

Then every one of them again.

You stopped when the signal cut out completely.

You sat on the stairs and stared at your dead phone like it had betrayed you.

It wasn’t even night yet.

-

The sun went down and the silence got worse.

Not quieter. Not softer.

Just… deeper. Like the house was swallowing sound whole.

You’d left one lamp on in the kitchen. Just one. You couldn’t bring yourself to sit in total darkness, not after what you’d seen, but even that pale yellow light made the windows feel like targets. So you covered them. All of them. Towels. Cardboard. Sheets. Paint. Anything that would block the view in or out.

The second you were done, you realised how hot the house had become. No air moving. No hum of electronics. Just your own breathing, shaky and fast, and the occasional distant sound outside that made your fingers twitch around the kitchen knife you still hadn’t put down.

You tried to eat.

Just a granola bar.

It felt like eating sand.

You paced. Counted the number of canned items in the cupboard. Organised them by expiry date. Counted again. It didn’t help.

You tried the radio.

Static.

You tried the phone again.

No signal.

You sat on the floor, back against the hallway wall, knife still in your lap, and just breathed. In. Out. In. Out.

You counted that too.

By the time the sun was fully down, you’d already stopped crying. Your body had nothing left to give.

And still - you didn’t sleep.

You couldn’t.

You sat there all night, gripping a kitchen knife like it was a lifeline, flinching at every groan of wood and every gust of wind. Every now and then, something passed by outside. A silhouette. A shuffle. The sound of slow feet against asphalt. A knock.

You didn’t check the window.

You didn’t move.

You just listened.

-

You didn’t realise you’d fallen asleep until the sound of birds woke you.

Not many. Just one or two. Cautious chirps somewhere beyond the barricaded window, like they were checking if the world was still there.

You sat up slowly, every joint aching, your body stiff from hours spent curled against the wall. The kitchen knife had slipped from your lap at some point in the night. You found it beside your thigh, dried sweat making your skin stick to the floorboards.

The lamp had died.

You blinked into the dim morning light and didn’t move for a long time.

There were no screams outside. No sirens. No helicopters overhead. Just an eerie, unnatural calm that made your skin prickle.

You weren’t dead.

And that meant something.

Eventually, you dragged yourself to the kitchen, filled a glass with water from the tub, and choked it down like it was medicine. It tasted metallic and strange.

You didn’t look in the mirror.

Not yet.

Instead, you sat at the table and pulled out your notebook - the one you’d used in class. Half the pages were still blank. You stared at the empty lines, then slowly turned it sideways and drew a rough layout of your house. Then the street. The surrounding blocks. The nearest supermarket. The hardware store. The pharmacy.

You marked all of them.

Then you made a list.

Reinforce the doors

Secure windows (downstairs priority)

Food

Water

Yes - right. Water. You halted what you were doing and sprinted to the bathroom, you plugged the bathtub and let it fill up, using that time to gather every single container you could find in your house to fill it up with water too. Glasses, bottles, mugs, pots, bins, anything and everything was now dedicated to hold water.

When everything held the sacred liquid of life - you sat back down.

Find batteries

Find solar power manuals

WEAPONS

Don’t die

You underlined the last one twice.

You tore out the page and taped it to the wall.

Then you exhaled. Just once.

-

It had been twelve days.

Twelve days of counting every meal. Twelve days of drinking from the tub. Twelve days of silence so complete, you started to forget what other voices sounded like.

The house was airtight. Sealed. Fortified. Trapped.

You’d eaten your last can of beans the night before. You hadn’t wanted to. You’d stared at the label for an hour, trying to make it wait one more day. But in the end, you’d caved.

You’d cleaned the can out with your fingers.

You were starving.

So you decided to leave.

You wrapped your forearms in newspaper covered with duct tape. Padded your chest with rolled-up magazines. Duct-taped those too. It looked stupid. You didn’t care.

You didn’t have any real weapons.

So you snuck out to the garden shed.

The door creaked, a long, rusty groan that made your skin crawl.

Inside: an old metal pipe. A shovel. A hammer. A rusted crowbar. A garden fork.

You took the crowbar and hammer. Tied the garden fork to your belt with a broken extension cord. You didn’t want to use them. But you would.

