#i need fewer deaths

[ipwarn]

Happy New Year!

[epaulando]

they should let me kill people

[friendofthecrows]

Dislike how your meat suit can't really tell how much time you've wasted. You'll hit the exhaustion wall anyway.

Like, let's say you're in a similar boat to me rn. For approx. 3 weeks, I've been way more tired than normal and have just been pushing through it because I don't really have a choice unless I just want to give up on everything. My chronic pain is flaring up so I keep randomly having levels of pain I can best describe as "hurts bad enough I can't do anything including breathe until it subsides slightly" throughout the day. I've been in a sort of pattern of pulling all-nighters two nights in a row out of necessity and then way oversleeping (not really all good sleep, just keep trying to go back to sleep/won't give up on trying to get enough sleep until I get the migraine from laying down too much) out of desperation. Not to mention the boredom + depression evil combo attack has been hitting much worse than normal. Frequently, I have been too busy to do things such as "eat" or "get dressed in fresh clothes."

AND YET I have wasted a phenomenal amount of time in the past few days especially. Lots of time on tumblr, lots of time just dissociating...but my physical form doesn't know this.

It only knows I've been pushing myself to get things done, pulling all-nighters, skipping meals, etc. for weeks despite being severely overdrawn in the imaginary energy bank account. It does not care that these behaviors are necessary due to the Quencies of being so tired in the first place...you fail to work on a thing consistently throughout the day because you're too tired and in too much pain to focus, so now you have to stay up all night to get it done.

What does Physical Form decide the solution to this is? More tired. Maybe even so much tired that the basic self-care that might help feels near-impossible. Great job, Physical Form (said with malice)

[cangrellesteponme]

just finished a very annoying assignment with only ten minutes to spare... maybe i hate university and academia in general actually

[sprrksfly]

.

[letteredlettered]

feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)

This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.

Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.

AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.

AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.

But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.

The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.

The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.

There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.

I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.

But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.

It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.

Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.

These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.

Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?

The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.

Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.

I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.

My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”

I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.

And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”

That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.

This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.

I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.

As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.

When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.

The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.

I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!

The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.

But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.

Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.

However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.

Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.

So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.

But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:

Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.

But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.

[ms-demeanor]

Friends, I think we need to talk about Covid.

I want to get a few caveats out there before I start:

I am aware that there are people who need to exercise extreme caution about Covid; I live with someone who has two solid organ transplants and who is at the most immune compromised level of immune compromised. *I* have to be extremely cautious about covid.

Masking does prevent a certain level of transmission, and people who think they may have covid should mask and people who are concerned that they may be at high risk for covid should mask.

You should be vaccinated and boosted with the most recent vaccines that are available to you; covid is highly transmissible and very serious, you do not want to get covid and if you do get covid you don't want it to be severe and if you do get covid you don't want to give someone else covid and up-to-date vaccinations are the best way to reduce transmission and help to prevent severe cases of Covid.

We should be testing before going to any gatherings, and informing people if we test positive after gatherings, and testing if we suspect we have been exposed.

It is bullshit that there aren't good protections for workers who have covid; you should not be expected to go to work when you are testing positive

It is bullshit that people who are testing positive are not isolating for other reasons; if you have Covid you should not be going out and exposing other people to it even if you are experiencing mild symptoms or no symptoms.

We do need better ventilation systems for many kinds of spaces. Schools need better ventilation, restaurants need better ventilation, doctor's offices and hospitals and office buildings need better ventilation and better ventilation can reduce covid transmission.

I want to make it clear that Covid is real and there are real steps that individuals and systems can take to prevent transmission, and that there are systems that are exerting pressures that needlessly expose people to covid (the fact that you can lose your job if you don't come in when you're testing positive, mainly; also the fact that covid rapid tests should be ubiquitous and cheap/free and are not).

All of that being said: I'm seeing some posts circulating about how we're at an extremely high level of transmission and the REAL pandemic is being hidden from us and, friends, I'm pretty sure that is just incorrect and we're spreading misinformation.

I'm thinking of this video in particular, in which the claim is made that "your mystery illness is covid" in spite of negative tests. The guy in the video says that there's nothing else that millions of people could be getting a day, and that he predicted this because a wastewater spike in December meant that there was a huge spike in cases.

I've also seen people saying that deaths are where they were in 2021-2022, and that we're still at "a 9/11 a week" of excess deaths and friends, I'm not seeing great evidence for any of these claims.

I know that we (in the US, which is where the numbers I'm going to be citing are from) feel abandoned by the CDC and the fact that tracking cut off in May of 2023. But that only cut off for the federal tracking.

I live in LA county and LA county sure as shit is still tracking Covid.

If you want a clearer picture, you can see the daily case count over time compared to the daily death count:

Okay, you might say, but that's just LA.

Alright, so here's Detroit:

Right, but maybe that's CDC data and you don't trust the CDC at this point.

Okay, here's fatalities in New York tracked through New York's state data collection:

It's harder to toggle around the site for South Dakota, but you can compare their cases and hospitalizations and deaths for early 2022

To cases and hospitalizations and deaths from early 2024

And see that there's really no comparison.

Okay, you might say, but people are testing less. If they're testing less of course we're not seeing spikes, and they're testing less because fewer tests are available.

Alright, people are definitely testing less than they were in 2021 and 2022. Hospitalization for Covid is probably the most clear metric because you know those people have covid for sure, the couldn't not test for it.

Here are hospitalizations over time for LA:

Here are hospitalizations over time for New York:

As vaccination rates have gone up, cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have gone down. It IS clear that there are case spikes in the winter, when it is cold and people are indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and people are more susceptible to respiratory infections as a result of cold air weakening the protection offered by our mucous membranes, and that is something that we will have to take precautions about for the forseeable future, just as we should have always been taking similar precautions during flu season.

So I want to go point-by-point through some of the arguments made in that video because I'm seeing a bunch of people talking about how "THEY" don't want you to know about the virus surge and buds that is just straight up conspiracism.

So okay, first off, most of what that video is based on is spikes in wastewater data, not spikes in cases. This is because people don't trust CDC data on cases, but I'd say to maybe check out your regional data on cases. I don't actually trust the CDC that much, but I know people who do tracking of hospitalizations in LA county, I trust them a lot more. Wastewater data does correlate with increases in cases, but this "second largest spike of the entire pandemic" thing is misleading; wastewater reporting is pretty highly variable and you can't just accept that a large spike in covid in wastewater means that we're in just as bad a place in the pandemic as we were in 2022. We simply have not seen the surge of hospitalizations and deaths that we would expect to see in the weeks following that spike in wastewater data if wastewater data was reflective of community transmission.

