#which will only result in a death from a thousand cuts

[drkineildwicks]

Palworld - 5/18/2024 - It's been worth every meme

So looking at it the last I talked of this game was in February

I’ve been busy since then

Starting with I’ve found the upper limit on how many Pals you can own

I’ve been hatching a lot of eggs

Found out you can also hatch alphas from eggs

And if I’m not hanging out in one of my bases (finally built a second one) I’m out riding around on one of my pals and hunting

There's something oddly satisfying about riding around on one of your Pals and sniping wild Pals and bad guys for loot

But I do agree with everyone who wants to be able to turn the hip lantern off because dang that thing gets bright and ruins the ambience

Favorite thing to do when I run into the fire brotherhood guys is to get up high on a flying Pal and throw down a grenade or two

Since those dudes favor flamethrowers you’re always guaranteed to get two explosions

Also hunting certain locations to get small Pal souls to boost my guys

And about once a play session I run into a Lucky

Firstly I want to thank Palworld for giving us a persisting audio cue for Luckies because I’ll be cruising along and suddenly hear the lucky shine

Me: oh goodness where???

One time the Lucky was behind a structure and I had to fly around a bit to find it

Unlike, say, scarvi where they made shinies less accessible

Look I played Pokémon pretty faithfully from Gen III to Gen VII and when I say that I mean I played just about every single game they pumped out so I’m allowed to give the multimillion-dollar company grief

But thus far I’ve only failed to get two Luckies: a Ribunny and a Cawgnito, and both were because they absolutely killed me and then despawned before I could get back to the area

They still haunt me

Did finally get around to beating the first tower boss

Waited too long because I absolutely smoked her

I’ve also been working on filling out the map and tracking down all the boss monsters

And raiding dungeons for ores and dungeon bosses

My second base was/is basically built around ensuring that my chonky alpha/lucky Pals have plenty of room to move around

Also I’ll make them the big beds and this happens

She deserves it tho

Raids are no longer a problem because I got Mossanda Lux and the grenade launcher

The Kung-Fu Panda trilogy would have been a lot shorter had Po had a pair of grenade launchers, let’s be real

Yes I’ve said skadoosh a couple times while doing this

Basically you go outside of your base area to avoid damage to said base, aim where they’re all running up, and go ham

I have had to stop doing this to boss Pals tho because electric Po will blast them clean out of bounds and since you can’t go through the wall and they can’t go through the wall you have to leave and reset the dungeon

Also after a lot of hunting and hatching (and then selling Pals to dealers who don’t have guillotines right next to them) I have either Luckies or Alphas for all three of the follow-type Pals

Presenting the squad, consisting of two Luckies and two Alphas

But back to filling out the map—after a couple of tries I was working on filling out the volcano map today

Found one of the mineshafts that leads down to a big boss, decided to go down and see if I couldn’t sneak a peak and see how strong it was

Long claustrophobic shaft with lava dribbling down

Get to the end—“Oh, an egg!” up on top of a little ledge right before the final turn

Climb up and grab it—

I get blasted by this

Now understand that I did not see this

I turn and see this dark cave shaft, the fire in its wings, and its eyes, and that’s it

So that’s an encounter that’s gonna haunt me for a while

Anyway game of the year 2024 looking forward to new updates please let one of those be expanded inventories I don’t like selling Pals ;^;/

[awkward-teabag]

It can also incubate for months, so that nip by a dog you assumed was just your typical reactive small dog you forgot about? Congrats, you are effectively dead the moment you start showing symptoms (and even if you somehow survive, you're in for years of rehab to deal with the damage to your brain from the virus).

Bats and raccoons (among other wild animals) get the blame for transmitting rabies to humans but the reality is dogs account for ~99% of rabies transmission to humans, so yeah, vaccinate your fucking dog.

Have a popcorn Youtube video on the subject if that's more your thing.

TLDR it's a long, miserable death for your dog so if you care about them at all (to say nothing of yourself, other dogs, and anyone your dog comes in contact with), you bloody well vaccinate them against rabies.

Istg, if I ever get rabies because some dumb ass antivaxxer refused to vaccinate their dog, I’ll probably be doing the rest of my blogging from prison because I promise you, Imma curbstomp the shit out of the owner

[genericpuff]

Tbh at this point you should just make your own webcomic app/website because it would probably be 100 times better than whatever going on with webtoon right now.

hahaha it wouldn't tho, sorry 💀

Here's the fundamental issue with webcomic platforms that a lot of people just don't realize (and why they're so difficult to run successfully):

Storage costs are incredibly expensive, it's why so many sites have limitations on file sizes / page sizes / etc. because all of those images and site info have to be stored somewhere, which costs $$$.

Maintenance costs are expensive and get more so as you grow, you need people who are capable of fixing bugs ASAP and managing the servers and site itself

Financially speaking, webcomics are in a state of high supply, low demand. Loads of artists are willing to create their passion projects, but getting people to read them and pay for them is a whole other issue. Demand is high in the general sense that once people get attached to a webtoon they'll demand more, but many people aren't actually willing to go looking for new stuff to read and depend more on what sites feed them (and what they already like). There are a lot of comics to go around and thus a lot of competition with a limited audience of people willing to actually pay for them.

Trying to build a new platform from the ground up is incredibly difficult and a majority of sites fail within their first year. Not only do you have to convince artists to take a chance on your platform, you have to convince readers to come. Readers won't come if there isn't work on the platform to read, but artists won't come if they don't think the site will be worth it due to low traffic numbers. This is why the artists with large followings who are willing to take chances on the smaller sites are crucial, but that's only if you can convince them to use the site in favor of (or alongside) whatever platform they're using already where the majority of their audience lies. For many creators it's just not worth the time, energy, or risk.

Even if you find short-term success, in the long-term there are always going to be profit margins to maintain. The more users you pull in, the more storage is used by incoming artists, the more you have to spend on storage and server maintenance costs, and that means either taking the risk at crowdfunding (ex. ComicFury) or having to resort to outsider investments (ex. Tapas). Look at SmackJeeves, it used to be a titan in the independent webcomic hosting community, until it folded over to a buyout by NHN and then was pretty much immediately shuttered due to NHN basically turning it into a manwha scanlation site and driving away its entire userbase. And if you don't get bought out and try your hand at crowdfunding, you may just wind up living on a lifeline that could cut out at any moment, like what happened to Inkblazers (fun fact, the death of Inkblazers was what kicked off the cultural shift in Tapas around 2015-16 when all of IB's users migrated over and brought their work with them which was more aimed towards the BL and romancee drama community, rather than the comedy / gag-a-day culture that Tapas had made itself known for... now you deadass can't tell Tapas apart from a lot of scanlation sites because it got bought out by Kakao and kept putting all of its eggs into the isekai/romance drama basket.)