Your backpack had two bottles of water. An empty lunchbox. Some plastic bags. A few bandages. A towel.

And rocks. A whole pocket full of small rocks - collected from between the pavers in your yard.

You opened the front door slowly.

The world had died.

Your neighbourhood looked just like it had before - except the air felt thicker. The wind smelled like rust. And the bodies that had once been neighbours now stood crooked and twitching in the street.

Dozens of them.

You couldn’t tell who they were - most of them. Faces were too far gone. Clothes, too stained. One of them wore a jacket that looked like your uncle’s. You didn’t look twice.

They weren’t moving much. Just swaying in place. Jerky. Aimless. They seemed to gather outside though, your neighbourhood wasn't that populated, so either these are migrated zombies or they tend to just - wander outside? Who could be sure, you spent the last 2 weeks in quarantine.

But when you tossed the first rock - high, far, straight into the porch light three houses down - the sound of breaking glass cracked through the air like a gunshot.

They turned.

Their heads jerked toward the noise. Three of them stumbled in its direction. Two others followed. Then five.

You watched.

You learned.

They weren’t chasing scent. They weren’t looking. They were listening.

You swallowed hard. Grabbed another rock. Threw it over a fence, deeper into the backyards.

Another turn.

Another shuffle.

You slipped into the street and moved.

You made it 3 streets without a fight. One careful step at a time. Heart in your throat. Fingers on your crowbar.

Every time a groan got too close, you tossed a rock. Sometimes they didn’t even flinch. Sometimes they ran.

Those were the newer ones. The ones who still had enough muscle memory to sprint.

You took a longer route around those.

It was just past noon when you reached the market.

The front window was cracked, but still standing. The OPEN sign hung crooked, covered in grime. The door was wedged with a rock.

You pushed it open slowly.

And stepped inside.

The air smelled like rot and stale rice. But the shelves - they were still stocked.

You blinked, breath caught.

Boxes of cereal. Rows of tins. Freezer doors cracked, but still cold to the touch. Someone had already started packing supplies near the counter - but not much was gone.

You lowered your crowbar.

And for the first time in nearly two weeks -

You hoped.

-

The first thing you saw was a trail of blood.

Not smeared. Not dragged. But thick splatters in staggered lines, disappearing behind the stacked crates of onions.

Your breath caught. You gripped the crowbar tighter.

You crept down the aisle, heart pounding, eyes locked on the dark streaks leading toward the freezer aisle. You stepped over a dropped can of soup, barely registered the half-packed suitcase sitting beside it.

That’s when you heard the groan.

Not the distant moan of one wandering outside - no, this was close. Wet. Guttural.

You turned.

He came from behind the ice cream display - stumbling, one arm limp, the other dragging something metal across the tile. A machete. A machete buried in his shoulder.

His face was bloated, purple around the mouth. Jaw slack. He didn’t even blink when he saw you. Just groaned louder. Shuffled faster.

You recognised him. Davit. Mr. Saff’s son.

You hadn’t seen him in over a year.

He didn’t recognise you.

He just lunged.

You ducked left, dodging by inches. The blade clanged against the displays. You struck him once in the side with the crowbar - but it bounced off his ribs.

You screamed.

He swung again - wild, sloppy. You caught his wrist, kicked his knee. He didn’t fall.

You grabbed the hammer from your belt and brought it down on the side of his skull - once, twice, three times.

He finally dropped.

The market fell silent again.

Your hands were shaking.

You crouched, panting, and stared at the machete still stuck in his shoulder. You pulled it free. It came loose with a sickening wet sound.

You had a weapon now.

You wiped it clean on his jeans.

You were about to turn back to looting when you saw the suitcase again - half-packed, next to a body.

Not turned. Not mangled. Just… still.

A young man. Maybe your age. Maybe younger. Blood pooled under his stomach. The brown leather jacket he wore was stained but intact.

He looked like he’d been running. Like he’d almost made it.

You hesitated. Knees buckling slightly.

Then you unzipped the suitcase. It had been packed in a hurry - some clothes, a water bottle, a tin of soup, and a photo of someone smiling.

You emptied it.

Then you pulled the jacket off the boy’s body and put it on.

It was too big. Too heavy. It smelled like old cologne and blood.