The next claim is that "there is nothing else that is infecting millions of people a day" and covid isn't doing that either. The highest daily case rates were in January of 2021 and they were in the 865k a day range, which is ridiculously high but isn't millions of cases a day.

But what we can see is that when people are tested by their doctors for Covid, RSV, and the Flu, more tests are coming back positive for the Flu. Covid causes more hospitalizations than the other two illnesses, but to be honest what the people in the video are describing - lightheadedness, dizziness, exhaustion - just sound like pretty standard symptoms of everything from covid to the cold to allergies. There are lots of things your mystery illness could be.

The video goes on to talk about the fact that people aren't testing, and why their tests may be coming back negative and I'd like to point out that the same things are all true of Flu or RSV tests. People might be getting tested too early or too late; getting a negative test for the flu isn't a good reason to assume you've got covid, getting a negative test for covid isn't a good reason to assume you've got the flu, and testing for viruses as a whole is imperfect. There are hundreds of viruses that could be the common cold; there are multiple viruses that can cause bronchitis; there are multiple viruses that can cause pneumonia, and you're not going to test for all of these things the moment you start feeling sick.

He then recommends testing for multiple days if you have symptoms and haven't had a positive test (fine) and talks about the location of the tests (less fine). Don't use your rapid tests to swab your throat or cheek unless it specifically says that they are designed to do so. Test based on the instructions in the packet.

He points out that the tests probably still pick up on the virus because they're not testing for the spike protein, they're testing for the RNA (good info!)

The video then discusses something that I think is really key to this paranoia about the "mystery illnesses" - he talks about how covid changes and weakens your immune system (a statement that should come with many caveats about severity and vulnerability and that we are still researching that) and then says that it makes you more susceptible to strep or mono and that "things that used to clear in a day or two now hit you really hard."

And that's where I think this anxiety is coming from.

Strep throat lasts anywhere from three days to a week. A cold takes about a week to clear. The flu lasts about a week and can knock you on your ass with exhaustion for weeks depending on how bad you get it. Did you get a cough with your cold? Expect that to take anywhere from three to eight weeks to clear up.

I think that people are thinking "i got a bad virus and felt really sick for a week and haven't gotten my energy back" but that just sounds like a bad cold. That sounds like a potent allergy attack. That doesn't even sound like a bad flu (I got a bad flu in 2009 and thought i was going to straight-up die I had a fever of 103+ for three days and felt like shit for three days on either side of that and took six weeks to feel more like myself again).

Getting sick sucks. It really, really sucks. But if you're getting sick and you're testing for covid and it's coming back negative after you tested a few times, it's almost certainly not covid.

The video then says "until someone provides evidence that it's not covid, it should be assumed to be covid because we have record levels of covid it's that simple" but that's not simple. We don't have record levels of covid and he hasn't proved it. We have record high levels of wastewater reports of covid, which correlates with covid cases but the spike in wastewater noted in december didn't see a spike with a corresponding magnitude of cases in terms of either hospitalizations or deaths, which is what we'd have seen if we had actual record numbers of covid.

He says that if you want to ignore this, you'll get sick with covid, and that about 30-40% of the US just got sick with covid in the last four months (which is a RIDICULOUSLY unevidenced claim).

He says that we need to create a new normal that takes covid into account, which means masking more often and testing more often and making choices about risk-avoidant behaviors.

Now, I don't disagree with that last statement, but he prefaces the statement with "it doesn't necessarily mean lockdown" and that's where I think the alarmism and paranoia is really visible here. We are so, so far away from "lockdown" type levels that it's absurd to discuss lockdown here.

What I'm seeing right now is people who are chronically ill, people who are immune compromised, and people who are experiencing long covid (which may not be distinct from other post-viral syndromes from severe cases of flu, etc, but which may be more severe or more notable because of the prevalence of covid) are talking about feeling abandoned and attacked and left behind by society because covid is still out there, and still at extremely high levels.

I am seeing people who feel abandoned and attacked because the lgbtq+ events they are attending don't require masking. I am seeing people who are claiming that it is eugenicist that their schools don't have a negative test policy anymore.

And this comes together into two really disconcerting trends that I've been observing online for a while.

The claim that the pandemic is still as bad as it's ever been and in fact may be worse but we can't know that because "they" (the CDC, the government, capitalist institutions that want you back in the office, the university industrial complex that wants your dorm room dollars) are covering up the numbers and

Significant grievance at the fact that people are acting like number one is not true and are putting you at risk either out of thoughtlessness (because they don't realize they're putting you at risk) or malice (because they don't care if the sick die).

And those things are a recipe for disaster.

I think I've pretty robustly addressed point one; I don't think that there's good evidence that there's a secretly awful surge of covid that nobody is talking about. I think that there are some people who are being alarmist about covid who are basing all of their concern on wastewater numbers that have not held up as the harbinger of a massive wave of infections.

So let's talk about point number two and JK Rowling.

Barnes and Noble is not attacking you when it puts up a Hogwarts Castle display in the lobby. Your favorite youtuber isn't trying to hurt you when they offhandedly mention Harry Potter.

If you let every mention of Harry Potter or every person who enjoys that media franchise wound you, you are going to spend a lot of your time wounded.

People are not liking Harry Potter at you.

Okay.

People are also not not wearing masks at you.

You may be part of a minority group that experiences the potential for outsized harm as a result of majority groups engaging in perfectly reasonable behaviors.

There are kind, well-meaning, sensible people who go out every day and do something that may cause you harm and it's not because they want to hurt you or they don't care about whether you live or die, it is because they are making their own risk assessments based on their own lives and making the very reasonable assumption that people who are more concerned about covid than they are will take precautions to keep themselves safe.

We are not at a place in the pandemic where it is sensible to expect people with no symptoms of illness to mask in public as a matter of course or to present evidence of a recent negative test when entering a public building in their day-to-day life.

I think now is a really good time to sit down and ask yourself how you expect things to be with covid as an endemic part of our viral ecosystem. I think now is a good time to ask yourself what risk realistically looks like for you and for people who are unlike you. I think now is a good time to consider what would feel "safe" for you and how you could accomplish feeling safe as you navigate the world.

I'm probably going to continue masking in most indoor spaces for years. Maybe forever. There are accommodations that SHOULD be afforded to people who have to take more precautions than others (remote learning, remote visits, remote work, etc.), and we should demand those kinds of accommodations.

But it is going to poison you from the inside out if you are perpetually angry that people who don't have the same medical limitations as you are happy that they get to go shopping with their faces uncovered.

So now I want to talk to you about my father in law.