Right now the mindset in which artists and readers are operating is that they're trying way, way too hard to find a "one size fits all" site. Readers want a place where they can find all their favorite webtoons without much effort, artists wants a place where they can post to an audience of thousands, and both sides want a community that will feel tight-knit. But the reality is that you can't really have all three of those things, not on one site. Something always winds up having to be sacrificed - if a site grows big enough, it'll have to start seeking more funding while also cutting costs which will result in features becoming paywall'd, intrusive ads, creators losing their freedom, and/or outsider support which often results in the platform losing its core identity and alienating its tight-knit community.

If I had to describe what I'm talking about in a "pick one" graphic, it would look something like this:

(*note: this is mostly based on my own observations from using all of these sites at some point or another, they're not necessarily entirely accurate to the statistical performance of each site, I can only glean so much from experience and traffic trackers LMAO that said I did ask some comic pals for input and they were very helpful in helping me adjust it with their own takes <3).

The homogenization of the Internet has really whipped people into submission for the "big sites" that offer "everything", but that's never been the Internet, it relies on being multi-faceted and offering different spaces for different purposes. And we're seeing that ideology falter through the enshittification of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. where users are at odds with the platforms because the platforms are gutting features in an attempt to satisfy shareholders whom without the platforms would not exist. Like, most of us aren't paying money to use social media sites / comic platform sites, so where else are they gonna make the necessary funds to keep these sites running? Selling ad space and locking features behind paywalls.

And this is especially true for a lot of budding sites that don't have the audience to support them via crowdfunding but also don't have the leverage to ask for investments - so unless they get really REALLY lucky in EITHER of those departments, they're gonna be operating at a loss, and even once they do achieve either of those things there are gonna be issues in the site's longevity, whether it be dying from lack of growing crowdfunding support or dying from shareholder meddling.

So what can we do?

We can learn how to take our independence back. We don't have to stop using these big platforms altogether as they do have things to offer in their own way, particularly their large audience sizes and dipping into other demographics that might not be reachable from certain sites - but we gotta learn that no single site is going to satisfy every wish we have and we have to be willing to learn the skills necessary to running our own spaces again. Pick up HTML/CSS, get to know other people who know HTML/CSS if you can't grasp it (it's me, I can't grasp it LOL), be willing to take a chance on those "smaller sites" and don't write them off entirely as spaces that can be beneficial to you just because they don't have large numbers or because they don't offer rewards programs. And if you have a really polished piece of work in your hands, look into agencies and publishing houses that specialize in indie comics / graphic novels, don't settle for the first Originals contract that gets sent your way.

For the last decade corporations have been convincing us that our worth is tied to the eyes we can bring to them. Instead of serving ourselves, we've begun serving the big guys, insisting that it has to be worth something eventually and that it'll "payoff" simply by the virtue of gambler's fallacy. Ask yourself what site is right for you and your work rather than asking yourself if your work is good enough for them. Most of us are broke trying to make it work on these sites anyways, may as well be broke and fulfilled by posting in places that actually suit us and our work if we can. Don't define your success by what sites like Webtoons are enforcing - that definition only benefits them, not you.

[felassan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard info compilation Post 3

[Part 1] [Part 2] Post is under a cut due to length.

There is a lot of information coming out right now about DA:TV from many different sources. This post is just an effort to compile as much as I can in one place, in case that helps anyone. Sources for where the information came from have been included. Where I am linking to a social media user’s post, the person is either a dev, a Dragon Age community council member or other person who has had a sneak peek at and played the game. nb, this post is more of a ‘info that came out in snippets from articles and social media posts’ collection rather than a 'regurgitating the information on the official website or writing out what happened in the trailer/gameplay reveal’ post. The post is broken down into headings on various topics. A few points are repeated under multiple headings where relevant. Where I am speculating without a source, I have clearly demarcated this. if you notice any mistakes in this post, please tell me.

Character Creation

All armor and clothing options will scale and mesh to any body type [source]

The character creator has lots of sliders for body parts and overall shape, none of which are tied to the voice or pronouns (she/her, he/him, or they/them) that you choose [source]

"Epler took special care to show off the extensive curly and textured hair options in the game, including several versions of braids and locs, noting that increasing these options in particular was very important to the team" [source]

You can change your character’s physical appearance at any time during the game, but not their class or backstory [source]

"Each individual class has some variability, too; even the mage class has some up-close-and-personal attacks, since a mage player character could still conceivably have an assassin backstory and would therefore need to have some attacks to accommodate that sort of career path" [source]

" "We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about skin tone,” Corinne said. The character we made, a Black elf, seemed to glow in the bluish light of a nighttime scene, and under bright sunlight, I could see the richness of his color. Corinne: "We want to make sure that skin tone is reflected authentically" " [source]

" “We have dozens and dozens of hair types,” she said. “And they’re fully affected by physics.” The quality and variety of choices I saw delighted me. The rows of bouncy, luxurious-looking hair of all curl types and textures (and yes, the annoyingly ubiquitous “Killmonger cut” was among the options, what can you do?) brought the biggest smile to my face in the hour I spent with Busche and The Veilguard." [source]

Story and lore

NPCs will remember when you chuck a shopkeeper through a plate-glass window [source]

" The game’s story sees Solas intact a plot that will result in the deaths of thousands. When his justification that “people die, it’s what they do,” falls on deaf ears, you and your merry band of misfits have to stop him " [source]

" “Early in the demo and in the trailer, you’re in a part of the world you’ve never been in – Tevinter,” Epler tells me. “Tevinter is known for being a place of high magic; visually, it’s different. Obviously in Origins you’re in Ferelden, which was grubby, muddy, and very visually different and distinct. That said, it’s the first hour of the game, so we’re only seeing the prologue. As you go deeper, you’ll find that the game can be just as bloody and just as grim as Dragon Age Origins, 2, and Inquisition. For us, it’s that feeling of contrast. You get moments of higher fantasy magic coming back to the world through Solas’ ritual, but also things get pretty grim, and things get pretty dark in some spaces for sure.” " [source]

"Snappy dialogue" [source]

The game is really about each of the companions [source]

Narrative narrative narrative! [source]