You zipped it to your chin.

And you kept going.

-

You wandered the aisles slowly.

You didn’t take anything at first.

Just walked.

Like you were still a teenager coming in after school. Like Mr. Saff would appear any minute and tell you the new sweets were behind the counter, and your mum had said no, but he didn’t care.

You didn’t realise you were crying until the tears hit your collarbone.

You grabbed what you could.

Canned goods. Fruit. Crackers. A multipack of noodles. A box of matches. An unopened pack of sanitary towels. A jar of peanut butter. A crate of frozen vegetables. A box of cheap chocolate bars. A bag of potatoes. And all of the frozen meat you could stuff alongside it.

And then you heard it.

Movement.

You froze.

Clutching your machete, you tiptoed toward the back - past the storeroom door that hung open, past the rows of crates, until you saw him.

“Mr. Saff-?”

He looked up slowly.

He was sitting against the wall. Legs straight in front of him. Face pale.

His hand was pressed to his side.

Blood soaked through his shirt.

“Y/N,” he rasped.

You dropped to your knees.

“I thought- I thought you were dead-”

He smiled faintly. “Not yet.”

You reached for the wound, but he flinched.

“It’s too late,” he said softly. “Your dad taught me how to patch things up, remember? It’s a bite. I knew what it meant.”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. “I- I can-”

“No.” He shook his head. “Listen to me. I didn’t have the strength to kill him. My son. But you did. That’s good. You’re going to make it.”

Tears blurred your vision.

You took his hand.

He gripped it tight. “Please. Don’t wait. When it happens. Don’t hesitate.”

You nodded, choking on your own breath.

He smiled. “Tell your mum… I said thank you. For the recipe. The lentils.”

You didn’t speak again.

You stayed with him until his breathing slowed. Until his pupils clouded.

You tightened your grip.

Then you did what had to be done.

-

You rolled the suitcase full of supplies through the frozen aisle on numb feet. You noticed a smaller freezer, maybe you could carry it. At the counter, you grabbed a handful of cheap digital watches hanging behind the register. You stuffed them into your jacket.

On your way out, you passed the sweet aisle.

You took three bags.

You remembered how he used to sneak you them when your parents weren’t looking.

You didn’t cry again.

Not until you were home.

--//--

AN: HEHEHEHEH 😈

Part 8

[galescafe]

spectrophotometer lab & physical chemistry notes

25 FEBRUARY 2025 | 34/100 DAYS OF PRODUCTIVITY

started the day with physical chemistry lab!

then went to work - waiting on a couple of other departments to send me stuff, so had a chill day

evening bioethics lecture!

had a dance rehearsal after class

then finished a couple of problems for physical chemistry

🎧: everybody else is doing it so why can't we? - the cranberries 📚: ulysses - james joyce (i WILL finish it by the end of the month)

[imagine-docx]

library hideaway.

Summary: You find an old, quiet corner of the library to hide from Flash to study in peace. Turns out, that’s Peter's spot. [college!au]

Warnings: none that I can remember.

A/N: new work? again? who am i? - amanda 💛

There is no such thing as being popular on this university campus. The only way to be considered ‘well-known’ was to be in the student union. And that was how you became ‘popular’. 

You were the president of the university’s student union. You advocated for academic support, mental and personal support, social belonging, and so forth. 

You had to build yourself for that role. You were an introvert at heart. You would rather shy away from the spotlight and hangout by yourself. But you always believed in advocating for other people’s rights and would put aside your introverted-ness to help those who needed it.

Your social battery was on the brink of dying, you were surrounded by so many people and you just wanted to go home and study for your bioethics midterm. You were walking with them and were focused on your phone, Flash wrapped his arm around your shoulder, “You coming with us for burgers?”

You shrugged his arm off, “No, I’ll pass.”

“Oh come on,” he whined.

“Flash, I’m good. I’m not hungry.” You said.

“Wherever you go I’ll come.” He responded.

“I’m gonna go to the library and study,” you said.

“You’re the president of the student union, why should you even study? You can dispute it.” You shot him a glare.

“It’s true,” he shrugged.

The more Flash spoke, the more you felt the urge of bashing your head into a steel door on campus. “I’m just gonna go to the washroom, I’ll meet you there.” You said, excusing yourself.

