#its not entirely based on the bubonic plague

[bullet-rebuttle]

New Verse: Bad ending/Ghost au

Base information: an au where the killing game happened and whoever was the killer escaped leaving everyone else to be executed. Tw for body horror below the cut.

Based on the executions here.

Shigure:

Appears with rope squeezed around his wrists and neck with the arrow through his chest, his heart at the end of it all. Despite everything, he continues smiling just as he did before death acting like nothing is wrong.

Akihito:

Is still completely covered in his own blood with knifes still slashed into him not that he bothers to look at as if he did he would pass out. Finds himself unable to stand from dizziness caused by blood loss , refuses to believe he is dead and still is trying to earn peoples favor by the manga he was writing before dying to an obsessive degree.

Rika:

Is completely covered in slices, almost seeming like she is gonna fall apart at points if she bothered to move: due to her siblings death she finds herself completely defeated even as a ghost contrary for her hard working nature beforehand.

Tsuyoshi:

His ‘body’ is barely even visible due to all the vines and flowers covering it. The most that can be seen is an eye and sometimes his hand. Routinely coughs up more plants which scratches his throat making his voice sound awful. Still tries to remain as kind as before, but..yeah proves difficult.

Yamane:

Unlike the others; she has nearly lost herself entirely being more of a ‘vengeful spirit’. Almost appears as if her skin itself is coming off as she hunts for whoever was the reason for this. Barley acts like herself from before other than trying to make sure her peers keep her in mind as her last moments was her execution trying to make people forget her.

Ume:

The hardest spirit to see as not even a body was left behind in her execution. Almost seems more of a ever changing phantom as her spirit almost always seems to be changing like her old artwork. Her views on her death are harder to figure out as she almost seems more as a blank slate.

Hayato:

Covered in intense bruises due to being beat up so much. Is contsnatly looking for Giichi believing he had failed him in the way along with his other classmates. Can’t careless what happened to him despite all the pain he experienced.

Naoko:

Half of him is covered in flames and intense burns while the other half is covered in things like black spots among other symtoms of the bubonic plague. Is even more weak and frail than he was even before and while he is better than the others in terms of understanding and accepting his death, it still troubles him due to this not being what he was expecting.

Mizumi:

Unlike others who at least have some ‘body’ remaining, Mizumi does not being left with only a skeleton only reconizable as her due to her pirate speech and outfit she put herself in despite all the water damage. Similar to Akihito, she refuses to believe she is dead, but this time its due to her own pride. Also quite vengeful about what happened internally though.

Yukino:

Looks like more of the stereotypical fiery white spirit with the only color on her other than that is her still red eyes. Otherwise her injuries are limitted other than it being difficult to walk due to other spirt hands trying to pull her back down to the ground (think of the river sticks ghosts). Accepts her death even if she finds this anger inducing.

Etsuko:

Skin nearly looks blue from hypothermia and is just as cold as ice enough for some to mistake her as such. Enough to give even living people chills if she is near. Her kind and positive personality tries to remain, but its a lot more forced and hard to show off due to the intense cold air surrounding her. Occasionally coughs up water from drowning and easily gets dizzy.

Kaori:

Completely blind due to having her eyes torn out and is covered in intense, deep gashes with bits of her hair and skin torn out along with her outfit being torn. Unlike before were she will at least speak if given permission, she doesnt talk anymore at all due to fear about whatever is going on around her as her execution stunned her to silence.

Takumi:

Due to being blown up, he almost always appears covered in flames with his ‘body’ parts falling of often leaving him rather limited along with some of his bones and brain exposed. Covered in third degree burns. Still has the remains of the bomb attached to his chest. More vengeful than other spirits, but not to the same extent as Yamane. Barely manages to keep himself composed and casual to hide his anger and regret.

Raijin:

Covered in many scraps and some third degree burns around the face and chest from hitting the ground along with having multiple gashes surrounding him from the planes engine. Views himself as a failure for not being more help to everyone giving up his hero persona like in the tragedy verse. Has lost his passion for flying now terrified at the mention.

Giichi:

Barely is able to stand due to all the body parts stolen from him. The surviving parts look as if they are gonna fall off or be torn any minute with an example being his left eye which is gorged out. Has given up his act being extremely angry about everything showing his old anger towards how his life has gone. His kind side is only shown to Hayato who he tries to help calm down.

Sumiko:

Most of her is unusable keeping her mostly stationary from the long fall she went through. Constantly is looking around for Oshia wondering if she just hallucinated her before while trying to ignore all the pain and bruises from her fall.

[roachliquid]

A problem I've noticed with writers who come up with fictional diseases is that they often get so focused on what they want the end product of the disease to be (especially when it's some zombie/hyperviolent/apocalyptic scenario) that they forget what things like viruses, bacteria, and fungi are even about.

To wit: they're about making more of themselves in the most straightforward way possible.

They're not malevolent; they don't want to make people suffer or die or any of that shit. They're just doing what they know how to do, and while misery and death are definitely possible products of their behavior, they're also prone to causing symptoms that are less deadly for most of the populace and more embarrassing, gross, and/or mildly debilitating.

I'm not saying that if what your story really needs is a murdervirus, then you absolutely must change it to something else for the sake of "realism" - if a disease is what you need, then a disease you must have (although I do sometimes wish a writer had considered other alternatives). What I'm suggesting is that, when coming up with your fictional disease, you can give it a lot of verisimilitude by keeping in mind that most real life diseases are not simply harmful, but really really weird.

Colds make you produce way too much of the mucus your body normally uses to protect your airways and keep out allergens. Stomach bugs over-activate a mechanism in your body that's meant to protect you from ingested poisons, and does absolutely nothing to help you when the source of your problem is a virus. Herpes viruses sit dormant in your skin doing absolutely nothing until the stars align and they can make sores once again in an attempt to infect someone else. And sure, that last one is metal as fuck - but just to balance it out, keep in mind that's the behavior of one of the more harmless viruses in circulation. Like, your biggest danger from herpes is if you get a bacterial infection in the sores.

Also, when it comes to high mortality rates, writers just tend to shoot way too high. "This disease killed off 99% of the population!" Cool, it just wiped out its entire host base and is on the fast track to extinction. Even the Black Death in its heyday never managed those kind of numbers, and it had about the best chances that any disease is ever going to get.

So yeah. Diseases that are written 100% around their narrative purpose (unless the purpose itself is weird; I've seen some stellar plague stories that just go buck wild) tend to feel two-dimensional and edgy. A little weirdness can help with that.

Another brainworm I've noticed in many of these kinds of stories is that the disease is often written as if it poses more of a threat to the non-infected than the people who actually have it. While any disease carries with it the fear of being infected, the greatest harm caused by any real plague is to the people who actually catch it, and not simply from the threat of sickness and/or death. The bubonic plague, for example, causes painful sores and tissue necrosis to its victims while they are living - something that people can still experience if they contract the disease, and even though it is much easier to receive treatment and survive, permanent loss of tissue is something they will live with for the rest of their days. Likewise, the COVID-19 virus - while brutal and deadly even as an acute infection - is not only horrifying and miserable to have, it carries the added risk of saddling survivors with chronic illness that they may never recover from.

And yet, far from empathizing with the victims of their fictional disease, many writers choose to treat them as plot devices to menace their main characters - who are typically part of that magic minority that is immune to the disease, catches it but survives it with no serious repercussions, or has simply had the skill and luck to avoid it this far. Obviously the people who are dead from the virus are, well, dead - but when it comes to current sufferers, or the concept of survivors living with some kind of chronic aftereffect, many writers seemingly fail to recognize that this is a possible perspective that they could explore.

Which, this isn't just slipshod writing, it's incredibly privileged and specifically ableist, because it goes beyond the practical necessity of writing about people who are still alive and acts as though the only people worth writing about, and in the long term caring about, are not only alive but not being directly affected by the biggest baddest plot device in the story.

So yeah. Bit of a rant there, and now I think I should plug Pontypool Changes Everything, a fantastic book about an apocalyptic plague that does none of the shit I just mentioned and is incredibly bizarre to boot. That's all for now.

[thegnasticious]

At Least It’s Not Alaska pt. 1

‘At Least It’s Not Alaska’ is an album which was released by The Sketchtistics (in full, in 2025). This is the single handed most difficult album I have ever produced. It was technically started around 2009-2013, then the demo version was completely deleted after shortly escaping its internet confines (based on my ex-girlfriend’s advice). Both times this album has been attempted it has met more resistance than any other creative pursuit of mine, and what I want to write about is why to me, though this album has been the most difficult, is the least and most important one of The Sketchtistics. To start, what does ‘At Least It’s Not Alaska’ mean; it is the end of the creative journey. The cool crater to a hot impact’s end. It’s the smoldering ashes with no explanation of what is burning. It is heat and cold at the same time, isolation and fame all in the same hand. In a deeper level or context, it represents the acceptance of fusion, of tulpas, and the context which provides the sense of wonderment that ignites belief. Each song is meant to be a banger of its own, and the album needs to ride out on a creepy, Phillip Glass type note. This particular part of the album has had me immensely blocked up (writer’s block for some two years now) and actually has for once impeded on my ability to practice and perform. This is because these last couple of songs, incomplete, are my greatest enemies. And at this point they have no form or care. I was convinced earlier this year to ride the outro out like Nine-Inch Nail’s ghosts; stop focusing on lyrical value, and go full instrumental. The idea behind this was to condense what is a book-sized lyrical content, to tonal and melodic upheavals which represent but not state the point. It would be as if the album was perfectly accommodating or scoring, a visual accompaniment which is not there. What has made this album hard is it defines solo work, and at my age, most musician’s aren’t playing together as much, so it’s supposed to represent that horrible feeling of disconnect, of being entirely alone, even with a pretty melody. The other thing that makes this hard….. is well….. Alaska is cold and sucks. It gets cold, some areas don’t have an ounce of sunlight for nearly all year, yet for some odd reason you’ll meet some idiot along the way who will insist it’s a nice place. I’d like to think it’s like Sweden, and if I ever got there there would be a hot tub of blonde haired babes waiting for me. But it’s not, it’s Alaska, and it should be like the smell of your feet after an over worked day. Do I ever think I’ll go to Alaska? Likely not, unless I’m abducted. I hate cold weather, and a thermostat below 70 during the winter constitutes mental insanity to me. I avidly clean molds and I spend a lot of time learning how to maintain old structures in harsh conditions (more than I would choose). What does Alaska remind me of? Coldness in general I relate with three things; Aliens, Ghosts, and Vampires (and death of course). A normal human would not be a freezebox. It takes lizard-like blood to not freeze and feel that below 20 degrees is a normal suiting environment for a living body temperature. The hardest thing for me about this particular album, is any time I attempted it, I had no co-musicians to jam with, it’s like it was the bubonic plague. Every other album there was cooperation and enjoyment and purpose, this one always feels like the end. That is on a deeper level why creatively, when I was younger I might have left it incomplete. I thought leaving it unfinished would grant me some kind of immortality or peace, but in the end, I felt that was fruitless and ambiguous and I now seek to find an actual (even if it’s not perfect) end to the album. This also gave me some years to see what other people might have worked for, and to incorporate their vision into the overall design as well as my own. But what did this mean, and more importantly what did it cost? In all when the profits were returned and distributed, the time it cost was around 15 years

[mail-me-a-snail]

Pink in the Night

Hugo Wallace’s story continues! in this chapter, we learn of the baker’s real name, and finally settle this emotional debacle

tag list: @txmmy-rose @immabethehero @spoken-paper-plane @cryptic-phantom17 @iv0ry-keys tw: mild nsfw, brief description of broken bones read pt.1 here

The rain beats against the ground. Somewhere, thunder cracks and lights the world up for one moment. The trees rush past Hugo Wallace in a wild blur as he races through the forest, trying his best to keep his footing as hot tears muddle his vision and the ground becomes muddy.

"Stupid," he berates himself, "Stupid, stupid, stupid. The one you love doesn't love you back, even though you knew he wouldn't, so you run away, crying like a child. Stupid, stupid—" "Doctor Wallace!" yells the baker from somewhere behind him over the rain. "I told you, don't follow me!" His voice cracks on the you. "Doctor Wallace, please, listen—" The ground gets rockier and muddier and it’s harder for him to maintain his balance. There are more trees now, crowding the edges of his vision. He's stumbling in the dark because he left his lantern in the grove. Another stupid, stupid decision, all because of this Bird Man nonsense. He isn't even using his cane; it's swinging as his arm does, like he's ready to hit something, because he is more than ready to. His clothes are sopping wet. "What do you want me to say, doctor?" The baker persists, footsteps closer, followed by the sound of branches being moved aside. "Do you want me to tell you I don't love the Bird Man? Would that help things?" Hugo wants to say yes, but the confusion drips so strongly from the baker it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. "Drop it, please, for the love of God, drop it!" Hugo shouts, "Clearly, you're in love with a silhouette!" "That's not—" he growls in frustration, "Where are you even going?" "I'm going home. I'm tired and angry, a-and upset, and I just want to go—" "HUGO!"