The Shadow Dragons are an underground resistance that engages in guerrilla warfare against the corrupt mage rulers of the Tevinter Imperium [source]

"Varric has created the group called the Veilguards, recruiting a veritable group of weirdos to pursue Solas, who’s carved a path through the magical empire of Tevinter" [source]

"There’s intrigue to the game’s tale already, with Varric hoping he can convince Solas to stop his plan of tearing open the Veil: a wish by the dwarf to save a dear friend. There’s a fascinating relationship that's already being set up, Varric and Solas as opposing narrative forces, with your character, Rook, pulled between them" [source]

"There’s extra context to flesh out dialogue, with short descriptions that help give a vague idea of how things play out. The example we were shown was Rook trying to take down a gang leader inside a bar. We could choose to defuse the situation with either words or weapons, but the catch is you don’t know how effective those approaches will be" [source]

" Busche explained that the team wanted to give players a game where locations were imbued with just as much personality as the characters. “That meant making contrast from the areas that are dark and decaying to the areas that are illuminated with magic,” Busche said " [source]

" “This is a part of the world where magic has been embraced,” Busche said. “It is a society of mages and magic in this world is inherently colorful. So whether we’re seeing them use magic for everyday purposes like signage or using them as spells, that color really comes through.” " [source]

We will visit the Necropolis of Nevarra [source]

Gameplay, presentation, performance etc

There are dozens of abilities and spells [source]

The game has an easy mode [source]

There is a setting where your character can't die in battle [source]

"The Rogue class in our demo had a bow with recharging arrows for ranged attacks, and dual blades that could unleash a furious flurry of instantaneous blows" [source]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[trans-axolotl]

ID: Intersex activist Max Beck standing in front of the American Academy of Pediatrics with a sign that says Silence=Death.

On October 26th, 1996, the first ever protest for intersex liberation in America took place when activists from Hermaphrodites With Attitude took to the streets to protest the American Academy of Pediatrics. Later memorialized as intersex awareness day, this important action was a milestone for the American intersex movement. Max Beck, one of the intersex activists from HWA, documented the entire protest and later published their recollection in the Intersex Awakening Issue of the Chrysalis Journal. The full piece is pasted under the cut.  

"But we’re here today to say we’re back, we’re no longer lost, and we’d like to offer some feedback. We’re here to say that the treatment paradigm for “managing” intersexuals is in desperate, urgent need of re-examination. We’re back to say that early surgical intervention leads to more than “just” physical scars and sexual dysfunction. We’re back to say that the lack of education and counseling for intersexuals, our families and the community at large does not lead to a blissful, healthy, well-adjusted ignorance. Rather, it too often leads to a life-threatening shroud of silence, secrecy, and self-hatred. 

I’m here representing over one hundred fifty intersexals throughout North America. One hundred fifty intersexuals are saying: Please! Listen! You doctors, you pediatric endocrinologists and urologists treating intersexuals, you nurses interacting with intersexuals and their families, listen to us! We understand intersexuality, not because we have studied the medical literature — although many of us have — not because we have performed surgeries, but because we have been grappling with intersexuality every day of our lives. We’re here to say that those who would have us believe that intersexuality is rare, cloud the issue by breaking us and separating us into narrow etiological categories which have little meaning in terms of our actual, lived experience. 

We’re here so that other intersexuals can find us — for many of us, finding others like ourselves has been a lifealtering, even life-saving, experience. We’re here to reach parents before their intersex child is born. We’re here to elicit the help of other sympathetic professionals. We can take a stand as openly intersex adults without being crushed by shame! And we did!" 

Hermaphrodites With Attitude Take to the Streets: By Max Beck, 1997

In late October of 1996, Hermaphrodites with Attitude took to the streets, in the first public demonstration by intersexuals in modern history. On a glorious fall day, the like of which you can only find in New England, under a crackling, cloudless sky, twenty-odd protesters joined forces to picket the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatricians in Boston. Deeply aware of the historical and personal significance of the action, and — correctly — surmising that a notebook diary would not be practical on such a whirlwind, windy week-end, I took a small hand-held tape recorder with me. What follows are excerpts from the resulting transcript.

October 24, 1996 2:45 PM, Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport

The trip has only just begun and I am already exhausted. Hot. Starving. Fifteen minutes until take-off. Every businessman boarding the plane looks like a pediatric endocrinologist, Boston-bound. Silly thought, testimony to what? My anxiety? My fear? My giddy anticipation? If these bespectacled, suit-and-tie sporting men were pediatricians, would they be flying coach on Continental, with a layover in Newark? I’m headed for Boston, for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP). Tens of thousands of pediatricians. I’m not a pediatrician, though, nor am I a nurse; in fact, I barely managed to complete my B.A. I’m a manager of a technical laboratory. We don’t work with children, and the AAP certainly didn't invite me, so why am I going?

With the plane taxiing toward take-off, this is a lousy time to reassess. I’m going. I’m going because I am intersexed. I’m going because the doctors and nurses who treated me as an infant and a child and an adolescent, and those who continue to treat intersexed infants and children today, consider me “lost to follow-up.” I was lost— that’s part of the problem. Now, I’m back.

9:02 PM: Boston’s North End

I’m comfortably ensconced in Alice’s warehouse condo in Boston’s North End, a renovated warehouse with a view of the city skyline, ceilings easily twenty feet high, exposed beams and brick, gorgeous tile floor. As I speak, my hostess is preparing an absolutely phenomenal meal. The aroma of roasted peppers permeates the entire space. Tomorrow, the work begins; my project this evening is to unwind and enjoy this wonderful meal. Easier said than done. I’m feeling excited, enervated, I feel very alive, something I don’t feel very often, I feel very present and aware. It could be my exhaustion, it could be the Chardonnay. But I think, rather, that the excitement is anticipation about what we are about to do. Being here, finally being prepared to raise a voice, to be heard, to be seen, a vocal, out, proud hermaphrodite who is standing up to say, “Let’s rethink this, this isn’t working, we’ve been hurt, stop what you’re doing, listen to us!” I’m really looking forward to meeting Morgan at the airport in the morning; it’s always amazing to make eye contact with someone else who has been there.