You walked into the washroom and held onto the counter and put your head down. You just wanted to be left alone and to study but Flash just wanted to annoy your soul.

You walked out and walked into the library, you noticed him at the tables in the far left corner and decided to snake around the bookstacks to avoid him. You were walking through the stacks before you found the perfect corner. You could tell it was less frequented because dust caked the pulp western books.

You dropped your bag and sat on the floor. Your eyes were starting to burn so you switched out of your contacts into your glasses. You took out the printed sheet of the midterm guide and your iPad and started reading through the lecture notes you took throughout the semester. 

You were so immersed into the lecture on Selective Memory in Aging Populations, until the faint sound of ABBA broke your train of thought. You looked up, “Oh sorry, I didn’t know someone was here,” he shyly said.

“Oh no, I’m sorry, is this your study spot? I’ll move!” You said, grabbing your stuff.

“No you don’t have to move!” He said putting his arms out stopping you.

“It’s okay! This is your spot,” you said, “Wait, aren’t you in my bioethics class? You sit at the front,” you tried searching through your memory for his name, “Peter!”

“You know who I am? You’re the student union president and you know who I am?” He asked, a little shocked.

“Who doesn’t you’re like one of the smartest kids,” you said, “Take your spot, I can go get a table.”

“Wait, are you studying for the midterm, ‘cause if you’re studying for it, maybe we can study together, but you don’t have to if you want,” he babbled.

“I was studying for that midterm,” you smiled, “We can study together.”

You and Peter took a seat back on the floor, he took out his laptop and you two were slowly going through the lectures together.

He took his time explaining the things you were unsure of, which you were eternally grateful for because it saved you from going to office hours. 

You two went through all the lectures that were going to be on the midterm and were even quizzing each other.

The lights flickered in the library which signaled that the library is going to close in 15 minutes. You two stopped talking about school and started finding things you had in common while packing up your stuff. “I always thought I was ancient listening to ABBA,” you joked.

“I love my 70s and 80s music,” he said, zipping up his backpack. 

“You’re a man of taste,” you said, joking.

You and him were walking out of the library, “Are you going to the office?” He asked.

“I went in this morning,” you adjusted your bag strap, “I think I’m gonna go home.”

“Oh,” Peter said.

“Wait, are you hungry? Apparently there’s a hidden gem ramen restaurant near campus, if you would like, we can try it?” you asked.

“You want to go with me?” he asked, a little stunned.

“Yeah, why not?”

“You could choose anyone in the student union or any of your friends-” He started.

“You helped me study for my midterm, I owe you one,” you smiled at him.

“Sure,” he said coyly. 

˖  ݁𖥔.☁︎.𖥔 ݁ ˖

You learned a lot about Peter over ramen, he was really into STEM subjects and would rather be told to do chemical compounds than write an essay, he loves sci-fi and fantasy. On the other hand he learned that you were also into sci-fi and fantasy.

Peter was walking you home and you two were continuing the conversation you had earlier and learning more about each other. “How did you get into the student union?” He asked.

“Honestly I have no idea,” you shrugged, “I was in and somehow I got elected to be president.”

“Do you like it?” He asked, adjusting the backpack on his shoulder.

“Keeps me busy,” you joked.

The two of you stopped in front of your building, “Are you sure I’m not putting you out of your way?” 

“I owe you because you paid for ramen,” he said.

“But you taught me stuff I didn’t understand,” you countered.

“I’ll see you soon Peter?” You asked.

“Yeah!” He smiled at you.

˖  ݁𖥔.☁︎.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Since then, you and Peter always met in the pulp western stacks once a week and studied together. But you two also exchanged contact information so you guys were exchanging memes almost everyday. 

Today, you two finished doing your worksheets for bioethics early and were sitting and exchanging snacks and conversation.

“How did you find this?” You asked.

“I was actually into pulp western for a second and found no one came here, and now I just study here,” he popped a gummy bear into his mouth, “How did you find it?”

“I’m very passionate about pulp westerns,” you joked.

“You constantly surprise me,” he joked.

