#i might have cancer

[waywardnewcomer]

A couple of months back (probably more like a year ngl) I found a neck lump and kinda just assumed it was normal. A few months ago it started growing. And then I found one on the other side. I got them checked had some bloods, and apart from a high inflammatory marker no further action. 3 weeks ago I found a lump in my armpit, then 2 days ago I found another one in my neck. I currently have 2 pea size lumps in my neck, 1 small lump in my neck and a pea size lump under my arm.

I finally went back to the doctors today. (I’d left the armpit one as I get boils and thought it was that but it never came to a head). I’ve been referred on the 2 week cancer pathway to get my lumps checked by a specialist. The doctor said it could be reactive lymph nodes but as I kept getting more she wanted me to get checked out.

I’m shit scared - but when dr google told me this months ago I had more of a panic then, I think I’ve now just accepted it could be something bad or it might not be. I was prepared for this outcome. So now we await an appointment over the next 14 days for some more investigations then 2 more weeks for results from then.

Moral of the story get your lumps checked peeps. Don’t delay like I did! The doctor was lovely and checked my armpits and neck thoroughly to find all the lumps she could. Now we wait🥺

[kittykatninja321]

Very deeply annoyed by the fanon idea that Talia treated Jason like a pet or a tool when he was catatonic, because when you actually read lost days you can clearly see that Talia is literally the only person who looked at Jason while he was catatonic and still saw a person and treated him like a person while everyone else around her (Ra’s and the doctor she hired) was ready to dismiss Jason as an empty shell

[slugcatmusings]

What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?

Spoiler Warning and Holy Wall of Text Batman Warning. I got WAY too into questioning the turbo-cancer here, hopefully my rambling makes sense.

So, the Rot is… weird, from a biological standpoint. Really weird, if you stop to think about it. It’s most frequently described as some variation of cancer, and it certainly fits the criteria for it. Caused by damage to DNA? Check. Multiplies uncontrollably? Check. Comes in both benign and malignant forms, one stationary and the other mobile? Big fat check. Heck, even the Rot cysts eating other creatures kind of fits, according to some research I’ve done – there are apparently cancer cells that will eat other cells, which makes sense in hindsight since cancer cells are cells that have lost important genetic restrictions, which may include whatever lets cells identify other cells as “do not eat.”

(I ain’t a biology whiz and I’m doing research on the fly while getting my thoughts out here, so take whatever I say about biology with a grain of salt)

So, Rot is clearly cancer of some kind, right? Case closed. Except when me and a friend of mine were talking Rain World theories on Discord, she brought up some interesting points that got me thinking.

First point: Rot cells obviously mutate in a way that affects FAR more than just cell replication and termination. Some of the cysts can HEAR. As far as I know, cells in the body do not hear sounds. They communicate via chemical signals and maybe, MAYBE react to temperature. Hearing involves complicated, specialized sensory apparatus to pick up on vibrations in the air. Even if you simplify it and say that it’s only vibrations, that’s STILL a multicellular thing, not a single-cell thing. It’s something that took millions of years to evolve on Earth, if not billions.

And while Rain World’s timeline goes on for long enough that it those kinds of mutations might happen eventually, Rot cysts have the ability to hear pretty much right from the start – because even the Proto-Long-Legs react to your presence like the Daddy Long Legs do, and the Rot in Spearmaster’s campaign, where Pebbles has recently contracted it, reacts the same way as it does in later campaigns. It’s already able to hear.

As far as I know, cancer just means the same cell duplicating over and over again. Are more mutations possible with each division, as errors are made in the DNA during splitting? Probably. But not to THAT extent. There’s no way a lump of cancer somehow mutated the exact complicated genetic blueprint needed to grow organs, at least not without outside interference.

Second point: Cases of Rot are way too consistent across the board. Now, we don’t have a huge sample size to work from, but from what we see from both Pebbles’ Rot, and Hunter Long Legs, they’re… pretty similar. Hunter Long Legs is basically a mobile Rot cyst. They move the same way, seem to grow the same way (starts as a growth inside/on the body before eventually freeing itself from whatever wall/flesh it grew from in some capacity and moving elsewhere), they have the same senses, and they even eat the same way, via something like phagocytosis (how white blood cells “eat” invading organisms via engulfing them and breaking them down in a sac in their main “body.”)