October 25, 7:38 AM Boston Commons

En route to my encounter with the AAP, walking the approximately two miles from my hostess’ domicile to the Marriott Hotel at Copley Square, I pause in the Boston Commons to enjoy a park bench, to sip my Starbuck’s decaf, and to watch a group of senior citizens performing Japanese swordsmanship on top of the hill beneath a monument to some forgotten general. The city is cool this morning, but clear, and it promises to be a beautiful weekend. That’s good: we won’t be rained out. I’ve got a stack of about ninety ISNA brochures in the bag at my side, crammed in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. If I want these pamphlets to get inside, I’ve got to get to the site of the Nurses’ Panel at the Marriott before they close the doors. Then it’s back out to the airport, to pick up Morgan. My feet are already killing me.

October 26, 9:15 AM: North End

Morgan and I are sitting at our hostess’ breakfast table, pulling our thoughts together. In a few minutes, we’ll have to leave to pick up Riki at the airport. The logistics of pulling together an action are mind-boggling. There’s no describing the thrill, though, of all that work, all those phone calls, all those miles. Riding a clattering subway on a Saturday morning, seated beside another living, breathing, laughing, swearing intersexual, hugging near-strangers at unfamiliar airports, then riding back, together, defiant, determined, organized, to the heart of so much of our pain, so much of our anger, so much of our need. We gathered in front of the huge Hynes Auditorium, pamphlets and leaflets in hand, and met the AAP attendees as they left the convention center for lunch. The next hour-and-a-half was a blur, as we positioned ourselves in strategic locations before the Hynes, held signs and “Hermaphrodites with Attitude” banner aloft, distributed our literature, engaged AAP members and passers-by in conversation and debate, spoke to microphones, to cameras. In all that time, I recorded only one fragment of a breathless sentence. 

Saturday, 12:20 PM Outside the Hynes

We’ve got all the exits covered, and it’s an incredible, incredibly empowering experience. I remember the words I spoke to the TV camera, if only because I had scribbled a rough outline on the airplane, pirating mightily from Cheryl’s press release. And because the moment was so salient, so real. Me, Max, bespectacled, with blisters on my feet and chapped lips, speaking out to untold numbers of invisible viewers (and a few bewildered pediatricians behind me.)

"When an intersex child is born, parents and caregivers are faced with what seems to be a terrible dilemma: here is an infant who does not fit what our society deems normal. Immediate medical intervention seems indicated, in order to spare the parents and the child the inevitable stigmatization associated with being different. Yet the infant is not facing a medical emergency; intersexuality is rarely if ever life-threatening. Rather, the psychosocial crisis of the parents and caregivers is medicalized. 

Intersexuality is assumed to be a birth defect which can be corrected, outgrown and forgotten. The experiences of members of the intersex support groups indicate that intersexuality cannot be fixed; an intersex infant grows up to be an intersex adult. This hasn’t been explored, because intersex patients are almost invariably “lost to follow-up.” The abstract of a talk that will be given at this very conference by a doctor who treats intersex infants concedes that “the psychological issues surrounding genital reconstruction are inadequately understood.”

Part of the problem is that we were lost to follow-up, and there were reasons for that. But we’re here today to say we’re back, we’re no longer lost, and we’d like to offer some feedback. We’re here to say that the treatment paradigm for “managing” intersexuals is in desperate, urgent need of re-examination. We’re back to say that early surgical intervention leads to more than “just” physical scars and sexual dysfunction. We’re back to say that the lack of education and counseling for intersexuals, our families and the community at large does not lead to a blissful, healthy, well-adjusted ignorance. Rather, it too often leads to a life-threatening shroud of silence, secrecy, and self-hatred. I’m here representing over one hundred fifty intersexals throughout North America.

One hundred fifty intersexuals are saying: Please! Listen! You doctors, you pediatric endocrinologists and urologists treating intersexuals, you nurses interacting with intersexuals and their families, listen to us! We understand intersexuality, not because we have studied the medical literature — although many of us have — not because we have performed surgeries, but because we have been grappling with intersexuality every day of our lives. We’re here to say that those who would have us believe that intersexuality is rare, cloud the issue by breaking us and separating us into narrow etiological categories which have little meaning in terms of our actual, lived experience. We’re here so that other intersexuals can find us — for many of us, finding others like ourselves has been a lifealtering, even life-saving, experience. We’re here to reach parents before their intersex child is born. We’re here to elicit the help of other sympathetic professionals. We can take a stand as openly intersex adults without being crushed by shame! And we did!

7:20 PM: Boston’s North End

Goddess, this is so sweet, so liberating! I was so reluctant a week ago, having my Jesus-in-Gethsemane experience, reluctant to accept — not an onus or responsibility but — to accept who I am. And here’s where the hard work really begins. I’m exhausted when I think of the road before us. But then, it’s nothing like the road behind us. 

Max Beck, 1997.

[voluptuarian]

another thing that's weird about adults who make an identity out of reading children's books is what they hold up as representative of the values they find in YA/young reader's fiction. They typically bring up wish fulfillment fantasy, morals and clear cut lessons, adventure stories with mild peril, strong centering on friendship and found family, and stories that make them "feel good" and are extremely light on genuinely challenging themes or ethically dubious situations.

Meanwhile when I was neck-deep in YA as a kid in the 90s and early 2000s this was the kind of stuff I was reading, other kids were reading, and that was winning awards, being highlighted on shelves and recommended by librarians:

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, in which a teenage boy survives a plane crash and is stranded in the Canadian wilderness and forced to survive on his own for months. He is ultimately rescued but is permanently altered by the experience. His navigating the drama of (I believe either currently separating or recently divorced) parents is also a major plot element.

Virtual War by Gloria Skurzynski, where real-life wars have been eradicated and instead are fought virtually, (inspired, if I remember correctly, by the disastrous results of a previous nuclear conflict) by specially chosen champions who are trained in combat strategy from childhood. Throughout, the three child champions are forced to question and push back against what the government has told them is the truth as well as against their own prejudices, including toward one of their own who is considered a "mutant" due to his dwarfism; it also details the grueling hours-long "war" in which the kids watch thousands of little 3D soldiers get blown up and dismembered and leaves them feeling genuine guilt for participating in.

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, which focuses on a teenage Inuit girl who is orphaned, forced into marriage and sexually assaulted, then runs away and ends up lost in the Arctic and survives by befriending and living with a pack of wolves.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, in which the heroine lives with her parents on a failing farm as the Dust Bowl is beginning, accidentally sets her pregnant mother on fire resulting in her mother's lingering death and the death of her baby, and the girl herself being permanently maimed, after which she and her father become estranged and she eventually tries to run away.

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene, which follows a young Jewish American girl on the WWII homefront who befriends (and falls in love with) a German POW, and when he escapes, hides him in her home for months; eventually the prisoner is caught and killed and the girl is sent to prison after being ostracized from the community and disowned by her parents.