Hugo's stomach dips as he falls straight off the path's end. At first, he thinks that this is it, that this is his end—a less than satisfying death at the bottom of a cliff. Oh, well. At least this emotional debacle would be over. The pain that comes with his jaw smacking hard against the forest floor, rattling his teeth, his mask scratching his face, and the bruising along his body reminds him he is very much alive. The breath is driven out of him and he struggles to breathe, but he is alive for the most part. His cane falls beside him. Dirt and rain shower him. He's covered in mud and his robes stick to his body. He looks up. He had fallen into a ditch, maybe five or six feet deep, and can see the trees overhead. He could climb out. His head hurts like hell and what's worse is that he can't see a thing in the darkness. "Hugo!" The baker's face pops over the lip of the ditch, eyes bright with worry. "Are you okay?" "Baker?" He groans, sitting up. Two of the baker's face shifts in and out of his swimming vision. A severe flame erupts in his left leg as he tries to stand, and he swears loud enough to scare away all the animals. As a physician, he knows his leg is broken. He feels around his pant leg for blood. The skin isn't broken, thank God, but the bone—his fibula, by the source of pain, it seems—is still shattered. The skin around it is already swelling. There goes climbing out. "M-My leg; it's broken." "Shit," the baker breathes, then slides down the hill to meet him. He leans down on one knee. "Tell me what to do, Hugo. I'm no doctor." The pain is already fading into numbness. Not good. He's going into shock; the edges of his vision are already turning a fuzzy black. He drops onto his back, feeling weak, sending a puddle splashing up around him. "Hugo!" The baker's strong, calloused hands help him sit up. One of his hands is placed right against Hugo's heart, which is thumping rather slowly, despite his wish coming true. "Hugo, stay with me. Tell me what to do." Hugo's head lolls and turns to the baker. He can see the anguish in those beautiful hazel eyes. It hurts him to see the baker so worried. His red hair and beard are wet from the rain, hanging around his face, making him look like a sheepdog with long jowls. Hugo's anger dissipates in a matter of seconds, though it might just be the shock. "F...first," he slurs, "Get me out of t-this hole." The baker hesitates, then puts one hand under Hugo's legs, careful not to jostle the broken one, and the other on his back. He lifts the doctor up without strain. Hugo throws an arm around his neck. "You weigh no more than a sack of flour does," The baker observes, "You should really eat more." "I-Is now r...really the time?" He lifts Hugo onto the other side of the ditch. He then hoists himself up and Hugo can't help but watch his muscles bulging as he does it, giggling to himself in delirium. Thunder claps again, and he can see the way the baker's wet shirt leaves little to the imagination. The baker sits beside him, unperturbed by his giggling. "Y-You must set the bone," Hugo undoes the clasp around his jaw and lifts his mask just until his mouth is exposed. "C...cane, give me my cane." The baker goes back to the ditch, climbing out with the cane in hand. He wipes it against his shirt, staining the cotton black with mud. Hugo wrinkles his nose; he doesn't exactly have many options here. "This will hurt," The baker warns, as if Hugo doesn't know that already. The doctor puts the cleaner part of his cane in-between his teeth. The rain coursing down his chin makes it hard to keep a grip, but he just bites down with all the strength in his jaw. He gives the signal. He tries to hold onto both the cane and the feeling of the baker's hands on his exposed leg as he nearly loses his mind in the pain and screams into his cane. Once it's over, he lets the tool drop and nearly drops down himself. The baker's hand on his back is the only thing grounding him. He's become deaf to the sound of rain and thunder because if the world's mad, then so is he, so the world has no right screaming like this. "S...Splint," Hugo blinks slowly, trying to get the words out. "Sticks. Two. Wrap." "O-Okay." The baker forages for sticks and finds two of roughly the same length. He tears fabric from the hem of his shirt. Following Hugo's instructions, he splints Hugo's leg. Then, the doctor promptly passes out. -- Everything is warm. Too bloody warm. Hugo wakes up covered in a sheen of sweat. He tries to move the heavy blanket off of him, but his motions are sluggish, like his brain and nerves aren't communicating. There's something cold and wet across his forehead. He relishes it. Every part of his body hurts and even blinking does, too. He wants to say something, but the sound that comes out of his chapped lips is a rasp. He realizes, with a start, that he's not wearing his mask, or his uniform. He's wearing a cotton shirt that isn't his, plastered to his chest because of the sweat. The room itself is cold, even with the fireplace roaring pleasantly and casting light on everything. The window outside shows the chaos of a thunderstorm. Rain pounds the roof. The walls are painted red. The bed of his is comfy, pillows presumably filled with goose down. The blanket is woven and threadbare. His mask is hanging on a coat rack in a corner of the room, along with his hat. He tries to adjust his position, but his left leg is in severe pain. When it flares up, he remembers why; the chase through the woods and subsequent fall into a ditch, where the baker splinted his leg and carried him out...this was probably the baker's house. The thought warms his cheeks more than the fever does. He shivers. He startles when the baker walks in, sporting a similar cotton shirt. He's holding a bowl with a spoon. Hugo can see the steam rise from it, but he feels nauseous at the thought of digesting anything. "You're awake," the baker says softly, lacking his usual gruff. "How do you feel?" He pulls a chair towards Hugo's beside and sits down. "Like s...shit," Hugo replies, every word sluggish. He squints at the baker, the firelight behind him burning his retinas. He looks away. "I expected as much." The baker presses a hand against Hugo's neck and the doctor prays the other man doesn't feel his pulse quicken at the contact. The baker draws his hand back. He has to hide his sore disappointment. "You're burning up, doctor. Come on, I know just the thing." He props Hugo up to a sitting position and takes the cloth from his forehead. The doctor's head hangs, and to his embarrassment, leans into the baker's shoulder. The baker isn't surprised and keeps a solid hand on his nape. All this touch—it's so new and scary to Hugo and yet he craves more. More of calloused hands. More of being held. More of him. Even breathing hurts for Hugo, and his breathes come out shallow. He hates being so weak. He's been attending to plague victims for a straight year so far—he's never gotten sick until now.  Of course, it's not the plague, though. No one in Honeycliff has been infected...yet. "You must eat, doctor," the baker holds a steaming spoon in his other hand. "When I was a boy, my sister would have me eat this when I got a fever. Besides, you're too skinny. You can't fight the plague without some meat on your bones, now can you?" He holds the spoon to Hugo's lips, but the smell, as warm and comforting as it is, with hints of rosemary and thyme, spins his stomach over and he turns his head and buries it further into the baker's shoulder. The baker sighs, right next to Hugo's right ear. It shakes his messy hair. "I did the same, when I was younger," he chuckles, then grows serious. "Please, Hugo, you must eat." Hugo pauses. Then, he looks up at the other man, squinting at him with shiny eyes. His freckles pop out like stars. His beard is fluffier now that it's been dried. "Why do y...you do that?" He whispers, because anything above so hurts his chest. "Do what?" "You s-switch from 'doctor' t-to my name. You did the same thing in the forest...when I fell, you called my name. Every other t-time before this, it has always been d-doctor, or 'Doctor Wallace'..." He plops his head onto the baker's chest, gripping the blanket tightly. "...I don't understand you." A bead of sweat rolls down his nose. "I don't understand it, either, d..." He catches himself. To Hugo's surprise, he starts stroking the back of Hugo's neck, fingers tangling in his messy hair. "...Hugo. It just happens—spontaneously, then I remember that there's a pretense that comes with knowing you, so it—I correct myself..." "There's no pretense with the man you saved," Hugo picks at his shirt. "And whom you gave your shirt to. Did you..." He hesitates. "...undress me?" The baker is silent for a moment. "Yes," he murmurs, then adds, "But only your shirt. I kept the pants on. They dried well enough by the fire." "Oh. Good, good." He blushes a red bright enough to rival even the baker's wild locks. He's glad the other man can't see his face. Those hands being so close to his chest...it's enough to make his whole face red. "Will you eat now?" Hugo resists groaning and nods. It would be better to get it over with. He leans away and sits up properly. The baker's hand goes back to his back. He opens his chapped lips and takes a sip from the offered spoon. It's not entirely bad, and his stomach doesn't feel like a waterwheel, so he keeps eating. He was right, of course, about the spices; rosemary and thyme, with the slightest hint of lemon. They don't speak. The fire, the rain, and the clacking of the spoon against the bowl are the only sounds that make up a conversation. They leave things unsaid; this kind of thing doesn't just end in a ditch. He's much hungrier than he thought. The bowl gets finished much quicker than the plague spreads. "There you go," the baker says with a fleck of pride, and Hugo can't help the way it makes his heart flutter. The baker leaves the bowl on the mantel, then comes back to sit by the doctor's side, grasping his hands in his lap. He's about to speak, but Hugo cuts him off. "I...I don't think I know your name," he admits sheepishly, "I'm sorry. I lo...I love your bakery, so it's, um, strange I never got your name." "It's Thomas," Thomas says, "Thomas Gray. It's alright. I don't suspect you know the farmer's name either, nor his wife's. You've been here with us for all of—what is it now—three months, and you hardly know our names." Thomas's tone isn't accusatory, but observational, even humorous. Hugo's glad he finds it so funny, because he's embarrassed. He couldn't give a shite about the farmer or his wife or their kids, so he's more embarrassed about not knowing the name of the object of his desire than their names. Being a plague doctor isn't a highly personal job, after all. "Thomas," he tries the name, and it feels right, that it should be coming from him. "Thomas, you're Scottish, aren't you?" "Yes. The plague did start with our sailors. My family and I hopped onto the nearest wagon and made it here, in Honeycliff. We separated, however, so my father's serving as a plague doctor in another town and my mother as a seamstress in London. My three brothers have gone off to do odd-jobs in the villages." "You're the oldest?" "The youngest, actually." At Hugo's odd look, he laughs. "Yes, I am the youngest. My older brothers are all titans." Three other men built like Thomas. Hugo thinks that's the closest thing to heaven he'll achieve in this world. The silence returns, if only for a moment. "So, about last night—" The baker starts, but Hugo is quicker. "The soup was lovely. Y-You should give me the recipe, sometime." "I-I suppose. Hugo, last night—" "Would you look at that, the rain's stopped!" "It very much hasn't. Will you please let me speak?" Hugo opens and closes his mouth, struggling for a reason why they shouldn't have the conversation Hugo's been dreading since he woke up. He finds nothing. He motions with one sweaty hand for Thomas to continue. The baker takes the hand in his own. "Hugo Wallace," he says, "You were right when you said I was in love with the Bird Man. Because I was. Because I knew it was you." "W...what?" He looks up at the other man. His hazel eyes are honest. "Honestly, did you think I was just some big Scottish oaf who couldn't connect the dots like everyone else in this village? There is only one Bird Man around here, and it's the man with the very obviously bird inspired mask." Okay, he did used to think of Thomas as stupid, so color him surprised, but he still doesn't understand it. Hugo shakes his head. "I don't—then why did you answer me the way you did? That you 'didn't know' if you loved me?" "That," Thomas sighs, "I was very stupid to say. I didn't want to confess yet because it was all so...so sudden. I wasn't nearly prepared and I didn't even know if you felt the same way." You have no idea how much I love you, he almost says, but stops. How much does he actually love Thomas? In a wonderful display of hypocrisy, he's fallen in love with Thomas's image, with his body. He doesn't know the first thing about this man besides the fact that he is Scottish and has three brothers. "I do," Hugo admits, "but in the same manner I thought you had loved the Bird Man. I don't...I don't know you as well as I w-want to. And I do, I want t-to know you. I want to get to know you. We can start over. Will you...will you have me?" Thomas's other hand props up his chin, making the doctor look up at him. His thumb brushes Hugo's lips. The look in the baker's eyes is gentle, but serious. "There is no question of it, Hugo," he whispers, "I love you, Dr. Wallace. I have, ever since you moved into the village. I have loved you since the time you first came by my shop, looking in from the display window, and I knew how much you had wanted to go inside but you couldn't because of the plague, so I set up the delivery service especially for you. And...And I will love you, even if you don't feel the same once you get to know me." Hugo's eyes drift to Thomas's lips. He licks his own, and grabs the hand under his chin with both of his. Their freckles mesh together in one big pattern of stars. "I love you, too, Thomas," his voice cracks on the baker's name. There's a stone lodged in his throat. "Tell me you l-love me again, just once more." The baker chuckles. "I will make sure you don't forget it." Thomas tugs him forward and kisses him. Oh. He closes his eyes and leans into it. Oh. He has never felt such warmth. Their lips press together, pushing and pulling like waves. Hugo tastes thyme and rosemary, sweet on those lips, familiar on his. Something tugs at his fingertips, at his toes, at the bottom of his stomach. He curls his hands into the front of Thomas's shirt, trying to rid himself of the pins and needles that build up underneath his skin. They pull apart for a moment to breathe. Gasps. Soft breaths. Hugo's lips are not so chapped now. He's so eager that he's the one who pulls Thomas back into the kiss. He throws the blanket aside. He tilts his head, grasping at the other's lips, wanting so much more. A muscular arm wraps around his midsection, pulling him closer, and the other keeps a hand on his thigh, squeezing just that much. His touch is electric. It's like every nerve in Hugo's body is a firecracker. He's finally getting what he wants. So, why does the stone in his throat and the heat behind his eyes get harder and harder to ignore? He pulls away, trying to stifle a sob. "Hugo," Thomas murmurs in concern, cupping his cheek. Hugo leans into it. "Are you alright?" "I-I'm sorry," Hugo sniffles, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. "I don't k-know what's come over me. It's been a v-very long time since I've been...touched like this. I have been starved, so to say." "I understand." Thomas's smile is full of patience. "I k-kissed you," Hugo starts to smile despite the tears, "but I don't think I did it right. Can I try again?" "And again, and again, and again," Thomas presses a kiss to his forehead. "As much as you'd like to, doctor." And he does. He kisses Thomas. Again, and again, and again. "I love you, Hugo Wallace," the baker says while they're pressed against each other, gasping for breath, "I love the way your eyes are a different shade—blue and hazel, just like m-mine. I love..." Hugo tugs at his bottom lip and he growls, losing his train of thought for a moment. The doctor is trembling. "...I love your bravery, y-your strength. Even if you are snarky on the outside, your heart is tender." Hugo's hands, with hungry minds of their own, lift up the hem of Thomas's shirt. They touch the muscles there, then travel upwards. The other groans; he is just as needy as Hugo is, he knows it. He wants so badly to take off those trousers and empty this pool of warmth in his stomach. His eyes are distracted by the wonderful V that is formed by the baker's hips and the orange fuzz that peaks out from under. Thomas's lips press against his neck, leaving cold, cold kisses against his flushed skin. He nibbles a bit, before eventually biting down, long and tense, savoring the moment. He groans, the sensation setting off another few firecrackers, and grips Thomas's hair tightly as the other man's tongue laps at the spot. "A reminder," he hums against Hugo's neck, sending shivers down the man's spine. "And a gift." The baker's calloused hand holds his waist under his shirt, thumb rubbing into the freckled skin. The other is still teasing his thigh. "You are so precious in my shirt," Thomas whispers in his ear. The hand under his shirt wanders, and Hugo sucks in a breath. Just as quickly as it came, it's removed. Hugo hisses, partly out of frustration, because he just wants to be torn apart. Just as his hands are about to tuck into Thomas's trousers, the baker pulls away and stands, fixing his shirt and hair. Hugo blinks slowly, not understanding for a moment, before he gasps. "Thomas," he whines, breathless, grabbing the hem of the other man's shirt. "Don't leave it at that. I...I want t—" "I know you want more, my love," Thomas says, amused, patting Hugo's messy hair. "But your leg is broken and you've got a fever. I don't want you to strain yourself." "T-This old thing?" He gestures to his left leg, which is in a rather well made homemade cast. "It won't stop m-me, Thomas. Please." "You are sick," Thomas shakes his head firmly, hands on his hips. "You need rest." Hugo pouts, then flops onto his back. The disappointment and warmth are already starting to ebb. Thomas draws the blanket around him and brushes the hair out of his face. He kisses his forehead softly. "Goodnight, Hugo," he murmurs, "I'll see you in the morning." "Goodnight. I love you." "I love you, too." The baker leaves the room. The doctor touches his neck, pressing his finger into the bruise the baker had marked there. It stings pleasantly. He grins. As he drifts off to the sound of rain tapping against the windows, he thinks of the kiss between two silhouettes, and thinks of the ones that are yet to come, when they start over and become people, become more than just lips and breath. He thinks of the canvas-like palms of the baker holding him close—not destroying him, like he had wanted. Thomas is far more than muscular arms and hearty laughs. He is gentle. He is kind. He is not afraid of contact. That is all Hugo can ask for.