˖  ݁𖥔.☁︎.𖥔 ݁ ˖

You were walking to your afternoon bioethics lecture when you felt an arm wrapped around your shoulder. Unconsciously you rolled your eyes knowing it was Flash, “Where are you going today?”

“The same class that I have had for an entire semester,” you bluntly stated, shrugging his arm off you again. 

“Skip class, you’re already passing,” He said, “Let’s go do something.”

“Flash, I am not doing that,” you stated flatly.

Flash was in the middle of persuading you to try and leave class and wrapped his arm around you. That was until your eyes landed on Peter standing outside of the lecture hall. 

You immediately pushed Flash off of you and made a beeline to Peter. “Hi Peter!” You exclaimed enthusiastically. 

˖  ݁𖥔.☁︎.𖥔 ݁ ˖

You were leaving the student union office and were walking to the library to meet Peter for your usual meet up. You noticed Peter walking in front of you and was on the phone, and were going to call out but some words caught your attention.

“I don’t know what to do,” Peter said, “I really do like her, and I love these hangouts but Flash is always draping his arms around her and is hanging out with her. I feel like I don’t have a chance.”

You connected the dots, Peter was interested in you.

You felt so much relief hearing those words. You slowly started harbouring feelings for him. He was always so gentle with you, and you guys had so much in common, it was hard not to catch feelings.

But the absolute bane of your existence was somehow still screwing this up for you. Flash was like a speck of glitter you could not get rid of.

You took a little bit of a detour to find Flash before going to meet with Peter.

˖  ݁𖥔.☁︎.𖥔 ݁ ˖

You rushed into the library, your conversation with Flash took a little longer than you anticipated. You did text Peter that you would be a little bit later than you thought, lying and blaming it on a meeting. You picked up his favourite gummy bears as an apology gift from the student centre. 

You made your way to the pulp western section and saw Peter scribbling in his STEM notebook. “I brought gummy bears as a peace offering.”

“I was wondering when you would arrive,” he said, putting down the notebook.

“Got lost on my way,” you joked, sitting down and handing him the gummy bears.

He cleared his throat and looked at you, more seriously this time. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” you said.

Peter glanced down at the gummy bears, then back up at you. His voice was a little shaky. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you hang out with me?” he asked, eyes meeting yours. “You’re... you. You’ve got everything going on, and people are constantly pulling you in a million directions. But somehow, you still make time for this, for me.”

Your heart gave a small, nervous lurch. But instead of pulling away from it, you let yourself smile.

“It does,” you said softly. “It means a lot.”

Peter looked surprised but still unsure. “So… you feel the same?”

You nodded, your smile deepening. “I wouldn’t be hiding in a dusty corner of the library with anyone else, Peter. I like you. I’ve liked you for a while. I just… didn’t know if you felt the same.” 

Peter let out a breath that sounded like relief and laughed quietly. “Flash was around you so often, I was so convinced I didn’t have a chance because of him.”

“I literally duck behind shelves to avoid him,” you joked, “How do you think I ended up here?”

He grinned, and for a moment, the air between you shifted.

“Okay,” he said. “So what now?”

You looked down at the gummy bears between you. “Now we study. And maybe after that we go back to that ramen shop. Not gonna lie, I’ve been thinking about that miso ramen for weeks now.”

He smiled. “It’s a date.”

[bedlamsbard]

wait! this can go in the Yonder Disney story

what are the Tumblr girlies who live in the MCU saying about reader-insert and self-insert RPF about the Avengers

[phinniastuff]

007 Fest GO!

Um. Hi. I'm Mandelbrot Fisher, or Manda Fisher, if you want to call me something that sounds normal-ish. I'm Q-branch's new health and safety person. (And I have to say you guys really need one.).

Uh ... Let's see. Stuff about me? Um. I'm not really that interesting. I'm separated, I have a son, Alexander, he's seven ... uh .... his father .... well, less said about his father. I have a BSc in Ethics, I have MPH and DPH in Public Health, specializing in Ethics and Bioethics. Got those at the University of Toronto. (Go Varsity Blues(?)). We travelled a lot. My wusband works as a day trader at Barclays and is almost certainly screwing his secretary on his desk as I type this.

Um. So I'll be around.