My father in law had a bone marrow transplant in 2015. That's the most immune compromised you can get without having your organs swapped out.

The care sheet for him after the transplant was a little overwhelming. The list of foods he couldn't eat was intimidating and the limitations on where he could go was depressing. It cautioned against going to large events, it recommended outdoor gatherings where possible but only if he could avoid sunlight and was somewhere with no history of valley fever. It said that he should wear masks indoors any time he was someplace with poor ventilation and that he should avoid contact with anyone who had an illness of any kind, taking special note to avoid children and anyone recently vaccinated for measles.

It was, in short, pretty much what someone immune compromised would need to do to try to avoid a viral infection. Sensible. Reasonable. Wash your hands and social distance; wear masks in sensitive contexts and don't spend time in enclosed places with people who have a communicable illness.

This is what life was always going to be like for people who are severely immune compromised, and it was always going to be incumbent upon the person with the illness to figure out how to operate in a society that is not built with them in mind.

It is not the job of every parent I encounter to tell me whether their child has been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months. That isn't something that people need to do as part of their everyday life. However it IS my responsibility to check with the parents I'm hanging out with whether their children have been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months so I know if it's safe for my immune compromised spouse to be around them.

If you want an environment in which you feel safe from covid, at this point in the pandemic (when the virus is endemic and not spreading rapidly as far as we can see from case counts) it is your responsibility to take the steps necessary to make you feel safe. Some of those steps will involve advocating for safety improvements in public spaces (again, indoor ventilation needs to be better and I'm personally pretty extreme about vaccination requirements; these are things we should be discussing in our school board meetings and at our workplaces), some of those steps will involve advocating for worker protections, guaranteed sick time, and the right to healthcare. But some of the things you're going to need to do to feel safe are going to come down to you.

If you are concerned about communicable diseases you have to be realistic about the fact that our society doesn't go out of its way to prevent communicable diseases - norovirus among food service workers pre-pandemic is pretty clear evidence of that. You are going to have to be proactive about your safety rather than expecting the world to act like Covid is at 2021-2022 levels when it is measurably not.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

john green quit tumblr because of the cock monologue

No, he didn’t.

This all happened a long time ago, and my memory is imperfect, but here’s my memory: The cock monologue certainly hurt my feelings! But when people are trying to force someone out of a virtual space, they sometimes resort to behavior that is similar to bullying except it’s not completely identical to bullying because the person they’re making fun of has a lot of power. (As someone who got bullied a lot in school, the feeling was similar in 2014 but it wasn’t identical--because I was aware of the fact that I was okay, that what was in danger was certain aspects of my identity/self-value that I treasured but not my entire personhood itself.)

Anyway, it hurt my feelings, and still hurts my feelings when I see it shared (it feels to me like a joke about my sexuality, although I understand other people don’t see it that way; but yeah, you don’t know much about my sexuality and I don’t really want you to but it feels like a joke about that to me, which just bums me out). 

But all of that stuff is a side effect of my job and having been successful at it, and I like my job. It is a great job. All jobs have aspects that suck. My job has fewer such aspects than other jobs I’ve had.

So yeah, I did not quit tumblr because of the cock monologue. (I also did not ask tumblr to make reblogs un-editable.) .

I quit tumblr because a few people started to make extremely specific threats. One might, for instance, send me an ask that featured a google streetview screenshot of my home alongside a plan for breaking into it.

I was super scared of these people (or possible person pretending to be a few people?) because they seemed to have a lot of knowledge about me and my family. We lived in a normal middle-class neighborhood in Indianapolis and I felt very exposed and nervous all the time in my real life, and eventually the freaked-out feeling just got too big and that’s why I quit tumblr.

(Edited to add: I am aware that prominent people sometimes use death threats against them to portray themselves as victims and protect themselves against justified criticism for their bigotry or abusive behavior or whatever. I don’t want to do that; it’s important to note that I have a lot of resources and power and so was able to, for instance, move to decrease the threat, which a lot of people can’t do. But I also feel like not talking about the experience honestly has not really helped me or anyone.)

I SHOULD’VE quit tumblr much earlier--I needed to realize that people weren’t comfortable with me in their virtual spaces and that to them I came across as cringey or even creepy, but at the time, I wasn’t nearly self-aware enough to leave for any of those reasons, and plus there was a lot of pressure from movie studios etc to stay on the social Internet so I could continue to promote my books and the stuff around them. So I didn’t quit when I should’ve, and as a result had and caused quite a few negative experiences for people. I’m sorry about the role I had in causing those negative experiences. I should’ve had a better understanding of not just how I experienced myself but also how other people might experience me. That’s something i’ve worked on over the years but still come up short on sometimes.

At any rate, I might delete this later because it makes me feel a bit like all my nerves are exposed to the air but I did just want to clarify that the, like, Tumblr Legend of this whole thing is at minimum a bit over simplified. 

[a-shade-of-blue]

Urgent: Help Mahmoud's 17 Family Members Escape from Frequent Bombings!

Hi everyone. Mahmoud (@mahmoudfamily1) is trying to raise fund to evacuate 17 members of his family (including no fewer than 5 children!), and he has asked me to share his story.

Mahmoud found out the bombing of her sister Tasnim’s husband’s house, the house his entire family was staying at, on the news. He could not contact his family for 3 days after that. He knew that several people had died and several more injured, but he did not know whom among his family survived, and who didn’t.

When he finally managed to reach them, he found out that a close relative, named Alaa, had been killed, along with her children: Ahmed and baby Iman who was not even one month old yet. Alaa was a beloved member of their family. She was optimistic and tried hard to cheer everyone else up. For the longest time, Alaa believed that the world would not turn away from their suffering and the war would end soon. But an airstrike took her and her children’s lives, the bombing continued, and the world remains indifferent.

Mahmoud’s sister Tasnim, was severely injured in the bombing. The attack happened while the family was sleeping, and Tasnim woke up to find her body injured and broken, bleeding heavily with bones sticking out of her leg. She found her 6-month-old daughter under the rubble, severely injured, but thankfully still alive. Tasnim's leg was fractured in multiple places, so severely injured that they all thought it had to be amputated. Tasnim’s husband and her 6-month-old daughter, her father-in-law, her brothers-in-law and Alaa’s husband were all severely injured by the bombing.

A few days later, Mahmoud’s family narrowly survived a second bombing on the street, as the people behind them, too slow to escape from the attack, were killed. They hid in their car, watching the plane flying above dropping bombs, praying that it would not target their car.