[demonslayedher]

Hi! Hope you're well!

Can I ask for a name analysis for Kokushibou? I know the meaning of the kanji but i wish there was a deeper analysis for what they would mean together. I saw some people saying it could be a reference to the bubonic plague but does it makes sense? Do you think it was chosen by Muzan or did he chose by himself? (since he seems to have more autonomy and respect from Muzan, maybe it was his choice?) What do you think?

Thank you so much for the hard work, your posts are always so helpful!

'Sup, Anon! A lot of analysis in the Japanese fandom also tends to start around looking at each individual kanji in demon names before putting them together, so a lot of the ways they would be thought of together are up to the imagination. Muzan's imagination, especially.

Starting there, I'd like to think it's possible Kokushibou was the first demon whom Muzan renamed (as I don't believe he changed Tamayo's name, and we don't know of any demons from before Tamayo and Kokushibou). It might had even been Kokushibou's wishes to receive a new name from his new master, as a sign of his loyalty to the person who entirely rebranded him. He does seem Kokushibou named his own sword, though, so we'll touch on that later.

Before we get into the meaning, I'd like to touch on the sound. Although the character for 'bou' is different, a compound kanji name that ends in 'bou' has a ring very similar to Tengu names (see a list of them in this article), though we already see the Tengu theme in both Urokodaki and Hantengu instead. As there is a lot of warrior monk imagery in Tengu lore I think that's why they have the character often associated with monks (坊), and while Kokushibo is clearly more samurai than warrior monk, by its sound it carries the same lofty, otherworldly warrior effect. At least, that is my personal impression. As for the kanji: 黒 koku - black 死 shi - death 牟 bou - pupil/eye... though it can also represent the sound a cow makes, 'mu' (I did check back to see if Kokushibou's final monstrous form was in any specific reference to cows, but besides the horns, I don't see a strong case of this. It's still funny to imagine a 'moooo' sound effect as he become engorged like that, though.)

There have also been theorists in the Japanese fandom who suspect this may be in reference to the Black Death, but I've also seen it pointed out that Muzan had certain distaste for illness probably wouldn't want a right-hand man so strongly associated with it. If it's interpreted as how he wanted Kokushibou to sweep through the demon hunters like the plague swept through Europe, that's one thing, and considering how much interest Muzan always had in foreign languages and culture it wouldn't surprise me if he had heard this news. The other idea that gets thrown around is that Muzan tends to make decisions on names based on appearances and abilities, and I wonder when he bothers to change names if that is the case. There's a sense that demons will develop their appearances and Blood Techniques based on innate desires of what they want to hone in on--for example, the Hand Demon found what worked for him and he kept developing that niche (really wanted to get his hands on Urokodaki, didn't he?). It's been proposed that Muzan chose 'black' because of Kokushibou's hair (that's... simplistic) and a reference to Kokushibou's multiple eyes. I'm going to come back to this idea in a moment.

As for the multiple eyes, it's thought that this was due to Michikatsu's jealous wish to see the Unseen World as Yoriichi did, so he developed that ability accordingly. While we have the phrase 'green with envy' in English, perhaps Muzan would had interpreted it as 'black with envy' though that still doesn't account for 'death' in the middle of the name, unless you want to think of envy as a 'deadly sin.' Even if you think that, I don't think Muzan cares. If we keep thinking about Kokushibou's desire to see into the Unseen World, and how this would had made him continue to develop eyes, this may account for all the eyes that cover his sword made of his own blood and bone: Kyokokukamusari, which is a mouthful. 虚 kyo - emptiness, crack/fissure 哭 koku - wail, moan 神 kamu - god/divinity/supernatural phenomenon 去 sari - eliminate, gone (like the past) (NOTE: Translations are rarely 1-to-1 equivalents, these kanji can encompass wider meanings and nuance depending on context)

My brain immediately put the last two characters together as 'god scatterer' which left mean interpreting the first two together as a sign of distress about the inherit meaningless of the world. There's a lot of ways you could read into it, I suppose, like viewed all together as how the cruel void (the Unseen World?) is a natural phenomenon that destroys his enemies, or something like that. Whatever it is, Kokushibou had either deep Zen philosophy or an Emo streak going on when and if he was the one to name that sword. It doesn't really seem like Muzan's naming taste. Let's back up. If we assume Kokushibou continually developed more eyes to more deeply see into the Unseen World, so deep that he could tell at a glance that Muichirou was his progeny, then I propose it's possible Kokushibou didn't originally have six eyes when he became a demon. What if he had four? As the word for "four" is synonymous with "death," that makes it an unlucky number...

..........so what I'm saying is, maybe the "shi" in the middle of the name is a pun that made Muzan feel clever.

[thecreaturecodex]

Anchheri

“Nocturne” © Lois van Baarle, accessed at her ArtStation here

[Commissioned by @abominationimperatrix​. The anchheri is a monster from Uttarakhand, the state in India making up the foothills of the Himalaya. As related in the superb book Ghosts, Monsters and Demons of India, its characteristics have been transplanted into the “acheri”, an “Indian” undead attributed to the Chippewa that does not exist in any authentically native sources. GMDI doesn’t say who’s responsible for this, but I know. The oldest attribution of the “acheri” to “Amerindian tribes” is in Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were by Michael Page and Robert Ingpen. I’ve complained about this book before. Whether this was an intentional alteration (the book has many of those), or a result of lazy scholarship (confusing “Indian” for India with “Indian” for Native American), the damage has been done, and most images of the anchheri online are clad in buckskins. The most accurate pop culture anchheri, possibly because its creators weren’t relying on English language sources, is in Shin Megami Tensei]

Anchheri CR 7 CE Undead This humanoid child has an odd, cruel smile, clawed hands and sunken, glowing eyes. Her skin seems tightly drawn around her bones, and has a hue of decomposition.

An anchheri is both tragic and dangerous, as they are the undead remains of children who died an unnatural death. They hide during the day in mountainous caves and crevices, and descend from the mountains at night to frolic and play. Mortals who join in these games risk being attacked. An adult will usually be just shredded with tiny claws, or put to sleep and its blood drunk, but anchheri are more subtle on their attacks on children. The touch of an anchheri’s shadow spreads plague, and a child who dies from this disease becomes a new anchheri. Thus, a single one of these monsters can become an infestation rapidly, and tales are told of entire villages emptied of children.

Anchheri are difficult to slay without access to magic weapons and divine magic, so some communities have taken to propitiating them instead. Anchheri love gifts; clothing, jewelry and toys are all appreciated. They fear the color red, perhaps because it reminds them of their own blood spilled, and so people wearing red clothing are usually safe from an anchheri initiating attack. Giving an anchheri red clothing, however, is a sure way to insult it and invite violence. The mind of an anchheri is childlike, and they are fairly easy to trick.

An anchheri stands between three and five feet tall. Because of their willowy frames, they are treated as creatures of Small size regardless of height.

Anchheri                CR 7 XP 3,200 CE Small undead Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +10 Defense AC 19, touch 15, flat-footed 15 (+1 size, +4 Dex, +4 natural) hp 85 (10d8+40) Fort +7, Ref +7, Will +6 DR 10/magic; Immune undead traits Defensive Abilities channel resistance +2; Weakness red aversion Offense Speed 30 ft. Melee 2 claws +12 (1d4-1), shadow +7 touch (disease) Special Attacks blood drain (1d2 Con), create spawn, sneak attack +3d6 Spell-like Abilities CL 7th, concentration +11 3/day—deep slumber (DC 17), fly, stone call Statistics Str 8, Dex 18, Con -, Int 13, Wis 9, Cha 18 Base Atk +7; CMB +5; CMD 19 Feats Combat Expertise, Deceitful, Improved Feint, Nimble Moves, Weapon Finesse Skills Bluff +14, Climb +10, Disguise +17, Escape Artist +12, Perception +10, Perform (dance) +6, Stealth +19 Languages Common, Necril Ecology Environment any land or urban Organization solitary, pair, gang (3-6) or party (7-12) Treasure standard Special Abilities Create Spawn (Su) Any humanoid child killed by an anchheri’s disease rises as a free willed anchheri at the next new moon. Disease (Ex) Bubonic plague—contact; save Fort DC 19; onset 1 day; frequency 1/day; effect 1d4 Con damage, 1 Cha damage, target is fatigued; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Charisma based. Red Aversion (Ex) An anchheri must succeed a DC 20 Will save in order to attack a creature wearing red clothing. If the anchheri fails that save, it cannot attack that creature for the next 24 hours. If that creature attacks the anchheri, the aversion is broken. Shadow Touch (Su) An anchheri can make a touch attack with its shadow as a secondary natural weapon. A creature touched takes no damage, but is exposed to the anchheri’s disease.

[jmvhorg]

Syphilis – Its early history

"If I were asked which sickness is the most damaging of them, I would unhesitatingly respond that which has been raging with impunity for some years... What infection infects the entire body, defies medical treatment, is easily inoculated, and torments the patient so cruelly?" Erasmus, Desiderius, 1520.

When Charles VIII of France attacked Naples in the first of the Italian Wars in 1495, a new and horrible disease broke out among his soldiers, and its impact on the peoples of Europe was catastrophic - this was syphilis, or grande verole, the "great pox." Although it didn't have the same horrifying mortality as the bubonic plague, its symptoms were unpleasant and repulsive: genital sores, followed by filthy abscesses and ulcers throughout the body, as well as terrible aches. The cures were sparse and ineffective, the mercury inunctions and suffumigations were painful, and many patients died as a result of mercury poisoning.

Throughout history, sexually transmitted infections (STDs) have posed a concern to military personnel. During World War I, they were the second most common cause of disability and absence from duty in the US Army, accounting for approximately 7 million lost person-days and the discharge of over 10,000 troops. During the war, only the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918-1919 claimed more lives. During World War II, the annual incidence of STDs in the US Army was 43 per 1,000 men between 1941 and 1945. During the Vietnam War, the overall average yearly incidence of STDs was 262 per 1,000 strength, compared to 30 per 1,000 in continental US-based army soldiers at the time. In Vietnam, gonorrhoea accounted for 90% of STD cases, with syphilis accounting for little over 1%.

Because to the discovery of penicillin in 1943, the impact of gonorrhoea and syphilis on military men in terms of morbidity and death was considerably reduced, as well as other factors including education, prevention, health-care worker training, and adequate and quick access to treatment.

Syphilis was thought to have been transferred from America and the New World to the Old World by Christopher Columbus in 1493 until the early twentieth century. In 1934, a new theory was proposed, claiming that syphilis existed in the Old World before Columbus. In the 1980s, palaeopathological research discovered plausible evidence that syphilis was an old treponeal illness that had suddenly evolved to become distinct and more virulent in the late 15th century. However, some subsequent research have suggested that this is not the case, and that it is still possible that Columbus introduced a new epidemic venereal disease from America.

For more info, visit: https://jmvh.org/

Also Read: https://jmvhorg.tumblr.com/post/664672928459341824/australasian-military-medicine-association

[koreaunderground]

(2019/04/15) Fear of biological agent strikes Busan as US troops continue bio-surveillance project

[warisboring.com][1]

  [1]: <https://warisboring.com/fear-of-biological-agent-strikes-busan-as-us-troops-continue-bio-surveillance-project/>

# Fear of biological agent strikes Busan as US troops continue bio-surveillance project

Jo He-Rim

10-13 minutes

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Jo He-Rim Asia News Network Busan, the second-largest city in South Korea, is once again living in terror of biological warfare experiments in the... ![Fear of biological agent strikes Busan as US troops continue bio-surveillance project][2]

  [2]: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/warisboring.com/images/bio-warfare-640x300.jpg

Jo He-Rim Asia News Network

Busan, the second-largest city in South Korea, is once again living in terror of biological warfare experiments in the aftermath of renewed allegations that US troops stationed in South Korea are conducting such tests at the city’s seaport.

Every morning, dozens of residents and activists gather to block the entrance to the Pier 8 military storage centre for US Forces Korea in Busan’s Nam district, to stop the US soldiers from going to work.

At night they hold candlelight vigils, carrying signs that read, “Nam district residents are not test subjects for viruses” and “Abolish the biological weapons test lab.”

Busan Port’s Pier 8 is among the military facilities in South Korea and the US where the US operates a biosurveillance project, dubbed JUPITR ATD for “Joint United States Forces Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition Advanced Technology Demonstration.”

While JUPITR’s stated aim is the development of early-warning detection capabilities to protect the USFK and South Korea from biological and chemical threats, it has been the subject of constant criticism since 2015.

In May 2015, the Pentagon confirmed that its laboratory in Utah had “inadvertently” sent live anthrax samples to one of its military bases in South Korea, rather than the inactivated samples that were meant to be delivered for the project.

The USFK has denied allegations that it is conducting biological tests using hazardous materials such as live agents or toxins, but the debate still rages on.