Now, this doesn’t tell us much, because cancer, when it does emerge, is pretty consistent in symptoms/what the mutated cells do once they start replicating. It’s pretty much the same regardless of whatever organism the cancer is happening in. But what ISN’T consistent is what causes the DNA error in the cancer cell in the first place. IRL, cancer can be caused by all kinds of things – smoking, radiation poisoning, being out in the sun too long, drinking deadly chemicals and whatnot, anything that damages DNA. But in RW, the only time we ever hear Rot talked about, or see it present, is in the context of an iterator having f*cked up while mucking around with DNA. Pebbles was trying to create an organism that could change his own genome, and No Significant Harassment created Hunter as a messenger and probably mucked something up in the process in his haste to get them to Moon.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes of it, of course, we’re working with a sample size of two in an apocalyptic world with who knows how much potentially DNA-damaging stuff around, but… that’s still awfully consistent.

So, combining these points and everything we know to be canon, Rot is:

an organism that lives inside another organism

Until a certain condition is met, it cannot harm said host organism.

Once said condition is met, it goes out of control, wreaking havoc on the organism’s systems and mutating, giving it sensory capabilities and an appetite

Said condition is apparently someone messing up when re-arranging genomes, in yourself or others

It is widespread across multiple different species, at least iterators and slugcats but potentially other species as well.

Once you have a bad case of it, it is apparently NOT CURABLE. Pebbles tried everything he could think of but apparently exhausted all of his options by the time of the Survivor/Monk campaigns.

So, with all the context FINALLY laid out, here’s my wild theory: Rot isn’t a cancer. It’s a symbiote turned parasite. Specifically, I believe it’s a symbiotic microbe that lives inside the cells that make up every other creature in Rain World, and is held in check by a specific gene that all species share, and altering or getting rid of that gene causes it to go berserk, taking over and eventually mutating the host cells.

Yeah, I did watch Parasite Eve let’s plays as a kid, why do you ask? Anyway, hear me out here.

There is precedence for single-celled organisms living inside of other single-celled organisms. They’re referred to as intracellular endosymbiots (hopefully I got the spelling right there), and the most well-known one is probably the mitochondria. The powerhouse of the cell is thought to be descended from some bacteria way, WAY back that was engulfed by a larger cell and not only survived it, but BENEFITED from it. Since then those ancient proto-mitochondria and eukaryotic cells have mutually evolved to be dependent on each other. So it’s entirely possible for something similar to have happened in Rain World.

However, I don’t think it happened NATURALLY, here. Because something that’s able to take over a cell entirely and begin wildly mutating it is NOT something your average cell wants inside of it. There’s a VERY high chance of extinction if you do that. Which means that of course those funky bio-tech loving Ancients either took a look at a wildly dangerous cellular parasite and went “hmmm we can use this” or made one themselves.

Why did they do this? Who knows! Currently, I’m tied between “they needed a better powerhouse for the cell to power the various weird adaptations they’re building into various creatures,” “there was some sort of disease that this parasite gave immunity against and they wanted to make use of it,” and “it gave their creations massively powerful regeneration factors that made them much easier to maintain.” Possibly it was all three. Whatever the reason, the Ancients either found or created this parasite, and put it into their creations’ cells, hoping to reap the benefits.

Well, they got the benefits, but they also got a microbe that hijacked the cells and harnessed their pre-existing DNA blueprints to build organisms disguised as great big blobs of cancer. Which is not exactly ideal, but hey, they just had to figure out a way of keeping the cell hijacking from happening! And the way they ended up going about it was to alter the thing so that so long as there was a specific DNA sequence in the cell, it laid mostly dormant. All the benefits, none of the risks – so long as that specific string of genes remained intact.

And then BECAUSE it was so beneficial, they spread their artificial symbiote and it’s genetic reins throughout ALL of their creations, from the smallest pipe-cleaning slugs to the iterators. Which meant that as their purposed organisms replaced most of the original ecosystem, they spread the symbiote as well. Thus making it possible for pretty much ANY creature on the planet to come down with a bad case of the Rot. And with the iterators, I wouldn’t be surprised if this symbiote is tied to their self-destruction taboos. Try to cross yourself out? Well, it’s gonna maybe happen now, but it’ll be a slow painful death as you’re eaten alive from the inside and all your own parts turn against you, so was it really worth it?

And they never told their creations this perhaps even actively hid it, because why tell them the cause of the main deterrent to them mucking with their taboos? They might find a way around it. The iterators were left ignorant of how Rot works, and because of this they never figured out that Rot HAD a cure after all: rebuilding that genome that reins in the symbiote. Because why in the name of the Void would they repeat the same mistakes that gave them Rot in the first place, and potentially make it worse?