Given Tasnim and her 6-month-old daughter’s severe injuries, the family used a lot of money and exhausted all means to get them out of Gaza to receive the essential medical treatment they require. While Tasnim and her youngest daughter managed to evacuate, the rest of Mahmoud’s 17 family members, including Tasnim’s 2-year-old daughter who sustained first degree burns from the bombing, are still trapped in Gaza.

Mahmoud’s 17 family members (including no fewer than 5 children!) risk being killed and injured from the frequent airstrikes every day. They have narrowly escaped death no fewer than 5 times. On 31 August, the IOF dropped bombs on the tent next to theirs, killing 9 young men and women, and Mahmoud’s family woke up to their broken bodies.

Look at the photos Mahmoud sent me. These children, they are all trapped in Gaza where bombs may fall on them anytime. Please do not look away. Please help Mahmoud’s 17 family members reach safety!!

Mahmoud’s campaign is vetted by association. Mahmoud is @hazempalestine's friend, see post here for proof. @hazempalestine is vetted by @/el-shab-hussein and is listed as #281 on the verified fundraiser list by @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi.

I’ve been trying to boost Hazem’s campaign, but we are both worried about Mahmoud’s campaign as donations are coming in really slowly for him. I hope you will support Mahmoud’s campaign and help him evacuate his 17 family members as well!

Extremely Low Funds! As of 3 September, Only $147 CAD raised of $80,000 goal! Last donation was 19 hours ago!!!

Please follow Mahmoud on @mahmoudfamily1 to get updates on his family's situation! And also, please, please, share/reblog, and donate if you can! Every donation helps!!

[fellthemarvelous]

Deny. Defend. Depose.

It is clear to those of us that live in America, the only people we truly have on our side are ourselves. The ruling class has made it clear we don't matter to them.

Luigi Mangione was arrested and happened to have every single piece of evidence on him that law enforcement was looking for, including the parts for the ghost gun, inside his backpack (that he also got rid of in Central Park containing the Monopoly money???). Either he was trying to get caught or that evidence was planted. And when he was being forcefully pushed into the jail, he hollered back to the press about "injustice" and "being an insult to the intelligence of American citizens and our lived experiences."

The people have now turned against corporate America and the CEOs and billionaires are fucking terrified. Nothing the news stations are saying to us are changing our minds. The American people have finally united over this issue and there is no going back for us. Whoever did kill Brian Thompson (and theories abound on the game The Adjuster is playing because no one plays Monopoly alone) exposed the very real divide that exists between every day citizens and the extremely wealthy. Things were easier for them to control when they were able to divide us, but now that we are aware of how uncertain our future is in America and seeing just how little we matter to the people who take our money, we have realized that we have more in common with each other than the people who control every aspect of our lives. We are waking up.

There isn't one person in this country who hasn't been a victim to the predatory scam that is private health insurance. Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America, and many of us are one ambulance ride or hospital stay away from homelessness. We all know people who have died because the insurance company denied them the treatment they needed or waited until it was too late for an approval of a medical claim to matter anymore.

Recently, I decided to be tested for autism and ADHD. Not life-threatening or anything, but my life is still in shambles and I want to know if I'm going untreated for something else. Before being tested though, I was informed that the insurance company (Aetna) has said that they were going to cover the full cost of the testing I was having (which was six hours of testing by the way). She even made sure several times that they were, in fact, going to cover it in full and they said yes.

The same day that Brian Thompson, CEO of another horrible healthcare company, was murdered in broad daylight, I received a call from that doctor's office with the woman telling me that Aetna was now telling her they never agreed to cover my testing and that they are going to bill me for $1600 (where the hell am I supposed to get that?) and she is fighting them, but considering our lives don't matter to the people who tell us what healthcare we are and are not allowed to receive, I don't think they will feel compelled to change their minds because they are bloodsucking parasites who only care about lining their pockets while I don't even have $6 lying around, let alone $1600!!

Corporate America leeches off our taxes. They take and take and take and we see nothing in return. They raise prices on insurance coverage and then deny us the very coverage that we pay for. They poison our food, price gouge our poisoned food, and then force us to pay for the treatment we get when the food makes us sick. Corporate America profits off of our hard work, our taxes, our health, our lives, our deaths.

I don't know if this will reach a larger audience or not, but I wanted to talk about it on Tumblr because this platform seems to be a crossroads for every type of creative soul. I initially brought up this idea on TikTok earlier, but I want to see if it can get traction in other places as well since I have fewer than 3,000 followers on TikTok (and I have seen a small few express interest in my idea in the hours since I posted the video.)

We're busy being lectured by politicians and the news media because while they are clutching their pearls at what happened to Brian Thompson, the rest of us do not give one single flying fuck about what happened to him. As CEO of a for-profit health insurance company, he signed off on denied claims and death for those of us who struggle to make it from one day to the next. The sicker you are, the poorer you are, the more they force you to struggle and pay. The love to deny coverage because regardless of whether we live or die, they already have the money we are forced to pay them.

I don't condone murder at all, but I also don't care that he was murdered because he was guilty of murdering so many more people in this country through legal means because it's profitable. The CEOs are scared and there are wanted posters with their names and faces popping up in places. Every CEO of every healthcare company is guilty of murdering Americans and they continue to go unpunished for it because "it's just business".

So (if you've read this far) all of this previous rambling is to say that I keep thinking about how I want to make an impression. I want to continue upsetting the billionaires and the CEOs because corporate America is full of murderers who are legally allowed to decide whether we live or die based on which outcome will give them more money.

I have thought about the idea of creating a wall/constructing a wall somewhere as an art piece or something (making a statement) that will somehow honor the memory of people who died because insurance denied them care.

I know I definitely want it to say something along the lines of "In memory of those murdered by for-profit healthcare systems in corporate America". Something blatant. Loud. Something they are forced to look at every single day. Somehow. The wall could have images of those who are gone, or names of the person who died with the name of the insurance company responsible for their death underneath. Just something to make it clear that we see them for what they are. Something to avenge those who were sacrificed so billionaires and CEOS and shareholders could brag about record profits. Something that shows the whole world that American citizens are waking up to who the real monsters are.

The Adjuster (whoever he is or is not) has fanned the flames of revolution in America. He managed to unite us in a way I can't even recall before. It's not over. We know what happened to Brian Thompson was just the beginning, and corporate America only just now realized how much we actually hate them. A single shooter has sparked an awakening in America that is starting to snowball into something much bigger.

So if there is anyone out there who might be interested in collaborating on something like this, please let me know. I know we are all tired and demoralized and we have no money. I want to make a statement though, and I love doing that through art or writing. Collaborating with other people who have been through this same shit will also probably help us unite even more.

This is a watershed moment in American history.