The Ramsey Scallop by Francis Temple, where the heroine, engaged since childhood to her current fiance, is sent on a pilgrimage with him as way of working out his trauma from serving in the crusades. Neither of them feels ready to get married and the fiance is dubious about doing much living at all, but they're able to get to know each other and build trust on the road. It's been ages since I read it but I'm pretty sure there's a scene where a hot single guy who helps patch up an injury she sustained then offers to have sex with her, which she decides to turn down.

Music of the Dolphins by Karen Hesse, where a feral child who has been raised by a pod of dolphins is rescued and taken to a center for rehabilitation. The whole thing follows her progress at understanding to how to be human, and eventually her decision to reject it all and go back to her dolphin family.

The Last Book In the Universe by Rodman Philbrick, whose hero is a teenage orphan living in a purposely abandoned dystopia, ostracized by his community for being epileptic, whose only friends are an old man who is the last literate person in the community and a monosyllabic feral child. The split between the have-nots and the haves, who live in sheltered futuristic cities, and discussion of privilege (one of the main characters is a girl from the cities who comes out to do charity work in the dystopian district) are major themes, and violence is a regular occurrence, including toward the finale when the boy's mentor is murdered by a mob while he watches.

(And of course there's Among the Hidden and its sequels by Margaret Peterson Haddix which I never read, but my sister did, and I know at some point a whole bunch of child characters are massacred by the government because it upset my sister so badly she cried.)

And I couldn't forget The Dear America series, which includes:

character who is finishing high school as the Vietnam War begins and watches her social circle split nastily over the issue, lives through classmates and friends getting drafted, and ends up working at a hospital as volunteer where she is assigned to help disabled veterans

character whose mother (and I think siblings), as well as numerous fellow travelers die while traveling alongside her on the Oregon Trail, and later accidentally poisons to death several of her friends after picking a look-alike plant for their dinner; only one survives, who she eventually marries

character who is kidnapped by a local native tribe and eventually adopted, then marries a fellow captive, only for him and other friends and family to be killed when the tribe is attacked by Europeans, putting her into a total crisis of identity and conflicting loyalties

character who is taken from her tribe to be put in residential school, during which she is forcefully acculturated, severely bullied by another classmate, and a childhood friend of hers is accidentally buried alive

multiple books about immigrants in the 1800 and 1900s which highlighted struggles with poverty, cultural pressures, and prejudice; one of them follows a pro-union factory worker who watches as multiple friends die in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and another whose father imports her to America at 13 to marry a coal miner

most of these stories emphasize the young protagonist ending up in situations were they are either on their own, or so alienated from the adults around them that they might as well be. The protagonists have to assume the adult duty of taking care of themselves, but also of thinking for themselves and making their own decisions and judgements about their lives and the world.

they are also going through big changes, often ones created by their parent's decisions, and which they frequently dislike or are straight up Bad for them. This contrasts with later, when the protagonists are able to make decisions for themselves-- often this comes through hardship and abandonment, but ultimately allows them to control their narrative going forward.

the setting and events are often harrowing, deeply unpleasant, and put the protagonist and their friends in danger of victimization by forces around them. Obviously this is exciting for kids to read, but it also allows them to see someone their age on their own, entering into Adult situations and taking on that role. It's also a break from the overtly positive or cartoonishly (but usually un-seriously) bad circumstances that dominate younger kids fiction and an introduction to the idea that life is just terrible most of the time, sometimes massively and unbelievably so. (It's going from the early childhood story of Madeline's thrilling adventures escaping forced labor in a factory, to the older kid's or YA story of seeing the protagonist work at one day after day, getting injured, having friends get sick, and then watching a girl's scalp get ripped off by the machine, something which creates not excitement but genuine horror and sympathy.) These plots also allow adolescents a chance to experience Big Emotions (like the ones they're about to fall head-first into themselves) in a stable, safe way. All of this aims to create a bridge from the juvenile reality to the genuine, adult one. Trite moral lessons are dispensed with in favor of allowing the child to go out and start thinking for themselves. And especially in stories like the Dear America books, it allows a look at things that happened in the past that we have, or should learn from, but also allows for a fuller emotional, ethical, and empathetic development.

often the introduction of sex is part of the story, from initial experiences of attraction (and the resulting self-consciousness, jealousy, etc.) but also sometimes actual sexual experience. Especially in the historical stories, marriage is also frequently part of the story-- either again, as a fantasy introduction to adult experiences, or as a realistic detail separating a child's historical experience from current ones and creating a better understanding of the hardships historical people went through.

and most include some form of rejection of prevailing authority and thought. Instead of blindly "doing what your parents tell you to" these protagonists must do what they think is practical or ethical. The boy in Hatchet cannot wait for an authority figure to guide him, he must figure out how to survive entirely on his own, while the kids in Virtual War are old enough to begin questioning the entire structure they've been raised in, and to develop empathy for figures that structure has deemed outsiders; the heroine of Music of the Dolphins decides the entire experience of being in human society is not for her, and returns to living with animals.

So these books offer harrowing circumstances, protagonists who are isolated literally or through moral or political alignment, and who must learn to live on their own and make decisions for themselves, often in defiance of prevailing attitudes. They usually emphasize finding one's place (even if that place is completely alone and unsupported), fostering understanding and sympathy with others, even with people who are considered "undesirable," who are different, or who have behaved badly to you in the past. And they frequently involve violence, budding sexuality, exploitation and abuse by authority figures/structures, and a heaping helping of death, including the deaths of beloved friends and family members. What is "feel good" and "unchallenging" about that? And like, I can't speak for what YA is bringing to the table now, but these people are overwhelmingly adults, they were reading YA at around the same time I was, I don't think it would be possible for them to have somehow missed the plethora of books with these hallmarks. So where did they get this idea that YA is some land of comfort where no complicated idea can ever reach you? Even Harry Potter is full of them, and we know they read that!

[soon-palestine]

Palestinian Territory - The Israeli authorities continue to enforce their ongoing arbitrary blockade of the Gaza Strip, refusing to allow humanitarian aid and necessities that are essential for survival—such as cleaning and personal hygiene supplies—into the Strip. This comes amid the spread of infectious diseases and on top of the precarious living conditions faced by the approximately 2.3 million Palestinians in the enclave, constituting a perpetuation of Israel’s comprehensive crime of genocide, which began on 7 October 2023.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor emphasises that the consequences of Israel’s intentional worsening of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, by blocking people’s access to cleaning and personal hygiene products, medical equipment, and sterilisation supplies, are dire. Nothing justifies subjecting the population to conditions that can cause widespread death, including by causing the spread of serious skin diseases and and infections, including hepatitis.