[mishy-mashy]

Got my hands on a Ultra Analysis BNHA book from a library

Some points I liked (I focused more on 1B since they don't get a lot of attention)

1B once had a Tetsutetsu BBQ. They heated him up and cooked food on him. He proceeds to ruin it when he declares his sweat is the salt to their food

Yui is canonically the prettiest first-year

Mineta has no sex appeal at all, but he thinks being a hero will make him lucky

Class B does respect Monoma. He's sharp-minded, witty, and has a way with words

Monoma sometimes wanders into 1A's dorm just to throw down a mean speech, and heads back to 1B

Juzo probably isn't helping Monoma's confrontations with 1A, since he just always asks him why he can't say it to their faces whenever Monoma complains about them

Shiozaki tries to be polite even in a fight

Pony hosts anime parties, so 1B knows a lot about anime. Vice-versa, they teach her Japanese, and everything nasty is Monoma's fault

Tokage was a gyaru

Tsuburuaba, Kaibara, and Kuroiro get worked up whenever they talk about girls

Manga likes Kenranzaki

Awase's family runs a small factory. He also restrains Monoma whenever Kendo isn't available

1B likes hearing Rin say "Aiyah", so he does it for them

Kamakiri is obsessed with cutting into things

Class B's play was really successful

Tamaki is scared of Kirishima's energy

1C was planning a send-off party for Shinsou for his upcoming hero transfer. They didn't doubt he would make it, ever since the Sports Festival

Shishikura (meatball Shiketsu boy) might've chosen Shiketsu because he likes the uniform's hat

Nakagame and Yo are dating

Tsuyu's family gets to spend a lot of time together now, since their parents' busy jobs have calmed down

Tsubasa (devil wing kid in Midoriya's memories) suspiciously lost touch with Midoriya and Bakugo in middle school (his Wiki page confirms Garaki - his grandfather - turned him into a Nomu)

Torino likes goofy gags. This rubs off on All Might (ex. when Midoriya thought he died when Torino fell with ketchup. People don't know whether to laugh or be concerned)

Nighteye has yellow streaks in his hair as a homage to All Might

Nezu likes worming into tight, dark places, so he likes Aizawa's scarf. They went into detail, describing why Nezu likes it, such as material to crawling in, etc.

Recovery Girl has to travel around Japan regularly to help people with her Quirk (as in, she uses her Quirk to help them. Healing Quirks are SO rare)

Hojo, Tabe, and Sestuno are kept in the same jail, so at least they're not separated

[just-call-me-moran]

I am so normal about these two men. Like completely normal.

[chronodia]

the better animal

[narcpocalypse]

The fact that I'm so praise deprived that I'm looking forward to possibly having cancer 💀 npd die please thank u so much 💞💖

[qcomicsy]

Marvel writer: Then Wade get involved with monsters! And–

Me:

[munchy-k]

existing is so inconvenient like what do you mean I have to pee multiple times a day and also brush my teeth and wash my hair too??? and sleep??? why cant I just live the way I want to

[moggycuties]

Since a lot of y'all want me to make watson on gacha club yesterday so here is it! The silly billy

I'm struggle a bit with his beard but it turned out kinda good!😅

Anyway...

bonus comic:

[myunghology]

PJSK BOYS + random prompts.

!! gender neutral reader, completely sfw, fluff. tw ? none?? mentions of reader being sick on akito's part though, and mentions of reader wearing a bit of lipstick on toya's part. ( song recco )

!! AKITO SHINONOME ( "you stayed up...all night...for them. oh... dude.. you're in love..." )

akito was anxious. you haven't been replying to his texts, and you haven't been attending classes this whole week. he even tried asking your classmates, which was rare. but there was no change of outcome.

ena has been worrying because of his lack of sleep. giving him glances from the dinner table when they were eating together, she's been complaining that he wasn't eating and that the male was just staring at his food, but it'd be obvious to everyone that she's obviously worried, just didn't want to admit it.

the younger shinonome was now sitting on his bed, taking quick glances from his phone, to see if you've replied.

3:45 am. his phone lit up because of a notification.

he sighs in annoyance only to see that it was from toya, asking if he was okay.

maybe it was time to sleep, he thought. he's also tired of waiting for a response, even though it was a weekend tomorrow.

morning arrived, akito immediately checked his phone, only to see useless notifications. he rubbed his eyes and made his way to the living room, to see his older sister's head placed on the palm of her hand while sitting down beside the kitchen table.

the girls eyes lit up slightly upon seeing her brother, "hey, sit down and eat. i made you breakfast."

"you dumbass, i care about you, stop sleeping so late just for a reply. they wouldn't want you to be doing this just because your worried about them." he hated the fact that she was right.

akito ran his hands through his soft hair and fixed his position, "and you stayed up... all night... for them. oh... dude.. you're in love..." his eyes shot up, "what?"