[floral-ashes]

Trans girl here studying Bioethics in Australia. Just about to start a research thesis but still trying to figure out how to bring trans healthcare into my degree when my teachers know very little about that stuff (my professor hasn't heard of the Cass review, for instance). Any potential advice?

P.S. absolutely love your work, read both of your books and am blown away. Glad to know that there are academics like you out there :)

You don’t need people who know about it to supervise you on it, tbh! Only my doctoral supervisor knew stuff about trans issues and really not to the degree that I did—that’s not what they’re there for. They’re there to guide you into doing your own learning, more so than just impart information about the topic on you. So I wouldn’t worry about that. Just find someone who’s going to be down with gender self-determination, valuing trans voices, and stuff like that. Feminist bioethicist who have worked on abortion rights and fighting medical paternalism is usually an avenue to explore. Also people who do urban bioethics, critical disability bioethics, anti-colonial bioethics, and other justice and autonomy-centred bioethicists.

[ramblingandpie]

So last night I finally watched The Substance. It was an adventure just getting the dang movie into my eyeballs (we canceled Prime a while ago and so doing the whole "Oh just add a free trial of another streaming service on top of Prime!" wasn't happening, so I ordered it on Blu-Ray with some birthday money, BUT then Windows 11 apparently hates playing Blu-Ray movies and it wasn't until the fourth program worked to play it and and and... I'm sure someone could come up with a good analogy about planned obsolescence and The Substance!) Warning, here there be spoilers.

SO GOOD. So good. But. One of the downsides of this whole "doing a hard sciences graduate program and working with medical research / bioethics stuff" is like I cannot watch movies like this without trying to figure out HOW it works. Not just on a biology level, like, I'm willing to suspend disbelief about Sue's Athena-like birth (... so I was just trying to come up with a way to describe the birth and then was like "Oh like Athena sprouting from Zeus's head except Sue sprouts from Elisabeth's back" and now I'm like oh shit there's a whole other essay in there somewhere).

But on a level of

-Who created The Substance? Who decided on their weird multi-level marketing distribution (again, another essay is in there about the MLM distribution scheme)?

-How did they figure out tolerances? If there is a hard limit of 7 days, then the instructions should probably say to switch, like, every 5 days so there IS buffer in case of emergency.

-I did love the emphasis on Elisabeth/Sue being One and, like, Elisabeth being fairly selfish and then therefore Sue is also fairly selfish.

-Do they target selfish people? Is the MLM distribution fucking it up? Like, the dude who was Elisabeth/Sue's contact definitely was not super helpful, and is this deliberate? Do they want to harm people? Do they only care about the money/shareholders?

-How does she pay for The Substance? We never see any info about that. What motivates the folks who make it, if not money? All those secrecy measures and then they just. Don't provide support. Which means it's MUCH more likely that someone is going to fuck it up in a widely visible (Monstro Elisasue) kind of way???

-How does Sue get paid without tax info? OH wait I actually think I know this, Elisabeth probably has some kind of shell LLC set up that people pay so that they don't have to do 1099s, and then she is paid through the business. So Sue probably uses the same one. Sadly, the "you need a social security number" thing kind of falls off at the high end of the scale where everyone is doing things under different corporate entities anyway.

-How did Sue get out of the NYE prep, all the way back to her apartment, and then back again? During prep for a huge show?? (Also holy crud the dress getting stuck in doorways was amazing.)

-Demi Moore was robbed of an Oscar like I haven't seen Anora yet but I cannot believe that anything else that came out that year was more deserving holy hell she was amazing.

[australet789]

"learning all the fucked up stuff done in the name of science is super interesting" care to share any examples?

ok, just to clarify, that in my bioethics class we (obviously) revisited cases of my own country, apart from learning all the rules and how very much the majotiy of experiments related to science lack a lot of informed consent, the latter being the one we focused on the most, learning how to do a proper document and to explain it to people, from kids to older adults.

Cases were mostly just mentioned (the Standford Experiment, for example), everything that happened in WW2

But the one we studied and i cried in rage when learning about it?

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

We watched a movie about it, Miss Ever's Boys and had to make a essay about it.

I dont remember feeing so much disgust towards the USA as much as i felt reading everything about that "study" after i watched the movie.