“Why don’t they (the United States) just conduct the tests inside their country? Why in S. Korea?” Kim Suk-heun, the leader of a regional civic task force calling for an end to the “biological weapons lab,” told The Korea Herald.

“We want the facility and the project to be withdrawn, altogether.”

Lack of trust deepens fear

The controversy over the biosurveillance project resurfaced in March when a local daily ran a report citing the US Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Estimates, under which more than $3.5 million was allocated for JUPITR at Pier 8 — showing that the project is still ongoing.

The budget estimates, which set aside funds for live agent tests, fanned public suspicion about the project.

“They say they only have detection devices (for biological agents) and that they do not run tests, but last year’s budget clearly shows that their program includes experiments using live agents,” Kim said.

The fear also spread to Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, where the USFK’s Camp Humphreys is located, prompting the city to request USFK’s clarification on the issue. The US military base also operates laboratory facilities and allocates part of its budget for the JUPITR ATD project.

On April 2, the USFK released a statement explaining that it has not conducted any experiments involving biological or chemical agents.

“It is a defense system to issue an early alert to the USFK and S. Korean government in case of chemical or biological threats,” said the USFK response, quoted by the ministry in Korean. “The ‘live agent testing’ stipulated in the budget estimate is only conducted in the United States and not in South Korea.”

The USFK also told The Korea Herald that the funding specified in the budget estimates for the JUPITR program had been realigned to other chemical and biological early-warning programs in the United States.

“Improvements and upgrades to the JUPITR program formally ended in 2018, but the passive defensive early warning capability remains,” the USFK said, www.asianewsnet.netadding that there are no firm decisions in place on any potential new programs in South Korea associated with the threats.

Defending against biological threats

The JUPITR ATD project was launched in April 2013 in support of US policies recognizing the importance of detection capabilities to guard against biological and chemical threats.

Led by the US Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense and the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, the project was touted as the Pentagon’s flagship project for “how biosurveillance would manifest itself,” said Peter Emanuel, the leader of JUPITR ATD at the time in 2013, in a December 2014 interview with CBRNePortal.com.

The project consists of four parts: Early Warning, Biological Identification Capabilities Sets, Assessment of Environmental Detectors and a Biosurveillance Portal. Together, they are designed to form a comprehensive surveillance and reaction system to guard against biological and chemical threats.

The lack of any explanation about the project and what is happening in South Korea has amplified people’s fears.

North Korea stepped up its rhetoric against the US program via its news outlet in March, saying the United States was preparing for biochemical warfare to “control the entire Korean Peninsula” in a “barbaric manner.” It also stressed that the North does not possess any biological or chemical weapons.

The 2015 anthrax incident led to some changes. In the joint panel investigation conducted following the incident, the USFK admitted that it had carried out biological equipment testing and proficiency training after importing inactivated biological agent test samples from the US.

The investigation report revealed that the USFK had brought in and tested dead anthrax samples 15 times at Yongsan Garrison in central Seoul between 2009 and 2014. In 2015, 1 milliliter of inactive Yersinia pestis (bubonic plague) samples were delivered to the Osan Air Base for JUPITR — along with the live anthrax sample, rather than the intended inactivated anthrax sample.

Following the incident, the S. Korea-US Status of Forces Agreement was revised to mandate that the USFK file a report with the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when importing any biological agent, including inactivated biological agents. The Defense Ministry said it recently confirmed with the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that no cases have been reported by US troops since the revision of the SOFA.

“USFK works very closely with the S. Korean government by reporting scheduled shipments of any JUPITR-related resources within the SOFA Disease Prevention and Control Subcommittee,” the USFK told The Korea Herald.

Limits of the military project

While the US Army has been promoting the project as a way to cut costs and time and provide better performance results by introducing new instrumentation to upgrade biothreat detection capabilities, not much has been revealed to the South Korean public.

“It is a military issue, and it is difficult to inform the public of every detail about the project,” an official who refused to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter said when asked to confirm details of the project.

According to Emanuel, who led the project in 2013, the JUPITR project involves determining the equipment and process for biosurveillance. He described it as an “aggressive” attempt that “nobody has ever attempted to do so in such kind of a scale before.”

Emanuel, currently senior research scientist for bioengineering at the US Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, also said the alliance with South Korea had led to the biosurveillance project being conducted in the country, adding that the USFK had requested the capabilities.

“The reality of the situation is that the senior leadership in the USFK asked for capabilities, and they made themselves available to test these forward-leaning ideas,” he said in the 2014 interview with CBRNePortal.com.

Currently, only Pier 8 in Busan and Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek are officially confirmed as operating the JUPTR program. But the Osan and Gunsan air bases also appear to have been venues for the project.

In 2016, the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center managing the JUPITR ATD “did a complete make-over of two existing Air Force labs and also set up an Army lab from scratch,” Brady Redmond, the laboratory project lead, was quoted as saying in an article posted by the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center on April 15, 2016.

According to the article, Edgewood “increased the sample throughput of three US military laboratories in South Korea from two to three samples of suspected biological warfare agent per day to dozens per day with a 24-hour turn-around time for results.”

Able Response, a joint exercise by South Korea and the US against biological threats, also appears to have supported the biosurveillance project, according to the US Defense Ministry’s budget estimates for fiscal years up to 2016. The joint exercise, which was conducted from 2011 to 2016, was replaced by a tabletop training session called “Adaptive Shield.”

The biological agent test scare is ongoing. There are more allegations that the experiments may have involved other infectious diseases.

“They are said to be dealing with deadly biological agent samples such as plague and anthrax — weapons of mass destruction. Even if they do not intend it, accidents can happen and that would just be horrendous,” Kim said.

In addressing the residents’ concerns, the Nam district governor and Busan City officials criticized the project, while lawmakers across the aisle have proposed bills to prevent biological agents from entering the country.

“(The proposed bills) are unlikely to be passed because of the SOFA regulations. So I am currently negotiating with the Defense Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office to allow the residents to conduct on-site inspections,” said Rep. Park Jae-ho of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, representing Nam district’s B division, told The Korea Herald.

While the Defense Ministry is reluctant to speak about the JUPITR ATD project, saying it is a US military project, it reiterated that US troops are not conducting any biological tests at military bases here.

“We are making efforts together with the USFK to find ways to raise people’s understanding of the biosurveillance operation,” a ministry spokeswoman said.

USFK officials also said they are reviewing ways to address misunderstandings among the general public.

[rabbitcruiser]

Malmöhusvägen, Malmö

The earliest written mention of Malmö as a city dates from 1275. It is thought to have been founded shortly before that date, as a fortified quay or ferry berth of the Archbishop of Lund, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) to the north-east. Malmö was for centuries Denmark's second-biggest city. Its original name was Malmhaug (with alternate spellings), meaning "Gravel pile" or "Ore Hill". An alternate story stems from a more gruesome tale that suggests that a maiden was once ground up in a mill on what is now the town square. The name would originate form 'Mal Mö', which translates to 'Ground up maiden.' A millstone that was placed in 1538 can still be found on the town square today.

In the 15th century, Malmö became one of Denmark's largest and most visited cities, reaching a population of approximately 5,000 inhabitants. It became the most important city around the Øresund, with the German Hanseatic League frequenting it as a marketplace, and was notable for its flourishing herring fishery. In 1437, King Eric of Pomerania (King of Denmark from 1396 to 1439) granted the city's arms: argent with a griffin gules, based on Eric's arms from Pomerania. The griffin's head as a symbol of Malmö extended to the entire province of Scania from 1660.

In 1434, a new citadel was constructed at the beach south of the town. This fortress, known today as Malmöhus, did not take its current form until the mid-16th century. Several other fortifications were constructed, making Malmö Sweden's most fortified city, but only Malmöhus remains.

Lutheran teachings spread during the 16th century Protestant Reformation, and Malmö became one of the first cities in Scandinavia to fully convert (1527–1529) to this Protestant denomination.

In the 17th century, Malmö and the Scanian region (Skåneland) came under control of Sweden following the Treaty of Roskilde with Denmark, signed in 1658. Fighting continued, however; in June 1677, 14,000 Danish troops laid siege to Malmö for a month, but were unable to defeat the Swedish troops holding it.

By the dawn of the 18th century, Malmö had about 2,300 inhabitants. However, owing to the wars of Charles XII of Sweden (reigned 1697–1718) and to bubonic plague epidemics, the population dropped to 1,500 by 1727. The population did not grow much until the modern harbor was constructed in 1775. The city started to expand and the population in 1800 was 4,000. 15 years later, it had increased to 6,000.

In 1840, Frans Henrik Kockum founded the workshop from which the Kockums shipyard eventually developed as one of the largest shipyards in the world. The Southern Main Line was built between 1856 and 1864; this enabled Malmö to become a center of manufacture, with major textile and mechanical industries. In 1870, Malmö overtook Norrköping to become Sweden's third-most populous city, and by 1900 Malmö had strengthened this position with 60,000 inhabitants. Malmö continued to grow through the first half of the 20th century. The population had swiftly increased to 100,000 by 1915 and to 200,000 by 1952.

Source: Wikipedia

[chsamuseum]

The Sick Men of the World: Assessing Yan Fu’s Metaphor

1895 was not a good year for China. China had just lost the first Sino-Japanese War, the latest in a century of humiliation at the hands of foreigners. Amidst this chaos, Chinese scholar and later reformist Yan Fu described China as “the sick man of Asia.” In his article “On Strength,” he compared the country to a sick man in dire need of help. Traditional government, opium, and foot-binding were the maladies which were killing China. Overtime, Westerners would adopt his phrase as a metric to measure Chinese progress. The current COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on several maladies which plague both Western and Chinese societies. Rather than work together, both sides have elected to pursue tit-for-tat spats which have placed millions of lives in harm’s way and make both sides the sick men of the world. Understanding this history is the first step to combating the stereotypes that are being spouted by leaders in both the U.S. and China.

The “sick man of Asia” phrase was first applied by the West during a century-long outbreak of bubonic plague in China. Between 1894 and 1950, 15 million people died in the pandemic, decimating China’s dense population. Efforts to stop the virus were limited to local charities with minimal oversight from the imperial government. Western commentators believed that the reason why China suffered so dramatically at the hands of the plague was due to the country’s poor sanitation practices. Who was to blame for the poor sanitation? Who else but the Qing government, they argued. The government’s inability to provide for adequate sanitation was proof of China’s deteriorating health. Westerners therefore built off Yan Fu’s idea in order to develop an interesting metric which would be used throughout history to gauge China’s progress in modernization: China’s ability to respond to pandemics. 

To be fair, the West’s assessment was pretty accurate. Ironically, during the Black Death in the 14th century, China could say the same thing of medieval Europe, whose utter lack of clean drinking water and sanitation poisoned the country. While the plague was a global event, Europe was its epicenter, losing an estimated one third of its population.  While China was damaged by the plague, it did not suffer losses nearly as catastrophic. This has been largely attributed to the much more organized government and public sanitation practices of the much richer and much more powerful China. 

But late 19th century China was not as clean or as powerful. It was at the bottom of the international food chain. With the new view of China as unsanitized and inadequate, propaganda began to be spread within Western countries portraying Chinese immigrants as unclean and unfit for citizenship. Posters depicting Chinese living in decrepit conditions popularized the media. New Chinese arrivals at Angel Island were given rigorous health screenings; even a common cold could send one back to China. American society began doing everything it could to keep the Chinese out, and in 1882, passed the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act. Chinese in America? No! No! No!

In the 20th century, China awakened and recognized its dire need to modernize. With the fall of the Qing dynasty, the period between 1911 and 1949 was marked by economic, press, and social freedoms.  In the spirit of Yan Fu’s metaphor, the country was beginning to self-medicate. This change was distinctly felt in the health sector, which saw Chinese participation at international health meetings, expansion of medical schools, and new opportunities for women to enter the health profession. It also saw the creation of the Ministry of Health in 1928. China’s modernization efforts captured the attention of the Western countries. On a trip to China during the 1910s, one Western diplomat remarked that he had never seen a nation so promising and full of potential.

Then Mao came along. 

In 1949, Mao’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took control of China. While the CCP did care about public health, it came second to political considerations. This mindset was put on display during the period immediately preceding the Cultural Revolution and during the Cultural Revolution. In 1964, Mao began an attack on the Ministry of Health, arguing that it represented elitism and bourgeois thought. During the Cultural Revolution, doctors and scientists were targeted; as a result, hospitals dried up. The Revolution itself also spread infectious diseases. In 1966, at the very start of the Cultural Revolution, there was an outbreak of meningitis in Beijing. Students who championed Mao’s revolutionary cause spread it across the country. No one stopped them either, because political considerations came first. Stop the students, and you’d stop the revolution. The death toll was 160,000. 

Mao’s death in 1976 began a period of reform. China’s new relatively liberalized economy was put to the test with an outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the outbreak exposed the awkward relationship between the country’s underregulated markets and overregulated government. The 1990 HIV/AIDS pandemic established the response to future pandemics: rumors of a public health crisis, government attempts to cover up, whistleblower, reluctant admittance, and draconian remedies. This pattern would appear again in the early 2000s with the outbreak of the SARS virus, COVID-19’s predecessor. When SARS (2002) was first discovered in Guangdong, the government initially downplayed the problem, trying to make sure that no foreign country would discover the true extent of the outbreak. However, Jiang Yanyong, a Beijing physician, leaked the full extent of the pandemic to the West. The international panic triggered a highly-publicized effort to fight the virus by Beijing. SARS 2002 greatly jeopardized China’s newly found status on the world stage, having just joined the WTO the previous year and scheduled to host the 2008 Olympics. The entire world watched in suspense to see whether the modernizing nation could handle a pandemic, as well as handle its new status as a world power.

This brings us to COVID-19. Not surprisingly, many comparisons have been made between COVID-19 and SARS 2002. For starters, China’s initial reaction to COVID-19 was very similar to 2002. Local officials in Wuhan attempted to keep a lid on the outbreak, but were exposed by doctor Li Wenliang, who later died of the disease, which triggered a reversal of Beijing’s policies. However, China has matured greatly since 2002. While China’s initial reaction was not the greatest, it was still very fast at sharing the genetic information of the novel virus to health centers around the globe, a much-needed headstart for the world to get working on a cure/vaccine. Chinese officials also shared as much information as was available for best practices to handle the spread of the virus, including quarantine, mask-wearing, and social-distancing, practices we are all more than familiar with. 