"think about it."

as she said that, a reply finally came from his phone that was rested beside the plate.

"i'm sorry for making you worry. i'm fine."

!! TOYA AOYAGI ( "if you lose, i have to give you a kiss!" )

you were absolutely horrible at chess. you have annoyed yor boyfriend into giving in to teaching you, but to no avail, you still sucked, placing small little bets like "if you win.. then i won't annoy you for a day!" or "if you win, i'll take care of myself today!"

today, you made a bet that made the male question almost every move.

"hm.. if you lose, i have to give you a kiss!" was that really a punishment though?

his lips were thin, while you were waiting for a response. he smiles softly, "okay."

it was already obvious to the both of you that you were going to lose, but oh.. how.. did you win this round?

the answers' obvious, is it not? you had toya aoyagi completely smitten for your love.

he turns his head to you- "i lost." he says, almost proudly, while smirking. you were smiling ear to ear, if he knew you'd be smiling like that, he would have already lost on purpose a few matches ago.

you stood up from your chair, and softly kissed him on his cheek, a very faint lipstick mark was left.

he let out a small scoff as you went back to your seat, until you realized.

"hey, did you do that on purpose?!"

!! RUI KAMISHIRO ( “I think they saw us..” “oh, so what?" )

a model student and a very questionable one, who knew that they'd be together? a weird pair, really.

"i can't believe you're ruining your record just to ditch with me." rui said, smirking. you roll your eyes, "says you. you practically forced me here." "you didn't technically try to refuse though."

his hand still holding your wrist whilst you both chill at the rooftop, "you can let go of my wrist, you know" he shakes his head, refusing. "aren't you worried someone might see us?"

"obviously."

and then suddenly, students by pair started coming by for lunch. "i think they saw us.." you sigh while the taller male scoffs, "oh, so what? let them be." you truly admire how carefree he was when it came to you.

"we could always just run back to the classroom."

"i guess." you scoffed, but nevertheless accepted it.

!! TSUKASA TENMA ( "you’re definitely in love, all you ever talk about is them.” “i’m not in love, they’re just always on the back of my mind- oh.” )

"are you sure you're not in love..? you've been rambling about them ever since.. well ever since you've called us here man." rui questioned, tilting his head, while nene was looking at the blonde haired male in absolute disappointment.

"or are you just in denial?" she deadpans, emu just there observing.

"you're definitely in love, all you ever talk about is them."

"i'm not in love, they're just always on the back of my mind- oh." and there, he finally realized.

"..maybe i am?" he winces, "you definitely are." emu finally chips in, "now, we need a plan on how to confess!"

"already!? i just realized! let my admire them for at least just a week as a crush!"

"look at the bright side, you aren't gonna be bitchless anymore if they like you back."

"wait that makes sense."

"WAIT BUT I WAS NEVER EVEN BITCHLE-"

[nah-id-eat-dungeon-food]

Talking about cancer ⬇️

Chat I am currently in the clinic to check for breast cancer I am so cooked

Sorry if this feels weird I just needed to get it out

[causenessus]

just so u guys know i haven't been this attached to someone (suna) since oikawa tooru which started like 4 years ago i kid u not

[infiniteglitterfall]

Palestinians to platform, part 1

مؤمن الناطور / Moumen Al-Natour

@MoumALnatour

رئيس الشباب الفلسطيني للتنمية / President of Palestinian Youth for Development

Moumen Al-Natour is amazing. Not only does he run a Palestinian youth organization that is doing great work in Gaza, but he's also one of the organizers of the 2019 anti-Hamas protests.

Even to criticize Hamas, in Gaza, means to be interrogated, and potentially jailed, tortured, and/or killed. To actively protest Hamas is many times more dangerous.

To have survived that work and continued doing it? I cannot imagine the emotional strength this dude has.

Here's what Center for Peace Communications (another great organization) has said about him:

So many Palestinians, in or from Palestine, are out there talking about what everyday life in Gaza is like. About Hamas, about Israel, about what they want and what they need, about their struggles and their interests and their families.

My goal, in finding people for you to follow and platform, is to help more voices get out of Gaza after years of suppression, and to help more outsiders (like me) connect with them.

People care SO MUCH about Palestine. But frequently, all there is to share is outrage, semi-accurate news, and more outrage. Frequently, we're not calling for the same things they are. We call for a ceasefire; they demand Hamas return the hostages and surrender. We call for Israel to let aid in; they say Israel is letting the aid in, but it's being stolen, and call for air drops rather than trucks. We call for Israel to stop fighting; they say they hope Israel takes Hamas out first.