I recommend anyone in the science field to read or watch about that study. It's a slap on the face, and a way to show how much bioethics matter in a field that keeps teaching that we should disengage from the living beings, even when we have "bio" in our names

[centrally-unplanned]

(This is anon because this post might annoy lots of people and I want a little more distance between me and it than "just Google search of my username." But I am the person who cleared this with you earlier.)

I don't entirely understand why people are always so confident about letting old people die to save babies. Old people are people, but a lot of babies (depending on how old they are) have not become people yet. They seem to me to be part-people, in some cases, and in others to just be people-in-waiting. My dogs are closer to being people than some babies are, but I would have a moral duty to sacrifice them in a Dogs vs Old People trolley problem (maybe I'd fail, but I want to change my probable actions to fit my moral duties, not the other way around). Therefore, babies < old people, too.

This does break down in a lot of cases, because age-related degradation is a thing, and in some cases that might even kill the person who's running on that dying hardware before the body itself fully dies, but there are also centenarians whose brains still do more than "keep this slab of meat alive" and who still take fulfillment in being alive, so mere age isn't enough to say that the elderly are less deserving than babies. We might talk about whether dementia affects the personhood of an old person – in the sense of personhood as whatever thing it is that most adult humans (or even most children) have and day-old babies does not – but a twenty-year-old person with personhood-affecting dementia would (if we set aside the greater plausibility of future medical advances later helping them, because they have more time) raise the same concerns. It's not an age thing, it's just a thing that's correlated with age!

I also don't think that people actually consistently act like babies are people, either. If any baby is a person who deserves to live at least as much as an old person, then probably fetuses are people too, and we should care a lot, lot more about inventing external wombs and promoting rescue surrogacy and maybe other things I haven't thought of, so that pregnant women aren't forced to be pregnant, but have the option to exercise their rights without killing another person (just like dialysis is arguably a stopgap to help kidney-less people from dying without going out and stealing kidneys, because we know that it's bad to steal kidneys, but also good to try to keep people alive until they can get a non-stolen kidney).

But people are mostly content to not think about that, because we don't actually think that even a late-term abortion is killing a person (and even a lot of conservatives are inconsistent about abortion being murder, if they're the type who permit abortion in the case of rape and incest, because people are still people no matter how they were created).

I am happy to smuggle the essays of my mutuals + friends through anon asks so they can escape the consequences of their own beliefs! Bare minimum we can do for each other on here.

Surprisingly, I don't really disagree with you! In that bioethics posts I was just making an off-hand "elderly versus babies" comparison for illustrative purposes, no point digging into the details there. If we do dig into the details we get a bunch of what you are saying here - babies do not have the level of "self-identity" that many animals do, and certainly less than older humans do, in ways that yeah do affect the morality of actions. You can try to salvage that with some stuff about "potential" or deontological ethics, but you run into problems with all of them. "Being human" is often clear-cut, but when you dig into the edges it turns out to be a spectrum. I am, as a neutral outside observer, less sad about the death of a baby than I am over the death of a teenager, and I think that is true for most people actually - in isolation, which it never is.

I think it can be tricky if you do embrace moral absolutism around reducing all possible "death of humans", but when you don't this gets easier to manage. You can debate with your friends how "human" a baby is, but I don't recommend mentioning it to the parents! They are not interested because to them it is the most important human on the planet, and we just don't have any compelling reason to disagree with them. We don't, as a society, ask healthy 60 year olds to die for babies! But we do get how a sick 80 year old for whom medical care will make little difference is not an amazing use of resources, and so to analyze that problem QALYs and all that were born. There is no objective answer to "80 year old vs baby", but in actual human societies we aren't ever debating who to push onto the trolley, we are debating idk where to give charitable donations and concerns like efficiency tend to dominate.

And meanwhile it is absolutely true that we don't prioritize neonatal research above everything else, but a quick google tells me that the US spent $120 billion on sports gambling apps last year - we prioritize fuck all. We are spinning balls of hormones and bullshit flailing our way through the mud of life. You take pretty much any help you can get us to generate, and very few people are actually optimizing neutrally across the entire ethical space.

But that is my own approach to these kinds of ethics - if you do wanna get philosophical about them I definitely agree that there is not some abstractly-obvious hierarchy here.