Moreover, it is not only China who has a reputation for covering up the effects of the virus. United States officials, since the outbreak started, have elected to use racially-charged language and a wide array of diversion tactics to draw attention away from the ballooning COVID situation in the United States. Racially-charged language has resurfaced Sino-phobia and xenophobia among many Americans, which has led to a drastic increase in the number of hate crimes being committed against Asian, specifically Chinese Americans. Meanwhile, the United States leads the world in new infections (assuming China’s numbers are actually true). Many American politicians have placed politics over lives, placing a much larger emphasis on economic recovery rather than the need to prevent new infections. Despite these theories being largely rebuked by Sweden’s situation (a country which elected to keep everything open as an experiment and is now suffering huge infection rates without any noticeable benefit to the economy), many in Washington continue to downplay COVID. Both Washington and Beijing have elected to instead lock out each others’ news organizations in an endless tit-for-tat political spat that has placed millions of lives in harm's way. Both countries exhibit a high degree of immaturity, choosing to fight each other rather than work together as the world’s dominant superpowers. They are both sick, and need to seIf-medicate. 

COVID-19 has left the world in strange, and dare I say it, unprecedented times. Unfortunately, the pandemic is far from over. Not only will COVID-19 never truly be eradicated (it will continue to exist just as Ebola and smallpox do), the problems it has exposed in our world will remain as blueprints for future generations to solve. Many of those problems lie in how governments respond to global disasters in an increasingly globalized world. In addition to keeping each other safe, we must also be informed by learning the history and misinterpretations of the past in order to strive for a better future and not be dictated by the politics of sick men.

Submitted by CHSA’s Summer Education and Research Chris Ying. Chris is a sophomore at UC Berkeley where he is majoring in History and Mathematics. His writing is based on his research and lectures from his history class.

[gregellner]

Today, rather than writing a review, I will be going through an analytical approach to a certain element of Focus Home Interactive and Asobo Studio's A Plague Tale: Innocence.

Be fairly warned: spoilers follow regarding the latter half of the game.

The element being examined is the Prima Macula, known through the game as the blood-borne connection that Hugo de Rune and others before him have to plague-bearing creatures, most notably feral rats, enabling them to exert telepathic control over the creatures to manipulate movements in their frenzy, as well as being able to see into their minds on some level to sense them when they are near.

According to a brief exchange with Narrative Director Sébastien Renard, it seems entirely possible that while the Prima Macula in 1348 France has concentrated control over rats that spread the bubonic plague, previous wielders (and subsequent ones) may have had control over other creatures declared as vermin. To use his words exactly, "Well, swarms of animals have always be a tradition among plagues, such as in the Plagues of Egypt. I can only say that our version is the rats, and let you imagine what you'd fear more :) (yet in France today, it would definitely be mosquitos! :D)"

If taken to its logical conclusion, plenty of animals could be controlled, from birds to insects to much more. Similar to the plague rats of the original Dishonored being comparable to the bloodflies of Dishonored 2 in function for an epidemic-ridden society and how someone developing their powers in one era or another would be connected to their own time and place's source of infestation, users of the Macula in other time periods could utilize their power over infected creatures to perform acts like creating a temporary artificial darkness in the form of thousands or even millions of insects or birds (if they are not afflicted with the same light sensitivity as the rats), capsize and sink watercraft through fish, or even control larger land animals than the waves upon waves of rats encountered by the de Rune children and their friends.

Similarly, the locations where said animals live would be drastically different. The gore-filled tunnels of the rats are a hint of the kind of macabre living spaces these creatures live within, but what if they were in trees as nests, or otherwise lying in wait in places at a significant height that would make it harder to spot them until it is too late?

That said, all of this may be completely inaccurate. The main element that may make this speculation invalid is a look at the historical pathology related to the Prima Macula as known within the story. Research in-game places the earliest known account of the hosts for the Prima Macula at the time of the Plague of Justinian (541-542 CE) in the Byzantine Empire, a disease that has been since confirmed as originating from the same bacteria (Yersinia pestis) as the aforementioned Black Plague (1347-1351 CE), and thus all fitting under the collective label of "plague" in terms of epidemics.

If Mr. Renard's denotation of the Macula as for "plagues" rather than all epidemics is accurate and not just a general colloquialism, then the applicability of when and how this type of power is used would be greatly limited, mostly just to rats and perhaps fleas, as there does not seem to be direct control that bearers of the Macula have over species that are infected by said rats. However, none of this is to say that the spread of the Macula would be too inherently limited. There have been many plagues throughout history, numbering greater than forty.

The existence of such a significant element as the hosts of the Prima Macula give rise to the idea of how it could potentially alter the way in which society develops if it were to be known to higher authorities, as demonstrated by Vitalis Bénévent's goals within the game itself. First it seems prudent to go over what is known about how to control the Macula.

Control over the Prima Macula relies upon certain "thresholds" through which the host experiences a lot of pain until their body can become accustomed to the power, coupled with symptoms such as times of significant weakness and some rather high fevers. Certain alchemical concoctions are capable of controlling these thresholds, such as the ones used by Béatrice de Rune and her fellow alchemist Laurentius, but only with the help of the large book known as Sanguinis Itinera ("Voyages of the Blood") was such an elixir completed. Another component important to the Macula's progress appears to be internal, related to moments of intense emotion such as heightened fear or anger, but these elements can be worked through by having someone close by to manage said fears, and are much less important once the host passes the final threshold to the point of being able to control the rats, which also appears to allot a kind of passive immunity to the plague itself through rats' unwillingness to attack said host. Whether or not this type of issue would be a significant problem for people who are older than the five-year-old Hugo is unknown, but perhaps it is a recurring element.

As shown by the alchemical works within the Inquisition, some other scientific means have been used to transmit the Prima Macula. A blood transfusion from one who has a hereditary form of the Macula to someone who does not grants a connection through their blood. The artificial host is granted power over the infected creatures at the same rate as the natural host, even crossing the thresholds in tandem. Whether or not artificial hosts suffer from the same debilitating effects as those for natural ones is unknown, but as shown by Hugo de Rune's transfusion to Vitalis Bénévent and the eventual boss battle, not only is the natural host able to sense the Macula within the artificial one, but he or she is also capable of understanding if the Macula, which appears semi-sentient (unless Hugo is wrong) is "fighting" the artificial host in some way to prevent the use of power.

Certain elements, such as the "exsanguis" substance procured from rat-infested locations and the resultant "odoris" alchemical substance utilized to draw rats into one area or another, help to give the impression of non-carriers of the Macula having some defense nonetheless, albeit one that is rather dangerous to procure and utilize. Similarly, the specially treated white rats, which respond only to Vitalis and not to Hugo, along with being immune to bright lights or fire, show another way of controlling the use of the ability itself.

All of these elements come to a head when thinking about the implications for said developments going forward.

In terms of developments to society, such scientific works could be used to manage or even neutralize the effectiveness of potential hosts of the Macula, especially with the increase in scientific knowledge since the 14th century CE. For instance, if such a serum were created, it could help to keep such a horrific superhuman from emerging, or conversely be even worse and attempt to heighten emotional extremes to keep them down with their own sickness. Neither of these are benevolent options, to be clear, but both seem within the realm of possibility for the game.

Through the experimentation of Vitalis Bénévent, it is shown that while there are drawbacks (even excluding the difficulties with blood transfusions in general), it is entirely possible that people could create more carriers of the Macula while keeping the natural hosts safely away. Between the transfusion technique and the unusual white rats, plague-based officers are entirely within the realm of possibility for the later years or centuries of the story's narrative.

Meanwhile, elements like exsanguis and odoris show how society could develop other means to control the infected creatures through a variety of inventions to redirect or otherwise neutralize them even outside of common exterminators or plague vaccines. Together with the aforementioned officers, not to mention more positive uses such as redirecting plague vectors away from population centers to limit infection, there is an enormous amount of potential at work.

Of course, all of this could be for naught, as it is not clear whether or not A Plague Tale: Innocence will have any further stories in its universe, but much like another disease-related game published by Focus Home Interactive, Vampyr, all of this serves as an interesting thought for what could potentially exist moving forward.

[itshistoryyall]

Pandemics

The history of pandemics is, as I’m sure you can surmise, quite extensive. As far back as the history of humanity goes, pandemics, disease, and death has kept close proximity. We have always faced hardships, but the intriguing part, is how we have survived. It’s important to remember that during these tough times where it seems like we might be isolated, afraid, or scared. We, as a community, have always persevered, and this time is no different. We will pull-through, we will move forward, and we will survive. BUT, it’s very important that we start by passing on good, researched information, help out our neighbors, and keep in mind that this situation is above all, NOT about you.

Beginning in the 1300s with the bubonic plague, humanity started seeing an organized effort to quell emerging diseases. At first glance, I would be want to say that we, as modern humans, have not experienced a pandemic threat on this particular level, but that would not be entirely true. It’s more like true, but with an asterisk--more on that in a minute (I’ll be sure to put an asterisk so you know). The plague, I won’t spend too much time on because it could in it’s own right be an entire series of posts, but what’s important to know is that this is where we, as humans, assessed a threat and decided that there should be some sort of concerted effort to suss out tactics to stop its progression. So, we won’t talk about how it spread here, but more specifically about statistics. It is estimated that around 30-60% of the world’s population was decimated by “the black death,” and to put that in numbers, an of an estimated 475 million people, around 350-375 million were left at the start of the 14th century. 

It’s important not to blame the animals for the spread of the plague though, they may have started it, but uninformed humans made it the pandemic that it was (three times in history, I might add). The plague was thought to have been potentially airborne and close contact mixed with poor health conditions, malnutrition, and a general lack of knowledge for personal hygiene and the healthcare practices that we have today were simply a recipe for disaster. This disease spread rapidly from person to person, and ended up taking out over half of Europe’s population. It seems like a silly thing to compare that to what’s happening in our current day situation, but I would like to draw the parallel of what dangers an uninformed public can pose. The idea of quarantine began here in 1377, and though it was the right decision, the spread of the disease was not halted because of a lack of modern medical knowledge.

We don’t see a real protocol for quarantine until the mid 1600s when England passed a number of bills that standardized the process for disinfecting and cleaning people and ships suspected of being infected with the plague. Around this time, cases of smallpox and yellow fever were starting to pop up in America, and the implementation of regulations for dealing with the spread of disease was the responsibility of the state. We didn’t see national involvement in disease prevention until the late 1700s. If you’d like to know how old news anti-vaccers are, then you can look back to the beginnings of inoculations for smallpox that began in the late 1600s around 1691. It was highly controversial to inoculate people and was more acceptable to mandate a quarantine for those suspected of having the disease.

When cholera began spreading across the world in the 18th century, quarantine practices were also scoffed at and for the most part considered unnecessary by most people. The resulting spread was exponential. The death rate was well over 1 million people and plenty of others had contracted cholera before the pandemic calmed down around 6 years after the initial outbreak thanks to a literal act of God, meaning, a severely cold winter killed off most of the mosquitoes that were carrying and transmitting cholera to humans and worsening the impact and spread. By the early 1900s an international Sanitary Conference was held where new articles were signed that reinvented methods of prevention of the spread of disease, and it couldn’t have come soon enough because a few years later (7 to be exact), a tremendous influenza epidemic hit the world hard. Known as Spanish Influenza, the world’s first introduction to the flu was not a pleasant experience.

The influenza pandemic came in three waves between 1918-1919, and was a disease that was completely unknown to professionals. The Office International d’Hygiène Publique (predecessor of the World Health Organization or WHO), located in Paris, France was all but useless in the immediate need for action to stop the spread of flu. As the world was suffering at the throes of the First World War, too little and too late was done to prevent the spread, but to no avail. Attempts were made to close public gathering places, schools, sporting events, and entertainment venues. Even Yale closed all on-campus meetings, but the extremely contagious virus was too widely spread for these uncoordinated and poorly-timed measures to prevent mass spread. Here we see the efforts of health experts encouraging people to self-quarantine and use social distancing measures, but by the time this was implemented, influenza had reached every part of the world and had progressed to a point where these measures were all but useless. What’s important about this history lesson is that these things would have helped had they been a preventative measure.

Influenza is unique in this time period because we also have our first instance of the impact that mass media would have on the outcome and public information about this virus. In Italy, newspapers were prevented from publishing the death count on a daily basis in order to keep the mass acute anxiety that was having an extreme impact on public morale and panic levels. However, war-torn nations were experiencing problems with accuracy and clarity of information regarding prevention of spread because of the censorship of media outlets at the time which worsened the impact of the pandemic as much as the war effort itself.

In 1933 the pathogen that causes influenza was found and we were able to start treating influenza, and creating a vaccine. Around 1940, the CDC was founded and established in Atlanta, Georgia as a base for all operations regarding the control and prevention of the spread of infectious diseases, and it was in direct relation to the spread of malaria in the 1940s. The CDC added a plague department in 1947 as well as an  Epidemiology Division and Veterinary Diseases Division. In 1951, the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) and Field Epidemiology Training Programs (FETP) were established that now have international models based off of the American programs. The Venereal Disease Division was establishes in 1957, and in 1963 the Immunization program was established. The CDC has been widely influential in a number of preventative and creative approaches to preventing the spread of disease and abuse of medications in order to prevent immunity of viruses and bacteria to treatment. This organization is a world leader when it comes to establishing standards for handling anything from research to protocols for worldwide pandemics. If there was ever a time to trust the nerds it’s now.