In the words of Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight,

"There is a future for us. One where we're all free. But it's up to us to make it happen."

[writersdrug]

For the alpha/omega one, forced proximity on one of his missions he gets sent on, and she is basically standard issue along with his weapon. She’s around his stuff/in his bunk 24/7, her sent slowly permeating everything, eventually his mask, driving him crazy/rut if that’s interesting. She gets captured, he starts to realize how much he’d unconsciously relied on her, goes feral, tears enemy base apart and she nurses him back to health? Hehehehe I love feral könig

Oh, he's pissed.

Warnings: mentions of violence, attempted sexual assault (very minor and brief, guy gets what's coming to him)

When Ridgeback had informed the team that they had a new assignment, König was sighing in relief. Finally, a moment away from that damned omega. A chance to prove that he didn't need some weak, not-so-self-sustainable thing to "improve his performance" (if anything, you were just making him grumpier, with how often you complained about the standard-issued nesting material. He already said he'd buy you some new blankets, ok?!).

But then, Ridgeback announced that any partners belonging to the soldiers would be included on the deployment. Meaning omegas. Meaning you.

You weren't happy, either. You thought you were going to get an entire two weeks to yourself, including the entirety of König's room and bathroom and a chance to roll around in his clothes and scent uninterrupted. You'd get to chat it up with the sweet beta corporals that accompanied you to the mess hall in your Alpha's absence. But now? Being flown out to god-knows-where with König, a.k.a. Chuckles? With even fewer nesting materials of an even lesser quality? Great. Just perfect.

König hated how you were everywhere. He hated how your scent, ocean breeze and warm sandalwood, had clung to every article of clothing he owned. He hated how you built your (rather lackluster) nest in the top bunk with a literal wall of pillows around you - he wasn't even in there with you, why were you adding insult to injury? He hated that you were even here in the first place. Who's idea was this?! Now he has to growl at anybody that approaches his table in the dingy cafeteria where the two of you eat in silence, or sit in in the briefing room with you squished to near death in the corner, just to keep you away from other alphas. Not to mention, projecting his scent to cover yours is very inconvenient, you should really stop smelling so nice.

It was a breath of fresh air when they finally landed at the objective rally point for the mission - but the gunshots and acrid smell of blood did little to drown out the thoughts of you. What were you doing without him there to scowl at you? He didn't like the idea of some random beta from this random base taking you to meals, but it was better than an Alpha, he supposed. Your scent clung to his mask, and although it made his senses keener and sharper, he really wished it would just go away, so he could stop thinking of you and focus on the mission. Thankfully, it didn't last too long.

Thank goodness he was still in overdrive when the heli touched base, though - because he quickly found out that you were not where you should be: in his room. He'd have half a mind to think you ran off to do your own thing, if it wasn't for the sour scent in the room, rather than your usual sweet, slightly angry notes. You didn't leave intentionally.

Everyone was instantly on edge when he burst out of the room, nostrils flaring and pupils shrunken in his rage. Horangi rushed after him as König stormed throughout the base, following the trail of your scent (he has to make sure his friend doesn't kill anyone - innocent, that is). He hadn't claimed you yet; a decision he was regretting more and more by the second. What kind of Alpha was he? Leaving you alone on a foreign base without a nice, toothy mark on your neck. No, he didn't need you (🙄), but you were his. He should have made that clear. He didn't like it when people tried to take his omega.

It didn't take long before he heard you - some idiot Alpha had dragged you into the back of a humvee, and König could see your limbs kicking and scratching underneath the man (who had a decent, bloody scratch on his face - good on you). Your snarls and hisses echoed through the cracked windows - which König promptly shattered as he smashed his arm through it, grabbing the sergeant by his collar and pulling him out through the broken glass. You suddenly froze at the sound of the man being punched relentlessly, smelling a familiar cinnamon, woodsmoke, and earth, combined with the smell of blood. König's scent smelled like straight blood when he was angry, and it was terrifying, even to you.

Horangi was quick to interject König and his death sentence to the sergeant, pulling him off of the smaller Alpha - a bold move, even dangerous, but their pack bond was thicker than iron, and König wouldn't mistakenly swing on his friend.

Horangi shoved König back, muttering a quick "get your omega", before pulling the now-unconscious sergeant up by his armpits. "I'll do something with him."

König took a moment to clear his head, breathing in deeply and exhaling through clenched teeth. He then moved to the other side of the car with stride, yanking open the back passenger door and reaching in. You made a sound, a frightened squeak, still alert and cautious, as he promptly dragged you out from the back seat. After a quick brush of your clothes with his hand, making sure there's no lingering shards of glass on you, he tossed you over his shoulder with a grunt and made back for the barracks, leaving Horangi to deal with the soldier.

You assumed you're in deep waters with him now. König didn't say a word to you, just stormed through the halls and huffed at anyone he passes. You were a bit embarrassed by the whole ordeal: you had been dragged out, kicking and screaming (and gave a proper, internal fuck you to the surrounding personnel that did nothing) from the barracks, and now here you were, being dragged right back in - just without the protest.

He reached your shared quarters and shoved his bulky frame inside, kicking the door shut behind him. You were about to explain yourself when he slipped you off of his shoulder and put you back on your feet - then promptly leaned down and shoved his face into your neck, inhaling rather obnoxiously while gripping you by your arms. You whined at the sudden, atypical behavior, gently pushing against his chest to get away from the behemoth of a man. He ignored it, picking you up again and carrying you into his bunk bed. He drags you in between himself and the wall, chuffing when you fit so nicely against his frame. Had you always been so comfortable? Why didn't someone convince him to hold you like this sooner?

You, on the other hand, were not as comfy. This wasn't your nest - you didn't have that stupid, grey, felt blanket that was five feet too long, nor the extra pillows you had stolen from the empty room across the hall. You didn't have your border, your flimsy wall of protection against the rest of the world. You squirmed in König's grip, shoving against his taut abdomen and trying to climb over him. He growled, a sound that had you bristling for a moment, but you pushed past it.

"Gimme a sec-"

"Schatz, please-"

"Just a minute!"

He huffed and let you go; you scrambled over him and out of his bed, the thick, muscular cords of his abdomen tensing as you used it to support your weight. He lay on his back and sighed. He just saved you from some cocksure, weaker Alpha - weren't you thankful? I mean, really - this was truly insulting. Here he was (oh, look, his fist was bleeding from smashing the car window, didn't that show you he was a good protector? A good mate?), fresh off of deployment, fighting the demons of the world just for you, and you had the audacity to turn your nose away from him and shuffle back to your precious little nest. How sweet of you. Very appreciative, liebe. Why don't you-

He was torn from his thoughts when a blanket was tossed over him. He pulled it back, confused, as he felt you shoving pillows into his side. You tucked them around him, forming a barrier around the side of him that was closest to the edge of the bed. He watched as you fussed for a bit, beating and fluffing the pillows until they were just right. You then tossed one more onto the bed - one that was wearing his shirt as a case, which had him melting - and climbed overtop of him again.