Israel continues to systematically and arbitrarily deny hygiene supplies and equipment to all Gaza Strip residents, exacerbating the catastrophic health crisis that Israel has caused there. This crisis has been made worse by the population’s forced, widespread, and repeatedly occurring displacement, as well as the lack of personal hygiene supplies and disinfectants in shelters and camps housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Israel continues to prevent and obstruct the entry of the most basic supplies into the Strip, creating conditions that are ripe for the spread of infectious diseases, water pollution, and the absence of sanitation services, as Israeli army forces have destroyed these facilities.

Since the beginning of the genocide nearly, Israel has arbitrarily closed crossings into the Gaza Strip, blocking the entry of humanitarian supplies and the flow of food and water. These actions have resulted in a dangerous accumulation of crises that directly threaten the lives and health of the Gaza Strip’s residents, most notably due to their lack of access to food, clean water, medicines, medical supplies, sanitary tools, and cleaning supplies.

Aya Kamal Ashour Abed, a 20-year-old displaced mother of two at the Deir al-Balah Preparatory School for Girls in the central Gaza Strip, spoke with the Euro-Med Monitor team. “We are more than 30 people living in this classroom for about nine months,” she stated. “A few months ago, we numbered roughly 70, but after some of the displaced individuals relocated to tents outside the school, our numbers dropped somewhat.

“We only receive cleaning and personal hygiene supplies in small quantities every two or three months, despite the fact that our number is very high and we require them constantly,” Abed continued. “Sanitation supplies, like tissues, soap, and shampoo, are extremely expensive [or] even nonexistent in the markets.”

Added Abed, “A bar of soap, for instance, now costs 30 shekels (roughly nine USD) while a bottle of shampoo costs 90 shekels (roughly 25 USD). We do not have anything to eat, so how can we afford these amounts for basic hygiene?”

Abed, who was displaced from her home in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip following its bombing last October, said that her two sons had become afflicted with allergies and bacteria, for which she is unable to provide ointments because they are unavailable in UNRWA clinics. “I showed my son to the doctor, and he told me that his entire body is seriously infected with bacteria due to poor hygiene,” Abed told Euro-Med Monitor.

Obtaining sanitary pads—which are pricey and hard to find in local markets—is one of her biggest challenges. “Even though my children’s diapers are completely unusable, I have to cut them into tiny pieces and use them as sanitary pads,” Abed explained. “During my period, I also have to use a single pad for the entire day, which has led to numerous infections and rashes.”

Approximately 680,000 women and girls in the Gaza Strip are of reproductive age. These individuals lack access to menstrual pads and other essentials, and also face other challenges such as inadequate access to water, toilets, various hygiene products, and privacy. Additionally, they must use contaminated or unsterilised materials, which puts them at risk of developing infections that can lead to infertility and uterine cancer.

Since Israel has cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip, there is a growing risk to all residents caused by waste accumulation and sewage flooding of roads and markets due to the inability to drain it. Israel has destroyed most of the Strip’s vital infrastructure, including sewage networks, and forced over two million people—the majority of whom have been displaced more than once—into shelters and tents that lack the basic necessities of life, personal hygiene, and health care.

Forty-two-year-old Mohammed Saad Abu Haitham said that his family of eight, which resides in a tent in the Mawasi neighborhood of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, is severely impacted by the lack of cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, and bar soap. Due to its scarcity, soap is unusually expensive and therefore difficult to purchase.

“We do not have the money to buy enough meals for our children, so we cannot buy cleaning materials and soap in light of their high prices and the lack of availability,” Abu Haitham told the Euro-Med Monitor team. “My spouse and kids’ hair has been infected with lice, and we all have skin diseases as a result of not washing and not using enough soap and shampoo.”

Food dyes are used instead of traditional dyes for making liquid soap and sterilisation products, which have not entered the Gaza Strip in months due to the Israeli closure of the crossings and the imposition of an arbitrary siege. These alternative and primitive cleaning products are made locally, are unsafe, and are generally insufficient in both quality and quantity when sold in the markets of the central and southern Gaza Strip.

Tens of thousands of cases of skin diseases, including eczema, have been reported to medical facilities as having cropped up in shelters and camps for displaced people living in tents. This is particularly concerning for women, as eczema often appears on the hands of people working to clean food utensils using antiquated and dangerous materials. Meanwhile, reports from the United Nations indicate that skin rashes and skin infections, especially among children, are sharply increasing in the Strip.

The Israeli authorities have placed an arbitrary and oppressive siege on the Palestinian people there, squeezing them into a tiny area with exceedingly limited resources; denying them access to food, clean water, and other necessities; and leaving them exposed to extreme heat.

The right to dignity is an internationally recognised human right that protects people from humiliation, among other forms of unethical treatment. It is meant to ensure fairness by providing the means for people to live in dignity, as well as other fundamental needs and rights, like the right to health and the right to water and sanitation. These rights are essential to maintaining human dignity and preserving the lives of the populace.

The only way to guarantee the rights of Gaza Strip residents is to put an end to Israel’s crime of genocide, lift the arbitrary siege on the Strip, and rescue what remains of the currently uninhabitable region. Delays will either cause the region to irreversibly deteriorate, or incur significant costs in terms of civilian lives and health.

The international community is required to guarantee the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, including the entry of non-food essentials needed to respond to the dire circumstances faced by the Strip’s entire population. Euro-Med Monitor stresses that swift and effective action must be taken to safely deliver aid to civilians across the entire Strip, including the northern section, which is particularly isolated right now. Additionally, the international community must prioritise providing adequate supplies of personal and family hygiene products, as well as products for menstruating individuals, plus sexual and reproductive health care services to prevent and mitigate further harm to women and children in particular, and the entire Palestinian population in general. These actions are mandated by international human rights law and relevant international obligations.

Pressure needs to be put on Israel, as the occupying force, to maintain sanitation facilities and services in the Gaza Strip, as well as to guarantee the safety of the technicians charged with repairing and renovating water lines and their various sources. The main water pipelines that enter the Strip need to be restored, particularly those that enter it from the north.