And that brings us to today. So, what are we supposed to be listening to now? The professionals. The ones who have brought us from malaria to COVID-19, the place that has kept us informed about influenza since 1946, and the place that is the ONLY reason that penicillin still works as an antibiotic, the one-and-only, Center for Disease Control. This virus and its prevention has suffered from a large amount of disinformation and “fake news.” I would like to encourage everyone to take power over your own learning, to learn from the unintelligent and unfortunate dead, and to re-post only articles and information that you know to be true. Now, more than ever before is a time to learn from our own naive history, to realize that we have made these mistakes before, and to LISTEN to the pleas of our healthcare experts and government officials. These measures might seem superfluous, but they’re preventative and we need this virus to slow down or face the consequences a la Cholera. This is not something to not take seriously and now is not the time to be selfish. Help your fellow man. Stay home, even if you’re well, and remember that you’re saving lives--you hero, you ;)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”--George Santayana

https://www.cdc.gov/

[bigyack-com]

Microbes Point the Way to Shipwrecks

Off the coast of Mississippi, under 4,000 feet of water, a luxury yacht is slowly disintegrating. Marine creatures dart, cling and scuttle near the hull of the wreck, which has been lying undisturbed for 75 years.But there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to this shipwreck and others, researchers have now shown — distinct assemblages of microbes inhabit the seafloor surrounding these structures, helping to turn shipwreck sites into artificial reefs rich in life.Shipwrecks are trespassers on the bottom of the ocean, human-made structures decidedly out of their element. But a wreck’s intrusion gradually becomes welcome as various forms of marine life seek refuge among the steel and wood.The macroscopic animals that inhabit shipwrecks are only there thanks to much smaller forms of life, said Leila Hamdan, a marine microbial ecologist at the University of Southern Mississippi.That’s because microbes like bacteria and archaea coat surfaces in a sticky layer, a biofilm, that functions as a chemical and physical come-hither call for larger creatures such as barnacles and coral, Dr. Hamdan said. “A shipwreck can never become an artificial reef unless the microorganisms are there first.”Her team is researching how the presence of a shipwreck affects microbial communities. This field of research, shipwreck microbial ecology, is a niche area of study that spans archaeology, biology, ecology and marine science, she said. “As far as we know, we’re the only ones doing it right now.”In September 2018, Dr. Hamdan and her colleagues departed from Gulfport, Miss. aboard the research vessel Point Sur. Roughly 70 miles off the coast, the team lowered a remotely operated vehicle called Odysseus into the 80-degree water. Within 45 minutes, Odysseus’s seven thrusters had propelled it to the seafloor. There, it began emitting sonar pings to locate Anona, a shipwreck first discovered in the 1990s that the team knew was nearby.The 117-foot yacht, built in the early 20th century for a Detroit industrialist, was once sumptuously appointed in mahogany and teak, with a social hall that featured a piano. It sank in 1944, when the steel plates beneath its engines buckled during a voyage to the British West Indies. (The structural failure sent the crew of nine scrambling into a raft, and they drifted for two days before being rescued.) Anona fell to the seafloor upright and intact, its bow pointing toward Cuba.Dr. Hamdan and her colleagues directed Odysseus around the shipwreck. The remotely operated vehicle, about the size of a small car, carried a payload of clear plastic tubes. At predetermined distances from the shipwreck — ranging from about 300 to seven feet — one of the vehicle’s robotic arms plunged a tube the size of a water bottle into the fine gray sediment of the seafloor. The team collected cores off the yacht’s bow, starboard side and port side. (On previous research cruises, the team had collected cores as far away as 3,300 feet, including ones off Anona’s stern.)In June and July of last year, the team conducted similar fieldwork at two other shipwreck sites that they discovered in the Gulf of Mexico. Based on the shapes of the wooden sailing vessels and the artifacts found nearby, the ships were most likely built in the 19th century. Like Anona, both vessels were upright and intact. One rested in relatively shallow water, about 1,700 feet, and the other lay beneath more than 5,900 feet of water.Back in the laboratory, the team extracted microbial DNA from the cores and sequenced the genetic material. “We look both at who is present and what their abundance is,” Dr. Hamdan said.The researchers found the largest diversity of microbes — several hundred types — roughly 160 to 330 feet away from Anona. That makes sense based on the age of the shipwreck, Dr. Hamdan said, since the structure is providing resources to microbes. “Those resources begin to spread over time, and with the resource follows the microbes.”The team also discovered that the seafloor’s microbiome varied with distance from Anona. That’s something that had not been demonstrated before, Dr. Hamdan said. “A shipwreck sitting on the deep ocean floor is materially changing the biodiversity of the seabed.”Near the wooden sailing vessels, the scientists found bacteria that degrade cellulose and hemicellulose, some of the primary components of wood. “That gives us an idea that maybe they’re feeding on the shipwreck,” said Justyna Hampel, a biogeochemist at the University of Southern Mississippi who led the analysis of the two new shipwreck sites.Because there is no light and only limited sources of energy in deep water, survival “defies the normal routes of life,” Dr. Hampel said.The microbiomes of the two newly discovered shipwrecks are also distinct from each other, the team showed, which raises the question of whether water depth plays a role in dictating microbial communities.It’s unknown whether these microbes were transported to the seafloor or they were there all along and conditions simply became conducive to their flourishing after a ship sank. “That’s the million-dollar question in microbial ecology,” Dr. Hamdan said.In support of the second idea, there’s a theory that “everything is everywhere, but the environment selects,” she added. As an example, it’s entirely possible that an individual spore of bubonic plague is sitting on my desk right now, she said. “It’s just there, waiting for the right conditions.” Similarly, shipwrecks create a new environment that is hospitable to some microbes but inhospitable to others, she said.Dr. Hamdan’s students are doing experiments on the seafloor to investigate where the microbes came from, and where they go when they leave shipwrecks.These results were presented this week at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego.Magnificent ecosystems exist around shipwrecks, said Andrew Davies, a marine biologist at the University of Rhode Island who was not involved in the research. But it’s been largely unknown how these artificial structures affect the surrounding seafloor, he said, so it’s good to see studies like this that are focused on “habitats of opportunity.”In the future, Dr. Hamdan and her colleagues plan to study microbial communities around other shipwrecks. There are plenty of possibilities — more than 2,000 shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico, she said. “We absolutely need to go to more sites.” Read the full article

[tinyshe]

Systems Biologist Speaks Out About COVID-19 Response

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

[this is a long read but well worth the time, food for thought]

Download Interview Transcript Download my FREE Podcast

Story at-a-glance

According to systems biologist Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D., the COVID-19 pandemic is being used to shift global wealth

Systems biology deciphers the synergies within living systems to understand how to diagnose, assess and identify the underlying problem, and how to administer the most appropriate remedy

The economic collapse is a result of precisely engineered governmental policies, even though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best interest

Systems biology informs us one size does not fit all. Yet this knowledge is being ignored in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is told they must take the same precautions as those who are at high risk

Fearmongering is being used to suppress antigovernment dissent, to crash the economy and issue medical mandates that could generate trillions of dollars in ongoing revenue in years to come

Today, we continue to provide you information about  the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this recording, April 6, 2020, there are more  than 1.4 million cases worldwide and 370,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., with  New York City being one of the hotspots.1,2 Here, I interview Shiva Ayyadurai, who has a Ph.D. in systems biology from MIT.

What Is Systems  Biology?

His academic background gives Ayyadurai a  slightly different perspective on this outbreak, as it focuses on the  foundational causes of disease rather than the conventional medical paradigm  that tends to focus on pharmaceutical remedies. Ayyadurai explains:

“The MIT department of biological engineering was created in 2003.  The notion was … that you needed an engineering approach to biology as new  advances or new discoveries were coming out in biology. That created the department  of biological engineering …

One of the big things that took place in 2003 that led to the  formation of that department was, in an ironic way, what occurred with the  human genome project starting in 1993. We went into the genome project with a  reductionist view of biology.

Biologists essentially thought that the number of parts meant  complexity. We knew in 1993, a worm had around 20,000 genes. So, we said, OK,  we're going to start mapping out the human genome. We were at least 25 times  more complex. The notion was we had about a half a million genes.

By 2003, they only found 20,000 protein coding genes. That flipped  biology on its head because it said, wait a minute, we have the same number of  parts, and they thought genes were a reflection of complexity. That led to  systems biology starting around 2003, which said, look, genes create proteins  and these proteins interact. So, it's about all these interactions …

Today, that has led to this field called epigenetics, in which we  know that the external environment, what we interact with, can turn on and turn  off genes. I came back to MIT in 2003. I did four degrees at MIT in electrical engineering,  mechanical engineering. My Master's was in design, but I always was  fascinated with medicine.”

The Cytosol  Platform

The project Ayyadurai took on for his Ph.D.  thesis was to mathematically model the whole human cell. His work led to the  creation of a platform called CytoSolve “cyto” standing for “cell.” This approach  is different from biology, computer science and chemistry.

“Biologists are essentially distributed knowledge engineers,” he says, “and the thing  they're trying to understand is this thing called the body. No different than  aeronautical engineers trying to build the airplane. The difference is when we  build an airplane, we actually know what we want to build. And we know the  parts in biology, we're finding the parts, that's what they're doing.

Some biologists can win a Nobel prize just for looking at how two  proteins interact. So, they're very focused on understanding these parts. So,  imagine if we could create a technology where we could take those parts,  integrate them, and then essentially let them be sort of focused in their  silos.

But there wouldn't be this framework that you could integrate,  where you could integrate these molecular pathways. And that really created  cytosol. To me, it was a big circling back because I grew up in India where my  grandmother practiced traditional systems of medicine.

In that system of medicine, they had diagnosis methods, they  looked at you, they figured out your body type and they would figure out the  right types of foods and medicines, herbs or even body work to get you back  into balance. That was always seen as a ‘black art’ from a Western  medicine [perspective].

[CytoSolve] lets us decipher what they were doing and actually  understand these synergies. So that's what systems biology is about. It's  taking an engineering systems approach to the body … It's literally understanding  how to diagnose and assess and identify what the problem is, and then how to  administer a prescription within a few minutes. It’s essentially an ‘AI’-type  model.”

COVID-19 — Health  and Economic Perspectives

As noted by Ayyadurai, the COVID-19  pandemic is not only highlighting our immune health but also our economic  health. We're seeing the integration of medical policy and economic policy.

“I had a very interesting discussion with a leading economist,” Ayyadurai says, “and he had  a serious concern about the fact that economists are being forced to backfill  in a misguided health policy, which is occurring. What he meant by that is, [they’re  being told to] just use quantitative easing, which is basically printing money,  and that will solve the problem.

Now that entire process does two things. First of all, we have I  think 10 million unemployment claims in March alone. In addition to that, you  have the fact that we're going to print money, which … if you look, since 2008 and  2009, when quantitative easing started … that has essentially been the biggest  transfer of wealth — to the 0.01%, again.  

It is essentially a weakened earning power and the [weakened  value] of the dollar. So that's what's occurred. Now we have this COVID-19, and  we have this economic overreaction, in my opinion, from the fear-mongering. In many  ways, it reflects the immune system.

The immune system fundamentally wants to operate well for you and maintain  homeostasis, and it's the overreaction of a weakened and dysfunctional immune  system that causes harm. Similarly, when you look at it from the economic  standpoint, we have this unbridled overreaction, in my view. [We’re] not  looking at what modern medicine is saying — that we should take a personalized  medicine approach, right?

One size doesn't fit all. This is basically flatten the curve: Kick  the can down the street. We're just going to wait until, when? Until the  vaccine is produced or until a drug comes out. The assumption is that the  immune system of all of us is equally weak. That's what this is based on. The  assumption is that all of us are going to get it and all of us will suffer from  it.

It's a very interesting model. Look at the person leading this  health policy, Dr. Fauci. His background is from the pharmaceutical world …  [and] when you look at the NIH and the CDC, these organizations are heavily,  heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies.

In that environment, the model has always  been never to discuss immune health, what we can do to support the immune  system. It's always under the assumption that there's this big boogeyman, that  the virus harms your body. Most medical doctors, again, they're victims of this  education.

Many of them are taught the virus literally comes and attacks your  body, and that a vaccine or a pharmaceutical intervention blocks it. It's not  taught broadly that [the problem is that] the dysfunctional, weakened immune  system is not running on all cylinders.

One part of it can overreact, and that overreaction is what goes  in and attacks your own tissues. So, the issue is, we're not having a  discussion at all in the media about ‘How do you modulate that overreaction and  support people's immune health?’”

Similarly, Ayyadurai notes, the economic  collapse is “a result of precisely engineered governmental policies,” even  though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best  interest.

Is COVID-19 a Real  Pandemic?

COVID-19 meets the technical definition of a pandemic,  and the World Health Organization did declare it a pandemic. However, the death  toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics that would legitimately  justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government.

The Spanish flu in 1918 infected 500 million  people worldwide, killing between 20 million and 50 million. The bubonic plague  also killed 50 million people, wiping out a shocking 60% of the European  population. This is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.”

COVID-19 presently affects a tiny fraction of  the global population — about 1.4 million cases out of a global population of  7.78 billion3 — and even with a death toll of 81,000 worldwide,4 COVID-19 has had a miniscule impact, having killed a mere 0.00001% of the  population.

Don’t get me wrong. Any death is tragic. But any  given individual’s risk of dying from the epidemics of diabetes, heart  disease or cancer, for example, is greater than their risk of dying from COVID-19.  Why is death from lifestyle-induced disease and environmental toxicity more  preferable and acceptable than death from an infectious disease?

Dying from a preventable medical mistake is also  a greater risk, as that kills  up to 440,000 Americans every year. Where’s the panic  about that? Isn’t the idea that conventional medicine kills 440,000 people a  year terrifying?!  1  in 5 elderly patients are also injured by medical care. Where are the calls to protect our aging loved ones from this threat?

Were health policies more aligned with truth, we  wouldn’t have these chronic disease epidemics and far fewer people would die  from preventable medical mistakes. More people would lead healthy lives were  they properly informed about what’s harmful and what’s healthy.

Similarly, when it comes to COVID-19, there are  simple strategies with which we can address this infection that does not  require collapsing the global economy, creating unheard of unemployment and  isolating everyone from human contact for weeks on end. You can find many  articles detailing such strategies on my Coronavirus  Resource Page.

As noted by Ayyadurai, systems biology tells us  that one size does not fit all. “We need to move to the right medicine for the  right person at the right time,” he says. But this knowledge has not been  applied in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is being treated as though they’re  high risk for severe infection and death and therefore need to take identical  precautions. So, what’s really going on here?

“We have not said, ‘Hey, let's shut down the economy to address  the fact that we have skyrocketing obesity taking place, skyrocketing  diabetes,” Ayyadurai says. “So, the level of contradiction, the level  of hypocrisy should wake up everyone to understand that there is another  agenda.