His chest rumbled with an affectionate sound as you took a damp bathroom towel and began wrapping it around his busted hand. You held it against your chest as you curled into his side once more, not protesting or scrunching your face when he wrapped his other hand around your waist and rubbed your back. He preened when he felt the reverberations of your purr against his hand, your sweet scent filling the air and causing him to relax his shoulders and neck muscles. It permeated his brain and made his Alpha sigh with relief, happiness, and satisfaction. Your scent was finally untainted by that bitter, angry note that you usually had.

"Thanks for... today." you said, deciding to leave the details unspoken. "Sorry about the-"

"Don't be sorry." he rumbled, rubbing his thumb back and forth across your lower back. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"You couldn't be."

"Well, now I am."

You sighed, letting your eyes flutter shut. He's not so bad... getting sent off by my family to some random military company was bad, sure, but... my Alpha's a good one. This could be good.

"You're purring very loudly, schatz."

"Shut up."

[hyunsuloves]

can u write myung gi x reader ?? shy reader who rlly doesnt like confrontation & talking to ppl but thanos keeps following them around maybe ?? or u can do (idk if u write for him) but daeho x reader ?? maybe during the mingle game, theres too many ppl in the group so reader leaves & finds other ppl (despite daeho telling them not to) daeho doesnt know if theyre alive until they get back to the main room ??

even if u dont write these i hope u have an amazing day!! i saw ur myung gi x reader n thought it was so cute >.<

i don’t know which way to go.

synopsis … you make a sacrifice in the midst of the mingle that leaves you without knowing if your boyfriend is alive.

pairing … kang dae-ho x gn!reader ༝༚༝༚ featuring in-ho who’s friends with the reader!

warnings … the way this is written is a little unclear, sorry 😓

lovely notes … i hope you like it ml !! & i changed the plot a little bit

꩜ [ 1.2k words ]

you, jun-hee, and dae-ho stood on the leisurely rotating platform. gi-hun and jung-bae stood not too far away, looking around the room in the same wary manner. you were in the early parts of a game called mingle. 

it was described as a game where players had to group up and enter rooms following a predetermined number. if the players didn’t make it into the rooms in time, or if the room had fewer or more players than necessary, they’d be eliminated.

the most childish music ever played as you stood, hand gripping dae-ho’s arm in a way that would’ve been painful if not for the adrenaline running through both your veins. 

the platform stopped abruptly, and the lights turned off for a brief moment before they started flashing purple and pink. 

the first number that was called out was ten. you were in a group of six, and the entirety of them looked around frantically, needing to find the four people to complete your group. 

“how many are you?” gi-hun asked a woman, hyun-ju you believed her name was.

“four,” she responded quickly. 

“that makes us ten.” jung-bae added. 

you all darted toward room 44, the green door. you made it in with one second left, mere moments before the latch would’ve clicked and left all of you to die. 

you stood in a corner, gripping dae-ho’s once again with such intensity. you saw gi-hun peek out the rectangle-shaped slit in the door before the sounds of gunfire filled the room. you made the safe assumption that anyone who didn’t make it into the room in time was eliminated, which was being shot to death.

“hey.” dae-ho whispered in your ear. 

you glanced up to see your boyfriend looking down at you with an affectionate look in his eyes. something as small as basic eye contact with him calmed your entire body. you felt the tension leave your shoulders as you allowed yourself to take a deep breath.

it felt odd to find yourself relaxed in such a strenuous environment as the one you are in now, but maybe it was just the effect that your boyfriend had on you. 

“just stick with me, okay? i got you.”

“okay. thank you, dae-ho.”

each person stood in the room, taking a moment to catch their breath before going out to the death game you all knew you couldn’t avoid. it would be another number called, and you’d have to scramble to find a certain number of people once again.

the door unlocked with a click, and you found yourself standing next to dae-ho on the rotating platform once again. 

as the first round, the platform stopped, the lights turned off for a fleeting moment, and then they began flashing obnoxiously.

the next number that was called out was four, and you were in a group of six. you couldn’t risk any of your friends dying, so you quickly made a move to leave the group.

“i’ll go.” young-il spoke. 

“i’ll go with you,” you said without hesitation. you wanted dae-ho and jun-hee to survive more than anything, even if it meant putting your own life on the line. 

you made a move to leave before dae-ho gripped your forearm. “no, you can’t go. i can’t risk losing you.”

your eyes watered, causing your vision to blur, and you felt the burn in your nose. you didn’t want to lose your boyfriend either, but what else could you do? all you had to do was find two other people and you and young-il would be safe for another round. 

“i love you dae-ho, so, so much. but i have to go, and i have to go quick.” you gave him a fleeting kiss before grabbing young-il and running to the nearest participants you could find. 

you heard his screams of protest, but you had no choice but to leave. there was only twenty seconds on the clock, and you’d be damned if you let yourself die on the second round of this godforsaken game. 

you quickly found two people who stood and dragged them into the nearest room, with young-il close behind. 

you made it into the room with only two seconds left on the clock, and the latch clicked, as it did the first round. 

you stood in the constricted room for a drawn-out moment before the latch clicked again, and you all filed out of the room and onto the platform once again. 

the rest of the rounds felt like a blur. with screaming, rapidly moving bodies, and the near-blinding flashing lights, you were unable to locate dae-ho.

you deeply regretted leaving your group, and most importantly, your boyfriend. but you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if any one of your friends died because you tried to be so selfless.

you tried not to panic as your heart beat rapidly and your hands sweated tremendously. you felt a sudden, intense wave of fear as you stood on the platform with young-il for the last round. 

“have you seen dae-ho?” you looked up at the man beside you, a buoyant tone in your voice.

“i’m afraid i haven’t. but i’m sure he’s alright.” he comforted you, placing a heavy hand on your shoulder. 

you inhaled slowly through your nose, knowing that young-il was most likely right. your ex-marine of a boyfriend could survive grouping up and going into rooms, right?

the platform clunked, the lights turned off, and they flashed as before. the number was two, and it couldn’t be more perfect for you and young-il. he grabbed your arm, and the both of you ran to the first space you laid eyes on.

for the last time, the lock was unlatched and you were allowed to leave. you finished the third game, and you’d made it out alive.

you walked out among the crimson blood and lifeless bodies littered on the ground. you shuddered as you navigated your way through the room, and your body was wracked with tremors.

you walked next to young-il, making pace in getting back into the main room. your eyes scanned the room rapidly, looking for the man you left in the middle of the game.

suddenly, you felt warm arms tightening around your waist. your boyfriend found you before you could find him.