In addition to ensuring the entry of enough fuel to operate the Gaza Strip’s water and sanitation infrastructure, including desalination plants, water wells, and mobile toilets, it is crucial to exert pressure on Israel to permit the entry of materials required for repair work and rehabilitation of civilian infrastructure. These services are essential to the civilian population’s survival in the Strip, and will protect them from the threat of further health disasters.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Former President Donald Trump’s deadly lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene — and soon, inevitably, Hurricane Milton — depend on the impermeability of the right-wing information bubble. President Joe Biden has directed an ongoing federal and state response to the swath of death and destruction Hurricane Helene left on the southeastern United States, an effort which includes tens of thousands of personnel helping victims across several states.  Trump’s Helene response has been characterized by conspiracy theories and grievance-mongering for political gain.

The Biden administration won plaudits from GOP elected officials across the region, but Trump falsely claimed the federal government abandoned the public. Americans affected by the storm can access a robust program of federal assistance, but he falsely claims they could only get $750 in aid. The White House stressed there’s plenty of FEMA funds to respond to both Helene and Milton — and Republicans are reportedly the ones blocking additional funding — but Trump falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris blew “all her FEMA money” housing immigrants.  The former president, through these deranged fabrications, is trying to win votes in the coming election. He is summoning an alternate reality in which Biden and Harris are blithely unconcerned with the fates of millions of victims because many of those victims are Republicans and they instead prioritize immigrants. And he is doing so despite his own record  as president of allegedly withholding disaster aid for political reasons.

The only reason this strategy is remotely plausible is that the right-wing media ecosystem is willing to play along with it. The news sources Republicans rely on, from MAGA influencers to Fox stars, have bolstered Trump’s lies at every turn. The result is that right-wing audiences are bombarded with falsehoods from within an echo chamber. The MAGA media ecosystem responds in this same fashion to every news event because its function isn’t to report on what is happening. Instead, right-wing pundits offer a scapegoat — immigrants, Jews, journalists, teachers, trans people, Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans — in order to hold their audience’s attention, make money, and support the GOP’s core agenda of tax cuts for rich people and abortion bans.

Hurricane misinformation is plaguing the response to Helene. Local media outlets, federal and state officials, and emergency responders all are desperately trying to swat down rumors and falsehoods — some promoted by the former president. Republican officials in affected areas are begging the people pushing “conspiracy theory junk” to stop lying and pitch in instead.

Donald Trump and the right-wing media’s pushing of conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene reveals that they are in an insular bubble.

[probablyasocialecologist]

'Israel’ is losing. It is committing genocide, yes, but it is losing. The ground invasion has been a disaster, in strategic terms: casualties incurred, failure to rescue hostages or to diminish the Palestinian Resistance, and the IOF’s clear inability to control Gaza. All it has left is destruction. The horrors ‘Israel’ has inflicted are only explicable once this background of defeat is understood. Fundamentally, genocide is the result of the fact ‘Israel’ is losing. ‘Israel’ is losing and the Resistance is winning. Crucially this means that ‘Israel’ cannot control Gaza, and cannot significantly degrade the capacity of the Resistance to act. This does not mean, however, that ‘Israel’ lacks the military and technological capability to hold particular places for enough time to commit genocidal acts, or that the Resistance has the capacity to prevent it from happening. The mass graves in Al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital testify to this. It also, demonstrably, does not mean ‘Israel’ is unable to displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

[...]

If ‘Israel’ is losing while practicing genocide, then genocide and the Palestinian national liberation struggle are distinct, representing two processes that, while not precisely parallel, have no necessary relation. Indeed, it might be said that the aim of ‘Israel’ is to make genocide matter against the national liberation struggle, to bring the two processes together, by ravaging, slaughtering, usurping, by making a desert in an attempt to force a peace without justice. Famine is now the central weapon not only in the genocide itself, but in the attempt to have genocide deliver political-military consequences where conventional warfare has failed. Hamas have noted that the ‘Israeli’ assault on the Rafah crossing has the explicit intent of deepening the famine. Similarly, the National Emergency Committee in Rafah has stated that “the closure and occupation of crossings and the control over them portends the death of hundreds of thousands of citizens due to the cutting off of supply lines and lifelines to the Gaza Strip.” The Palestinian Resistance’s capacity to stop genocide is very low. It has almost no air defences – PIJ, in particular, seem to have developed a degree of proficiency in shooting down drones, including quadrocopters, but that is it. The Resistance cannot open the crossings, or cause aid to be delivered. It can, through guerrilla attacks, defend territory and harass the IOF, both of which can restrict an element of genocidal capacity. In short, though the Resistance has the capacity to prevent the total control of all of Gaza, ‘Israel’ has the capacity to control parts of its territory for a time. What the Resistance can do is to inhibit the desired connection between genocide and ‘Israel’s’ hoped-for political-military consequences. This offers a sliver of hope: if the Resistance can continue to interrupt to smooth operations of the genocide machine, might ‘Israel’ come to realise it cannot hope to win? Might it be possible for the resistance to put an end to the genocide, not through capitulation, as ‘Israel’ hopes, but through steadfastness? This would have meaningful political consequences for the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the example offered by the Palestinian struggle continues to inspire solidarity, including from Yemen and the people of Jordan, that exerts material pressure on ‘Israel’.

12 July 2024

[beelzebubsis]

i think one aspect of bbh's character in purgatory that often goes unnoticed is the huge difference in his well-being before and during purgatory. prior to purgatory, he was not doing good. He went through a huge depressive arc resulting in him losing all his colour, which he only managed to overcome when he began actively searching for the eggs, resulting in him kidnapping the fed worker. and while it was a bad thing he did, it was the only seemly progress he had actually made towards finding the eggs. but when that started to go no where he started torturing himself with the soul vultures because he felt guilty for his actions and when he was constantly being reminded of the absence of his eggs. he felt like if the bad action he took manged to help him he would need to do worse things so the soul vultures were his self made punishment for the things he was doing and about to do and if we look more deeply into his character it was his punishment for failing to protect the eggs. the more the soul vultures attacked him the more wounds and cuts he had all over his body and the more blue was spreading all over him. (a lot of fans theorise that he's got a soul infection and that the blue is actually his blood but he's infected so its showing as blue but that's not really been confirmed). he went through the psychotic break which i believe was the beginning of his character losing a huge chunk of his sense of reasoning and his ability to separate reality from his own delusions and then further isolating him from others because he began not trusting others and believing the worst.

before purgatory started bbh was fully prepared to do worse things for the sake of the eggs (see his forest burring convo with foolish) but then purgatory happen.