There is another agenda afoot. I repeat what my mentor said: ‘When  things don't add up, take a step back and ask, what is the other agenda?’ And  the only thing in a common-sense way that reveals itself to me is power, profit  and control. Power, profit and control.”

The Power, Profit  and Control Agenda

Like Ayyadurai, I believe the fearmongering is  being used to suppress dissent, to crash the economy and to issue medical  mandates. “If you look broadly, there were massive uprisings, antiestablishment  uprisings [in different countries]. Well, they're all gone now. We don't even  hear anything about them,” Ayyadurai says.

He also believes this fearmongering and social  isolation mandates will be used as a way to acclimatize people to accept state  wants or what a few people deem is good for everyone. “That, I think, is the  milieu being set up,” he says. “That's being teed up.” Indeed, it simply  doesn’t add up when you look at mortality rates.

“There's another agenda,” Ayyadurai  says. “That's what I see, because it  doesn't make any rational sense [to crash the economy over COVID-19]. I think  that's why a number of the videos, the tweets I've done have gone viral,  because to everyday working people, it doesn't make sense either. They're  trying to sort this out.”

Interestingly, this epidemic is taking place just a few months after Google  began censoring holistic health news. So, people searching  for sound nutritional strategies can no longer find them. Instead, they’re  directed to Big Pharma-backed sites promoting conventional medicine.

The censorship isn’t even about squashing nonscientific  views anymore. Educated health professionals are being banned left and right  simply for posting peer-reviewed studies showing nutraceuticals work, or that  drugs or vaccines don’t work — including Ayyadurai himself, who got kicked off  Twitter the day this interview was recorded over a vitamin D post.

“It has essentially moved to a model of a finite set of people serving  the interests of another finite set of people,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what's fundamentally going on. When  we really look back at the history of ‘infectious diseases,’ what actually  caused the real decline in infectious disease? …

That came from sanitation, vitamin A, nutrition, elimination of  child labor, refrigeration [and] infrastructure at the political level … Well,  how did we get that? This is one layer people need to understand from a human  standpoint. It came about because in the late 1800s, there was a massive force  of the American working class who were militant, and they fought for those  rights.

People lived in squalor. No one cared for them. It was the uprising  of those people and very, very powerful independently self-organizing systems,  all over this country, that forced the elites to give them these basic  infrastructures …

So, what I see is the ability for people to organize and demand  their rights and get them. That is what occurred in the late 1900s, and we got  massive gains. Now look at infrastructure today. Dirty water, dirty air, dirty  food … and we look at them in synergy, how they affect our body. None of that's  discussed, none of that.

I think the United States has a D+ in infrastructure. The roads,  the bridges and the water systems [are all crumbling]. And when you don't fix  these things in time, they affect all types of environmental things. The elite  in this country do not want to address that. They want to always create a fake  problem and a fake solution to consolidate power.

And that's why when you look at this [COVID-19] phenomenon that's  taking place, it's a penultimate of it … You create massive amounts of fear so people  will be willing — because they're under economic stress, under what they think  is a health [threat] — to give up their rights.

And that's where I see this headed. So, this is an interesting  convergence of … economic attack, attack on people's health, [and attack on] people's  autonomy and freedom. Truth, freedom and health are all under attack …

They do not want any discussion about indigenous people's  medicines that have worked for centuries. They don't want to talk about simple  solutions … so, they suppress discourse,  suppress debate, suppress freedom, and move everything away from the scientific  method — which is a process where you actually have to prove stuff, which is  what they claim they want to do to scientific consensus.

Freedom gets suppressed and now you can move truth to scientific  consensus. So, you go from suppression of freedom to fake science or outdated  science at best. And then that is used to create a fake problem and a fake  solution.

And then, if you go to the health part, what that means is you  diminish people's health, you control people's health, and now you have a  populace which is so controlled, they don't have the strength to fight for  their freedom. So, you have the attack on freedom, the attack on truth, and the  attack on health.

All of those are interconnected. They too are a system from a  systems perspective. Without freedom, you can't have truth. Without truth, you  can’t have health. And without health we don't have the strength to fight for  our freedom. And the way that truth actually is discovered should be through  the scientific method. That's what's really been compromised, starting, I would  say, in the late ‘50s.”

Postal Service  Could Be Used to Protect Free Communications

To summarize, the three-pronged agenda is:  Power, profit and control. To counteract that three-pronged threat, we need  academic freedom and the freedom to discourse and debate.

From that freedom, we get truth, and from truth,  we’re able to understand health, not only physical health but also in the  broadest sense the health of our systems, our infrastructure and environment. With  health, we gain the strength to fight for even more freedoms.

“For each one of those, there's a solution. For example, when you  go to freedom, if you look at communication, right now we are heavily relying  on Google, Facebook and three major telecom companies. So, basically, five CEOs  control our communication. One phone call to them, and you can essentially shut  down communication ...

What is the solution? Well, it's going to sound weird, but … the  founding fathers of this country created an institution called the United  States Postal Service. Why did they create that? Because the crown was not  allowing each individual to communicate. So, the notion of ‘the press’ was all  of us. There was no New York Times. Each one of us were supposed to be the  press ...

If anyone interfered with your communications, [they got a] 20-year  prison sentence. It was criminal. So, the entire postal service system was a  decentralized environment enabling every American to communicate for pennies …

In 1997 is when email volume overtook postal mail volume. I met with the  executives of the postal service. I said, look, you guys should be living up to  what you were chartered to do, which is to protect free communications. Why  don't you offer a public email service and public social media services … that  would be protected by the laws of the Constitution? No one, including the  government, could interfere.

They thought it was a ridiculous idea … In 2011, the postal  services were going out of business. Why? Because all the best parts of  the postal service were privatized into DHL and FedEx. So, I again hit them  really hard. The inspector general, Dave Williams, called me up.

He goes, ‘Shiva, why are you attacking us?’ I said, ‘Look, you  guys are not doing your job. You're not in the postal mail business. You were  supposed to be in the communications business. You are set up as a quasi-organization  to protect our rights. So anyway, I did two chartered reports for them.

My point is we need a digital rights act, and there is an institution [that can supply us with that].  It is the postal service,  in my view. All these postal service locations could be converted to a mesh  network. So, there is an opportunity to have a network by the people for the  people. Now if someone wants to go use Google and Facebook and you can, but  there needs to be a public common.

Those few elite would object to this and have the power and  control to prevent that from being implemented. Definitely. That's why I  believe we need to have a mass movement. Nothing has ever been given to us. People  think slavery ends one day and we have freedom the next. Every point in human  history has always been people chipping away at slavery to get freedom from the  elite."

Decentralization Is  the Name of the Game

Ayyadurai discusses many additional issues and goes far deeper than I can  summarize here, so please, listen to the interview in its entirety. He has many  fascinating insights, ideas and solutions. For example, about 50 minutes in, he  discusses how federally funded research systems can be improved to ensure  scientific integrity and prevent scientific fraud.

“We need to take power away from the academics,”  he says, “and one way to do that is to force decentralization. That's a common  theme here.” He also analyzes the health care model, and discusses how health  care, as a system, can be improved while simultaneously being made far less  expensive.

“Broadly, we need to decentralize health care. The concept of  centralized health care — which is what the purpose of this [COVID-19 pandemic  is] — is that next year everyone's going to be mandated vaccines,” he says.

“For them to crash the economy, to drive it into a depression, for  them it's a relatively great return on investment. You make the fed print $6  trillion, but you're going to make $7 trillion to $8 trillion recurring revenue  [by way of mandated, annual vaccinations] … So, we have to do whatever it takes  to decentralize health care …

When you look at these things I've said, it comes down to one word:  Decentralization … I think the opportunity here is to start educating people.  It is supposed to be We the People, and this does not mean it's going to happen  without struggle.

We may have to rise up and fight in ways that we haven't done  before, just like those people did in the late 1800s, and the idea is to compel  the thing. We need to build a broad-based movement bottom-up … And I think it  begins with taking care of your health.”  

[imdoingokayish]

Background and Introduction

A friend suggested that I write a blog documenting my experience of the Coronavirus pandemic. While I do wish that more people had taken the time to write their thoughts down during historic diseases such as the bubonic plague and the Spanish flu, I think that the internet has documented this time well enough, perhaps so well that future generations will have absolutely no idea what happened due to contradicting accounts. There are people enjoying cheap flights to faraway beaches and people hiding in caves constructed entirely out of rolls of toilet paper and bottles of hand sanitizer. And it is in this uncertain time, when people and governments have absolutely no idea what to do, that I am choosing to carve this little spot into the internet and create a place to process what exactly is going on. 

The past two weeks have been a blur of almost every emotion on the human spectrum. It doesn’t make much sense, but these past two weeks would have made a beautiful painting. There is pain, joy, change, loss, and uncertainty. Yes, I realize that people are dying and the economy is crashing and perhaps this is the beginning (who are we kidding, it’s the middle) of the apocalypse. But I am going take a moment to affect how this is affecting me specifically, in all its selfish glory. In the words of a friend, “fuck the big picture.”

Two weeks ago, the sunny weather had filled the air with optimism and my brain felt truly healthy and happy for the first time in a really long time. I was learning at a school that I was finally comfortable calling my home and falling in love with friends that I was beginning to think of as family. Coronavirus was a scary thing that we made memes about, but it happened in other places that were not my quiet bubble of reality. 

Now I am sitting on my couch at home, it has been raining on and off for the past two days, and a fog has descended over my town in a way that feels only fitting. I have not hugged or kissed anyone in my family because I am too afraid that I am an asymptomatic carrier. Every time I sniffle or cough, I am scared of infecting my mom and my brother. In the time that has passed, classes have become online indefinitely (a concept that has yet to fully sink in), I have cried many times, and a heavy feeling of overwhelm has made itself comfortable on my chest. 

In the interest of not having a tantrum, let me paraphrase by saying this sucks. I am worried about my friends, for both their physical and mental health. I am worried about my family, for the potential virus and definite tension that I bring to my household. I am worried about our economy, because closing borders and bringing everything to a standstill can not be good for a system based in global exchange. And in continual selfishness, I am worried about myself, a person who does not fare well under social isolation and unlimited free time. 

So yeah, that is my rationalization for creating this blog. It gives me something to do and somewhere to do it. Hopefully, we all get through this shit somewhat physically and emotionally unscathed. 

[echoes-of-realities]

be my fire in the cold (and I'll be waiting by the mistletoe) - 2/25

* * *

[Fanfiction] // [ao3]

[Previous Chapter] // [Next Chapter]

Chapter Summary: Rachel still doesn’t quite understand what an understudy is despite the fact that she is one; Brittany gets caught blushing far more often than she’s used to.

Chapter 2: there were sweeties and chocolates and toys and lights

//

The matinee goes far more smoothly than most people thought it would, but it’s not that it went well that surprises Brittany, it’s that people thought it wouldn’t. She doesn’t really make it a habit to listen when the company gossips, partly because there’s always a lot of mean gossip surrounding her and Mike and Tina since they’re all principals and Brittany just prefers to ignore it all, and partly because Mercedes always keeps her well informed anyways, usually when she’s changing Brittany into her costume or helping with her hair and makeup and Brittany has no choice but to listen. She when she hears people marvelling at how well Santana’s handled the show, despite the fact that she was literally only hired two days ago, she’s more than a little surprised that people are surprised.

She’s comfortably close with Quinn and Artie, not enough that they seek each other’s company outside of the show, but enough that she doesn’t mind having lunch with them between shows. And it’s because she doesn’t mind having lunch with them that she knows Santana Lopez is more than qualified to run the show, maybe too qualified if the copy of her resume Artie snuck them was anything to go by; and beyond that, she knows that Tina and Mike trust her completely, so she was never too worried about the change in production stage manager. Based on the complete and utter surprise of most people as they file into one of the larger rehearsal room for a quick meeting, Brittany realizes that she’s in a minority.

She spots Mercedes and Sam giggling together and blushing, so she heads over to them and collapses onto the floor beside them. None of the children are at the meeting, they’re all getting lunch with their parents and friends before the show at five, and though the meeting isn’t mandatory for the teenagers, there’s a couple of them gossiping in a corner. The entire rest of the company and all of the department heads, along with most of their departments too, are squished into the room. The mirrors lining the walls make it look like there are even more people than there actually are, and Brittany knows how nerve-racking it can be to stand in front of so many people with the mirrors multiplying them tenfold, but Santana looks calm and collected as her and Quinn break away from the small team of stage managers and stagehands in the corner to address the room.

It’s a typical meeting, and they go over some minor changes that Santana’s suggested to make backstage less congested during a couple scene changes, and despite the slight grumbling throughout the company, who like their routines perhaps too much, Brittany finds herself nodding along. They’re all changes that Brittany can easily see making the flow backstage so much smoother, and she briefly wonders why they haven’t always been doing it, but then she remembers their old production stage manager and how absentminded Holly can sometimes be and she’s not all that surprised. Their old production stage manager was a little all over the place, to say the least, and while Holly is an amazing director, but she doesn’t quite have the focused, meticulous, mechanical brain needed for stage managing. It’s refreshing to have a production stage manager that, despite having stepped foot in the theatre for the very first time about forty-eight hours ago, obviously seems to know what she’s doing.

The topic changes as Santana and Quinn address some of the dance corps, and Brittany finds herself tuning out of the conversation in favour of staring at Santana. She should probably be paying attention, but Santana does this cute little furrowed brow thing when someone interrupts her and Brittany kind of wants to smooth it out. She also talks with her hands a lot, and Brittany finds her eyes drawn to the movement of her arms as she gestures around or fiddles with her notebook. She’s completely lost to admiring Santana’s quiet grace in her movements when dark eyes catch on hers suddenly and something jolts up her spine, starting near her tailbone and tingling up towards the base of her skull as she sits up a little taller. She thinks maybe Santana’s just scanning the crowd and Brittany happened to see her when she glanced in Brittany’s general direction, but Santana’s eyes linger unmistakably on hers and it makes heat crawl, hot and prickling, under her skin until she’s pretty sure she’s blushing all the way down to her bellybutton. It’s been a very long time since Brittany got caught staring at a pretty girl, and she desperately pretends that her complexion doesn’t allow everyone to see exactly how fiercely she’s blushing.