“i found you,” he whispered in your ear, voice husky. 

you instantly turned around, your hands finding purchase around his neck. you had been so worried about losing him, and it felt surreal to have him standing right in front of you. 

you felt like you would never see him again, like he’d die just because you decided to leave the group to avoid causing chaos between them. 

“hi. i was so scared i was gonna lose you.” his mouth was right next to yours, yet the proximity didn’t feel like nearly enough,

“never. i’m here. please don’t ever leave me like that again.”

“okay, dae-ho. i’ll stay with you. i promise.” you intended to keep your promise; you intended to never leave him again. 

you had finally found your boyfriend again, amid the death games. you were wrapped in your lover's embrace, and you never wanted to leave again.

[takumiraine]

So I’ve fallen into the DPxDC thing. Not sure how, and I only have fandom characterizations and wiki knowledge but. I have a thing.

<next>

Once upon a time there was a boy, no older than fourteen, with hair darker than night and eyes bluer than the summer sky. Once upon a time, there was a budding scientist with a caring sister and two lovably scattered scientist parents. Once upon a time, there was a terrible accident. Once upon a time there was a boy, no older than fourteen, with hair whiter than snow, skin paler than death, eyes greener than toxic waste. Once upon a time, the boy needed help as more and more potentially world ending events descended on his town. Once upon a time, nobody but the government came. Once upon a time, the boy, his sister, and his friends escaped.

This is what happened next.

When they split up, Danny had drawn Gotham. Gotham with its so called “vigilante family”. Gotham whose so called “protectors” had been asked multiple times through the so called “Justice League” for help. But just like true justice, they were blind to his requests. His pleas. Both he and Amity Park were left to rot. It had been five years now but Danny was still mad. When he and his friends escaped the three of them each went to a different League infested city. They weren’t strong enough to do more than gather intel but…. Intel would lead to openings.

It took a bit of Tucker’s help in re-establishing his identity and giving him a realistic transcript for what his trajectory would have been if he wasn’t constantly fighting ghosts (mid to high Cs with a couple Bs instead of mid to low Ds with a couple Cs). But he managed a halfway decent scholarship to Gotham U. It covered tuition, books, and just enough for some food.

Sure Danny was technically homeless, but he’s lived through worse. Besides, the shitty parts of town had plenty of empty apartments. Careful use of his ghost powers made acquisition of an apartment a breeze. By the time the semester started, Danny had found himself a place. Tucker had slipped into the network and made sure the landlord wouldn’t be renting it - a coincidental shift of the management had been really helpful, Danny wouldn’t lie - as it looked as if it had been permanently bought. Danny did some within-wall plumbing to get himself water access, then rewired the electrical box outside to grant him access to the grid. Though it was all illegal and would crumble if people talked to each other about it, he counted his blessings for the moment. Illegal meant fewer ways to be tracked after all.

Ridiculous that a nineteen year old had to think about avoiding being tracked, but here he was. Every time he saw the bat signal in the distance his core writhed, and the nearby ghosts scattered. Crime Alley had its own masked vigilante, who didn’t seem to be always on good terms with the Bats, which was fine by him. The less chance of running into them the less chance he had of blowing his “Normal Human Dan Nightingale” life to pieces. Danny hadn’t seen this Red Hood person face to face yet, but he had heard stories.

Gotham had enough ambient ecto to sustain him without his ghost form and trips to the Realms, which was good because the more he used his powers, the more likely he was to get picked up by the Government’s sensors. The GIW had been sent by The League after all. They were trouble enough on their own. He didn’t want them to have backup while his own was spread across the country. He missed flying and seeing the stars, but Danny had to admit that he was a huge fan of the not getting hunted for sport thing.

It made times like these difficult though. Currently Danny was being mugged. Or… the guy was attempting to mug him. “For the fifth time dude, I live in this part of town. I don’t have any money.” Danny was trying to explain to the guy holding a knife to his midsection.

In another life he would have kicked the guy’s ass. Instead he had his hands up as he was pressed back to the crumbling brick and boarded up window of what used to be a shop front.

“Don’t play games with me kid! You’re going to college. You have money.” The guy pressed the knife point harder into his stomach, the knife tip barely a pound of pressure away from puncturing his skin. As it was he’d have to mend his shirt.

“Yeah, on a shitty scholarship. I can’t even afford dinner every night.” Thank god for ambient ecto. “Here I’m going to reach into my pocket and get my wallet.” Slowly Danny lowered one of his hands and slid two fingers into his pocket, coming back out with a thin, worn leather wallet. He raised it back up and unfolded it “no credit cards.” He slid his fingers into where he kept the two dollars he had left this month and turned them invisible. Then he tilted it so the would be mugger could see. “See? Nothing. Can I go home now? I’ve got the rest of an essay to write before the library opens tomorrow. I don’t even have a computer to type it on myself.”

“You’re lying! You’ve gotta have something!” The guy was getting more and more frantic. Probably jonesing for a fix of whatever drug flooded this place.

“If I had it I would have given it to you.” Danny explained patiently, “I have more sense than to get stabbed over some cash. But I don’t have it.”

“Liar!” The man yelled, jabbing the knife into him. Danny grunted in pain, not a shout, pain didn’t make him shout anymore, as the heavy thud of boots hit the ground. The guy was suddenly removed from in front of him. Danny swore loudly, careful to press his hands around the knife as his core demanded he do something. Instead all he did was breathe. When he got enough of a handle on the pain-fight response to know his eyes weren’t changing, Danny looked up.

The first thing he noticed was a red bat logo on the man’s chest. “Oh no not you.” He groaned half to himself.

The man slammed his mugger into the wall with a sick crack, and let him slump to the ground beside where Danny was bent over. “Excuse me?” The man asked, voice modulator seeming to glitch slightly, coming out more robotic. That was probably Danny’s fault. He needed a tighter control of his aura. But he didn’t have it right now.

“I don’t need your help.” He ground out through grit teeth.

“You’ve been stabbed.” The man explained, as if Danny was someone in shock. Which, fair. He might be.

“You’re one of those Bat fucks. I don’t need help from a Bat.” He grit out in reply, voice barely held together under his growl.