We aren't centering their voices and experiences. We aren't lending our reach and our strength to their demands.

I want to make that possible.

Ala Mushtaha, the son of this imam, evidently said, “On Saturday December 30, our front door was busted down and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza."

“One dragged him by his head and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

“He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.”

ok this dude needs his own post honestly, he goes on to say so much intense stuff about their lives.

OMG his dad was actually released!

This is what I'm talking about. This is effective activism. Imagine what all these people could do if they had the entire global pro-Palestinian movement behind them.

Al-Natour posts a fair amount of political commentary.

The "we want to live" hashtag is a callback to the amazing "We Want To Live" protests he co-organized against Hamas, in Gaza in 2019, and again in the summer of 2023. Activist Hamida Howidzy (who will also be getting a separate post) wrote about them in Newsweek recently.

Some things he posts in Arabic and then in English. Some of his posts are in Arabic only. In the thread above, he actually posted a couple more that were just in Arabic, presumably aimed at Arabic-language comments.

What I like about Twitter is that you can whack the "translate post" button and get a pretty decent translation most of the time.

Translation:

"I saw all the responses... What is wrong and forbidden in reuniting the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem through elections in which the people choose who will represent them??!?? Why are all the responses offensive...a collaborator, a traitor, and contain insults that indicate that whoever wrote them needs restructuring?! What prevents us, after ending the war, from returning our choice and choice to the Palestinian people?!+

"Everyone wrote that I opened??!! how did you know???!! Stopping the war is the most important thing now... Whoever sees the condition of the people and feels all this is easy for him does not have humanity, and is not a human being... Whoever, after the destruction of more than 80% of Gaza and the North, and still writing in a way that wants the war to continue while he lives abroad, should reconsider. He accepted to live the same suffering!++"

Note: I copied the "I opened" bit and threw it into Google Translate separately, because that cannot be right. It still insisted that it meant "I opened".... but it gave me the transliterated words, "ani fatah."

Everyone wrote that he's Fatah -- the party that runs the West Bank, the one Hamas violently kicked out of Gaza in 2007-08.

"The end of my speech... I know... whoever is not with you is a traitor and an agent... shameful... by God, by God, by God... there will be an account[ing] for all of this talk... so that you understand the word agent... and the account will be through a government of law... It is clear that there are many who benefit from the poverty and destruction of Gaza, and they must be held accountable according to the law.

"Have mercy on people with your tongues"

The comment on that one is noteworthy:

"Yes, whoever is not with the resistance is indeed a traitor, and those who must be held accountable are the traitors, agents, hypocrites, liars, and racists who slander the resistance and who want to hold it accountable only because it fights the enemy of humanity and defends truth and the oppressed. If you want to apply the law, apply it to yourselves first."

It highlights how much of what we hear in the West is Hamas propaganda. That's a whole other post too. But Hamas claims to be "the resistance," to "defend truth and the oppressed," while arresting people who refuse to preach its propaganda. While jailing and torturing someone 20 times for organizing a protest.

Which are the exact tactics that make it so easy for their propaganda to reach us . And so hard for us to even know that there has been an entire protest movement against Hamas in Gaza, much less to support its activists.

I'll just cut and paste the translations from his most recent thread, above. All emphasis is mine:

"When demonstrations took place in Israel demanding that Netanyahu stop the war and free the hostages, Al Jazeera and Hamas considered it a victory and an achievement, and that the Israeli government was under pressure. But what is striking is that these demonstrations were not suppressed. They were secured. The hostage issue and public pressure were dealt with professionally.

"The demonstrations that took place in Gaza demanding an end to the war and the return of the displaced...they were classified as suspicious [by Al Jazeera etc] ...even though the displaced Israeli lives in a 5-star hotel and has the privileges of the displaced, and when the Palestinian displaced in Gaza receives help, he needs a mediator, and if he wants a tent, he needs leadership intervention, and if he does not have the mediator And the intervention wants to scratch his pocket..+++

"Why did Israel allow demonstrations and look pressured, always trying to contain everything... while we have a displaced person lost, homeless, and no one is trying to contain him, and when he talks, they call him a fifth column???"

Last month, he posted about pregnancy in wartime. Note the cost of the tent later in this thread! Numerous Palestinians have posted about humanitarian aid getting stolen -- by Hamas, by NGOs, by others -- and sold on the black market. Food and tents especially get mentioned a lot. Everyone mentions the tents are being sold for more than (the equivalent of) $700, even though they were supposed to be free.

I'll leave you with this one for now:

You can read all the posts in this series in my "platform palestine" tag.

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

Look I'mma be honest every time twd kills off a long-beloved character at this point I'm just