Mercedes nudges her with her arm, smirking deeply as she glances between Santana and her, and Brittany curses herself for getting caught staring not just by Santana, but by her best friend as well. She’s pretty sure that she hasn’t felt this embarrassed to be caught staring at a girl since she was only questioning her sexuality in high school, and it doesn’t help that she knows that Mercedes is going to give her the third degree and relentlessly tease her as soon as they’re alone in her dressing room before the evening show. Mercedes continues to smirk at her even as Brittany resolutely refuses to acknowledge her; the worst thing about this is that she won’t even be able to escape from her best friend’s teasing after she leaves the theatre considering that Mercedes’ bedroom is about fifteen feet from her own.

She refocuses on the conversation as soon as she feels like she’s not about to burst into flames and Santana is asking if there’s any questions. Quinn winces beside her, as does half the company, while the only person who ever has ‘questions’ shoots her hand into the air, almost before Santana finishes talking. A wave of stifled groans goes through the company as Santana points at Rachel, whose arm is ramrod straight; Brittany’s been in ballet for almost as long as she’s been walking, and even her posture isn’t as straight as Rachel’s arm when she has a question.

“Yes, I was wondering if you have given any thought to changing the cast lineups to include more of the under-appreciated talent in this room. I would be willing to offer—”

“I’m sorry,” Santana interrupts, looking politely annoyed, “You are?”

Rachel draws herself up with an affronted air, and this time the company doesn’t try even hide their collective groan. “Rachel Berry, Marie’s understudy. I’m sure you’ve heard of me already.”

Santana glances at Quinn in barely concealed confusion, but Quinn just widens her eyes and subtly shakes her head.

“My talents, and I am sure you must be well aware of them, are wasted unless I am on stage in the spotlight,” Rachel continues without prompting. “My star shines too bright and it is a misuse of my talents to keep them hidden away in a lowly understudy roll—”

“Do you— Do you know what an understudy is?” Santana asks, her bewildered tone completely betraying her polite expression.

“Of course I know what an understudy is,” Rachel says haughtily, “As I’m sure everyone here knows, I was on Broadway in the prestigious revival of Funny Girl.”

“Yeah, for like a second,” Brittany mutters. Beside her, Mercedes and Sam snort and choke back their laughter.

Rachel continues to ramble, and Santana continues to look adorably baffled before she finally blinks out of her daze. “Look,” she interrupts loudly, waiting until Rachel awkwardly trails off, “I didn’t do the casting, I have no clue how well you dance, but I trust that Holly casted the correct people for the job, and I’m more than certain Tina’s earned her spot. And besides that, I have nothing to do with Tina’s ability to perform on any given day, and unless she calls in sick or injured, you will not be going on as Marie. As is standard of any understudy.”

“Yes, but—” Rachel starts. Brittany meets Tina’s eyes across the heads of people, and the pure, unfiltered annoyance in them as she rolls them at Brittany makes her bite down, almost painfully, on her lip so she doesn’t giggle too loud.

“No buts,” Santana says, her voice slowly growing more curt and clipped, “this is how shows are run. You are the understudy, you only go on if the principal cannot. Shows have done this for like, literally, a century. And I don’t know why you don’t know this, or why you seem to think I don’t understand how theatre works and will just put you on whenever you feel like it. But I have a feeling you aren’t going on unless Tina comes down with the bubonic plague.”

Rachel continues to argue, starting to criticize Santana’s running of the show and her experience, and as Rachel starts to move on to Santana’s personal character, Brittany can tell Santana is starting to lose the calm, collected exterior she’s had all meeting. Brittany leans back in her chair and surveys the room, sensing the rest of the company starting to shift around and glance at each other, and waiting for her opening. Sure, she hates Rachel as much as the next sane person, and she’s usually really good at just zoning her out, but she forces herself to pay attention to whatever is coming out of Rachel’s mouth because Santana’s far too cute to lose her temper in front of the entire company on just her second day.

The next time Rachel takes a breath to continue her rambling, Brittany tilts her head and dons her practiced look of confusion. “Does anyone else hear that? It sound like a cat getting its temperature taken,” she calls, just loud enough to be heard by the company, “All I can hear is screaming.”

There’s a small wave of chuckles that go throughout the room, and a small wave of oh it’s just Brittany being Brittany eye rolls too, but it shocks Rachel enough that she stops talking, her mouth freezing half open. Quinn takes the moment to quickly clap her hands together and dismiss everyone, and Rachel’s complaints are lost to a crowd of people quickly standing and trying to escape the room.

Brittany barely notices, because Santana’s amused and relieved dark eyes have landed on hers, and Brittany’s stomach flips over as Santana offers her a small smile, mouthing thank you across the room.

Santana has dimples and her nose scrunches up when she smiles, and Brittany’s pretty sure she’s already a goner.

//

The evening show goes even better than the matinee, and though there’s some slight confusion at the top of the first act, by the time intermission rolls around the backstage traffic is far less congested than usual thanks to Santana’s suggestions. Brittany can’t help the touch of smugness that colours her smile as she heads back to her dressing room while she listens to the gossip, which has changed from how surprised everyone is with Santana not completely failing to how impressed they are with her improvements. Sure, it’s not like the changes were Brittany’s own ideas or anything, but she feels like one of the only people who never doubted Santana for a second, and she’s proud that Santana’s proved them all wrong in less than twelve hours.

As soon as she reaches her dressing room, Mercedes is already there waiting for her. She helps Brittany out of her costume and tiara, before carefully unpinning her hair even though she doesn’t have to, while Brittany fights to peel her bodysuit and tights off, tossing them in the general direction of her tiny closet before carelessly peeling off the tape around her toes and dunking her feet in the bucket of ice by her couch. She hisses at the instant relief, and Mercedes just laughs and shakes her head.

“I gotta drop Sam off at his apartment a little early today,” Mercedes says, “Do you want me to swing around and pick you up after?” Brittany nods quickly; she ices her feet after almost every show, but the cold never fails to shock her body and steal her ability to speak. Mercedes tosses her the sweater she wore to the theatre, and Brittany quickly pulls it over her head, shivering as the cold seems to creep along her veins. Mercedes starts to head for the door, but suddenly stops and glances back at Brittany with a wicked smile. “Don’t think you’re getting out of talking about what happened at the meeting today, Britt-Britt,” she teases. Brittany groans and, despite the cold, she feels heat crawl under her skin again. Mercedes chuckles at her and waves her goodbyes as leaves, leaving the door cracked open. As soon as she’s gone, Brittany leans forward for her phone, quickly lighting it up to check her messages. There’s a couple promotional emails and a notification from instagram, but nothing from her mom, and she has to remind herself that no news is good news.

Movement from the hallway catches her eye and Brittany glances at the door, only spotting a flash of black as someone walks past. She briefly hopes it’s Santana, partially because she wants to talk to her and congratulate on the shows today, and partially because she wants to feel that same bright lifting feeling she did last night when she showed up in her dressing room doorway, but mostly because she has something to give her.

As soon as her teeth start chattering she realizes that the ache of cold has been replaced by the numb feeling that means she probably left her feet in the ice too long, and she quickly draws them out to dry them and pull on her warmest pair of socks. She takes her time wiping her makeup off and slipping into her comfiest and most worn pair of sweats just as she hears a knock at the door. She calls her invitation and hears the door creak open as she turns to greet her visitor, fighting down the flash of hope that curls beneath her sternum, which proves fruitless when she sees that it is Santana standing there just like she hoped. She’s wearing a cute leather jacket, a red scarf looped loosely around her neck, looking ready to head home for the evening, but what really catches Brittany’s attention is the small smiling playing on Santana’s lips.

“No banging shoes tonight?” Santana asks in lieu of greeting.

Brittany grins. “Wasn’t on the schedule,” she replies with a teasing shrug, “I didn’t work them too hard tonight.” Santana grins and hovers in the doorway, and it’s only then that Brittany notices the notebook in her hands. “You doing notes tonight?” she asks.

Santana starts a little and blinks away her surprise, seeming a little surprised by the notebook in her hands for a moment before she recovers. “Oh, god no, I just came down to see Tina quickly,” she laughs, “I barely had time to breathe during the show, let alone focus on doing any notes.” She holds up the notebook with a small smile. “Tina just gave me this in celebration of my first official show. It’s kind of a tradition.”

Brittany grins. “That’s cute,” she says. “It must be nice having people at the theatre you already know.”

Santana nods and her smile turns fond and a little nostalgic. “Tina and I were roommates all throughout college,” she explains, “And then she started dating Mike in our third year, and they’ve been nauseating adorable and loved up ever since.”

“They’ve been dating for that long?”

Santana laughs, leaning against the doorframe. “Oh yeah. If you think they’re bad now, you should have seen them when they just had crushes on each other through our second year. Adorable? Absolutely. Annoying oblivious? Definitely.” Brittany giggles. Tina and Mike are the most stable couple she knows, inside the company and out, but now she kind of wishes she could have known them before they got together. “They’ve been my best friends ever since,” Santana says, and though she rolls her eyes a little Brittany can see the fondness crinkling her eyes and tugging at her lips.

“That’s sweet,” Brittany says.

Santana shrugs a little and brushes it off with an embarrassed, “Yeah, well,” before straightening up a little. “Are you heading out soon?” Brittany barely has time to blink before Santana gets this bright, breathless, wide-eyed look and she starts talking again. “I mean— Because I’m on my way and Tina’s already gone so. I figured I’d check with you and— You know, see if you needed company,” she finishes lamely.

Brittany’s not quite sure if there’s a more adorable person on the planet, and she quickly assures Santana that, yes, she was just leaving too. She gathers her coat and shrugs it on, tugging a hat over her ears and sliding into her sneakers before heading to the door, collecting her wallet and phone from the coffee table on her way. Santana takes a step backwards down the hall to let Brittany out and she dig her keys out of her jacket pocket so she can lock the door.

She’s just about to turn the key when she remembers the whole reason she was hoping Santana would stop by in the first place. “Wait!” she says suddenly, shoving the door back open with a little more enthusiasm than strictly necessary, the sound of the doorjamb protesting the harsh movement echoing throughout the dressing room. “I have something for you!”

Santana watches her curiously from the doorway as she rummages around on the vanity in the dark until her fingers close around what she was looking for. She quickly crosses the room again, and Santana steps out into the light of the hallway while Brittany hides her tiny gift behind her back. “I, uh, saw this today and I got it so, um, so you have something to remember your first official show by,” she rambles, quickly biting onto her lip so more words don’t escape her as she hands the gift to Santana. It’s a tiny plastic figurine she saw through a toy shop window that morning on her way to the theatre, a flat circle of painted snow with the Sugar Plum Fairy dancing in the middle, surrounded by Marie in her white nightgown and the Prince in his soldier uniform. She’s pretty sure it’s supposed to be an ornament, but she cut the ribbon off so now it’s just a simple figurine.

Santana takes it carefully from Brittany, as if it’s made of fragile glass and not toylike plastic. Her fingers trace delicately over the dancing fairy and Brittany suddenly feels heat crawl and creep under her skin. Usually she’s not this prone to blushing, if anything she prides herself on making others blush, but Santana must have some innate connection to the blood vessels in her cheeks because they always seem to be super aware of her presence.

“I know it’s— Kind of dumb or childish or whatever,” she mumbles. She’s always been told by that too many people that, even if she is a principal dancer with one of the most prestigious dance companies in North America, but she understands how important it is to rediscover how to have fun; life’s far too hard and messy and cruel to take yourself too seriously, and Brittany’s found that sometimes the only thing you can do is have fun and laugh. But people have made her feel insecure about it for so long, all the way back in middle school when having sleepovers and playing pretend with her little sister suddenly wasn’t cool anymore, that it makes her nervous to drop her caution around people other than her sister or Mercedes or Sam because they almost always disappoint her.

“No,” Santana says quickly, shaking her head sharply, and when she glances up at Brittany her eyes are shining and bright with something Brittany can’t name. “It’s perfect,” she whispers, “Thank you.”

The heat in Brittany’s cheeks continues to prickle her skin, but as she kicks one foot behind her other she already knows it has less to do with nervous embarrassment now and more to do with how bashful-giddy she feels when Santana directs that smile at her. “You’re welcome,” she murmurs, “You deserve to remember today. You did amazing.”

Santana’s eyes never leave hers even as her smile widens and she whispers her thanks again. Brittany feels too much all at once and fumbles with her keys before quickly turning to lock her door, finding Santana��s eyes still on her when she turns back around. “Shall we?” Brittany asks, gesturing down the hallway.

Santana nods quickly, finally glancing away to look at the figurine in her hand before tucking it carefully in her jacket pocket.

Brittany finds it really easy to talk to Santana as they head out of the theatre, and the earlier heat creeping under her skin starts to fade as they navigate the halls. Santana can make Brittany laugh really easily and Brittany kind of really, really likes that, but Brittany quickly finds that what she likes even more is making Santana smile, because Brittany’s never felt more accomplished than when her deadpan makes Santana’s dimples crease her cheeks, and even better than that is saying something that makes Santana toss her head back as bright carefree giggles spill forth from her.

The make it to the front lobby far sooner than Brittany wants to, and as soon as they step out into the chilly air, her phone buzzes with a text from Mercedes telling her that she’s here just as a dark SUV pulls up. “That’s my ride,” Brittany says. They both pause, still smiling at each other, until Brittany shakes herself out of her daze and whispers a quick bye as she heads for Mercedes’ SUV.

“Hey,” Santana calls just as Brittany’s hand lands on the handle of the passenger door, “Thanks, for today. You know, at the meeting.”

Brittany feels something warm and bright and fond curl in her stomach. The feeling isn’t something she’s ever really felt before, but it reminds her of camping with her parents to celebrate the first time she ever won gold a competition, when she would huddle closer to the fire until it would feel like its warmth was blooming from within her cheeks and and chest instead of from the fire itself. “You’re welcome,” she murmurs, and despite the rush of the city around them Brittany feels a little bit like it’s just them on the sidewalk for a moment. “Goodnight, Santana,” she says softly.

Those dimples crease Santana’s cheeks and makes Brittany’s breath hitch just a little. “Goodnight, Brittany.”