“I am not with the Bats.” Danny snorted, then groaned as that was the absolute wrong choice. Instead he just reached up with one bloody hand, which he couldn’t keep the slight tremor out of, and swiped his blood across the red bat symbol on his “hero’s” chest. “Oh. That. We…. Had a falling out.”

“Right. Well. I’ll leave you to it. Next time, let me get mugged.” Danny took another fortifying breath, trying to settle his core. It screamed pain-revenge-fight at him, but now was not the time. He needed to get back to his apartment and get this knife out of him. Then check in with Sam and Tucker. Maybe Jazz. Though she was at one of the Ivy League schools and he really should leave her be. Let someone have a future.

The man with the red bat logo said something after him as Danny shouldered past and shuffled down the street, but Danny ignored it.

Fucking Bats. Fucking Gotham. Just…. Fuck.

[homunculus-argument]

Hey I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you need longer than a minute to recover from doing your gym reps, your workout is too hard for you. If you need to take time to wheeze and catch your breath while sitting on the equipment before you're capable of standing up and walking off from it, you need to cut back. Do fewer reps, use lighter weights, just do less of it altogether. It's a machine, not your damn death bed. Stop hogging up the equipment and go die somewhere else.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Reasons why we know there's something wrong with Grandpa:

• believes immigrants are eating their neighbors pets because he heard someone say it on TV (without any evidence) • thinks injecting disinfectant into our veins might be a good idea. (It's definitely not, don't try it.) • claims America's F35 fighter jet is completely invisible, even if you're right next to it (like Wonder Woman's plane)

• praises white supremacists and KKK members who were chanting antisemitic hate speech, calling them "very fine people" • focuses on imaginary issues like preventing children from changing gender while at school, but ignores real problems like school shootings • thought it was a good idea to give away our desperately needed Covid test machines to our adversary ("Grandpa, what have you done?" — he can't be left alone for a minute) • decided to believe Putin's lies, but dismiss findings from America's intelligence agencies • claims America had airplanes during the Revolutionary War

• believes in the Nazi ideology that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," and says some migrants are actually subhuman "animals" • insisted that the U.S. would have fewer coronavirus cases if it conducted less testing (yes, a U.S. president in charge of controlling the crisis, actually said something this inept, repeatedly) • due to his incompetence and lies during the Covid crisis, the U.S. had one of the highest rates of Covid deaths in the world • thinks windmills cause cancer and kill whales • speaks endlessly about his concerns re: dying by electrocution from a boat battery or being eaten by a shark

• thinks he's above the law and, as president, should be able to commit as many crimes as he wants • is a billionaire who whines about how badly he's been treated, then he's chauffeured to his private jet • likes to discuss Arnold Palmer's penis • after NINE years of repeatedly promising to unveil his Healthcare Plan "very soon," he admits he still has no real plan —only "concepts of a plan" • has a bizarre attraction to the fictional cannibal and serial killer, Hannibal Lector (why? no one knows —and everyone's afraid to ask)

• advocates dangerous plots, like using the military against Americans who disagree with him, or using the DOJ to arrest them, or just telling people to "beat the crap out of them" and he'll pay their legal fees • thinks having a national day of violence is a good idea (we should never have let Grandpa watch "The Purge") • wants to be the "law and order president," yet this 34 time convicted felon incites people to riot and to commit criminal acts of violence • unable to take the loss of an election like a man, he had a temper tantrum like a toddler, that culminated in a treasonous insurrection

⠀This guy is so delusional, he claims he's a genius because he often speaks incoherently in something he calls "the Weave." Here are two examples: • "How disgusted were all when we see all of us are when we see three days ago when we viewed their parade." Asheboro, NC, 8/21/24 • When asked, "What specific legislation will you commit to, to make child care affordable?" He responded, “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know; I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue. ...But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.” New York, NY, 9/5/24 ⠀If this was anybody else's Grandpa, the family would be having discussions about who's going to go with Grandpa to the doctor to find out what's wrong with him, and who's going to be in charge of finding him a nice convalescent home to live in. ⠀My suggestion is that it might be a good idea to elect a president who has no cognitive impairment and can tell the difference between reality and delusions. Personally, I think that's a rather important quality in a president.

[exhaled-spirals]

« To mention the global loss of biodiversity, that is to say, the disappearance of life on our planet, as one of our problems, along with air pollution or ocean acidification, is absurd—like a doctor listing the death of his patient as one symptom among others.

The ecological catastrophe cannot be reduced to the climate crisis. We must think about the disappearance of life in a global way. About two-thirds of insects, wild mammals and trees disappeared in a few years, a few decades and a few millennia, respectively. This mass extinction is not mainly caused by rising temperatures, but by the devastation of natural habitats.

Suppose we managed to invent clean and unlimited energy. This technological feat would be feted by the vast majority of scientists, synonymous in their eyes with a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions. In my opinion, it would lead to an even worse disaster. I am deeply convinced that, given the current state of our appetites and values, this energy would be used to intensify our gigantic project of systemic destruction of planetary life. Isn't that what we've set out to do—replace forests with supermarket parking lots, turn the planet into a landfill? What if, to cap it all, energy was free?

[...C]limate change has emerged as our most important ecological battle [...] because it is one that can perpetuate the delusional idea that we are faced with an engineering problem, in need of technological solutions. At the heart of current political and economic thought lies the idea that an ideal world would be a world in which we could continue to live in the same way, with fewer negative externalities. This is insane on several levels. Firstly because it is impossible. We can't have infinite growth in a finite world. We won't. But also, and more importantly, it is not desirable. Even if it were sustainable, the reality we construct is hell. [...]

It is often said that our Western world is desacralised. In reality, our civilisation treats the technosphere with almost devout reverence. And that's worse. We perceive the totality of reality through the prism of a hegemonic science, convinced that it “says” the only truth.

The problem is that technology is based on a very strange principle, so deeply ingrained in us that it remains unexpressed: no brakes are acceptable, what can be done must be done. We don't even bother to seriously and collectively debate the advisability of such "advances". We are under a spell. And we are avoiding the essential question: is this world in the making, standardised and computed, overbuilt and predictable, stripped of stars and birds, desirable?

To confine science to the search for "solutions" so we can continue down the same path is to lack both imagination and ambition. Because the “problem” we face doesn't seem to me, at this point, to be understood. No hope is possible if we don't start by questioning our assumptions, our values, our appetites, our symbols... [...] Let's stop pretending that the numerous and diverse human societies that have populated this planet did not exist. Certainly, some of them have taken the wrong route. But ours is the first to forge ahead towards guaranteed failure. »

— Aurélien Barrau, particle physicist and philosopher, in an interview in Télérama about his book L'Hypothèse K