and suddenly everyone was doing horrible things for the sake of the eggs. i think the biggest reason why bbh's character felt comfort regarding purgatory is that he didn't feel alone in his horrible actions and he felt more justified. dapper had explicitly told him to do whatever he could, the other parents and his team were talking about winning and strategizing. he didn't have access to his soul vultures and he and most of his team viewed his actions as necessities to saving the eggs. moreover soulfire ended up being a huge support network for bbh, because he finally felt like he was sharing the burden of his horrible actions with others. they were all paranoid and hiding away like bbh had been. it makes sense that from his perspective it would be comforting to feel like people understood him.

but now post purgatory he's got his eggs back. he doesn't regret his actions because at the end of the day he saw them as necessary to get the eggs back and there wouldn't be any point in regretting those actions now especially when he had resolved himself to do horrible things before purgatory had even started. plus he self imposed the punishments for those actions to begin with and there are huge consequences for him now because of that. he's started to get his colour back because the eggs have returned. but he's still covered in the wounds from the soul vultures and the potential infection, the injury on his head is seemingly getting bigger and he now has the radiation poisoning on his back from the nuke. his first few streams back we saw him struggling against his character reincarnation, or to clarify his death, and we later learn through his conversations with pomme and dapper that he doesn't want to reincarnate because he'll lose the ability to recall specific memories and he's scared of forgetting the eggs, which explains why on the first streams back when we weren't sure what had happened to dapper and the other eggs, he had no memories because he didn't see any reason to keep them without the eggs so he wasn't fighting his death. implying that the eggs are his reasons for fighting against the reincarnation and why when he's around them he's able to recall and remember again but he's started to cough and suffer instead. so now he's faced with the moral dilemma of keeping his memories of everyone and the eggs but continue to suffer in a dying rotting body OR to reincarnate and forget everyone.

plus we now have the mysterious ghost and "old friend" invading his home and leaving him ominous message so he doesn't feel safe. so what does he do? he goes back to when he did feel safe or at least comfort and support. which was the soulfire base, because at least there he felt like he was sharing the suffering. i believe that the "old friend" is someone involved with his reincarnation which is why hes avoiding it but thats an entirely different post.

holy shit how did this get so long D: but yeah this is why i think bbh has such different feelings towards purgatory compared to others and why he keeps taking people to the recreation of the soulfire base. like always i'd love to hear any more interpretations.

heres another tik tok

[poppadom0912]

Together (IX)

Warnings: Mentions of violence, blood, injuries, abuse, kidnappings, shootings, swearing and scary men.

Summary: They're finally together and nothing's getting in the way... maybe.

A/N: So this is the second final chapter before the epilogue. This has been so much fun to write you don't understand. This is like my baby that I've had since January and I'm so proud. You guys have shown so much love for it that it makes me upset it's all coming to an end. So I hope you enjoy and cherish the last two chapters of this series!!

I'm not a professional so ignore any medical inaccuracies. Also, for my sake, let's pretend that all these characters are still here because I can't be asked to remember who left and what season is which. Everyone's just going to exist happily together ;))

Previous Chapter / Series Masterlist / Next Chapter

The gunshots reverberated through the warehouse, despite being cut off from the outside world it sounded like a battlefield where thousands of bullets were being shot when in reality it was probably under thirty people shooting back and forth at each other.

You’d been awake for a while now, your body curling around Will’s as both of you shivered. He tried talking, telling you stories that you somehow never heard before but talking became too hard at one point and his pain doubled resulting in staying in silence.

The silence made it easy to get lost in thought, getting carried away in the thought that maybe this was it. It daunted on you that no matter how hard you fought, how hard your brothers fought, none of it was enough at the end of the day because look at where the three of you ended up.

Half an hour later, Will was dragging you and himself towards the door as soon as the gunshots went off. He murmured how when the door was eventually opened, you’d be hidden behind the door and it’d taken just a few seconds longer to be found, giving Will hopefully some time to come up with a very last-minute plan.

Holding in your breath, you waited anxiously on the floor with Will crouched besides you, pain evident on his face from the new uncomfortable position. Just as you were going to tell him to sit down, footsteps could be heard stomping downstairs and across the corridors.

You and Will shared a glance, worry written boldly on both your faces. This was probably it and that thought of this being the end made the pit in your stomach grow. All this pain and suffering only ending in death, it was kinda pathetic. You prayed Jay mourned healthily, prayed Kelly wouldn’t lose himself and moved on, prayed that everything stuck together, and no one let this tear them apart.  

Will gripped your hand as tightly as he could, his body shielding yours as best he could because if this was it, then he was going to go down protecting you and putting up some sort of a fight. You squeezed his hand back as tight as you could, expressing words that you were too scared to say in the silence that was interrupted by stomping feet and shattering bullets.  

With a watery smile, you squeezed Will’s hand one more time for good measure, maintaining eye contact for just a little longer, having a silent conversation where you both said everything necessary with simply your eyes; eyes that you shared with Jay and eyes that he shared with your dad. Merely the thought of it made a tear slip from where you were pushing it back.  

Will softly smiled back at you, his thumb rubbing over your knuckles comfortingly. This minute of silence shared between you two wasn’t enough, you wanted, scratch that you needed more time.  

The sound of struggle was the next thing you heard; someone was trying to get into the locked room. The sudden banging overtook your thundering heart that was already having a tough time. 

The door burst open; it happened so fast that it hit Will’s back whose face scrunched up in pain. You squeezed his hand tighter to hopefully offer him some comfort, but he only adjusted his position so that his crouched body was fully covering yours from outside eyes.  

“Please, please don’t touch her.” Will begged, urgency dripping as it heavily coated his words. He would rather they did all the damage on him than you, you’d been hurt enough, and he could handle a little more violence. You argued he couldn’t since he was barely stable while on the ground. If he wasn’t being so hypervigilant and took the time, he’d realise he was worse off than he thought.  

“Thank fuck.”  

That didn’t sound like Jackson or Ezra, neither did it sound like any of their bulky lackeys.  

You slowly peeled your eyes open, watching as Will froze from shock. All the oxygen left his body as he lay eyes, finally, on Jay.  

“Shit, what the hell did they do?!” The fear and anger mixed as Jay took in the sight of his siblings. To see them again took off all the weight on his shoulders, relief replacing it but soon it was gone because you and Will looked worse than he could’ve ever anticipated.

“Help me up Jay.” Will ignored Jay’s question and instead held out his hand. Jay complied easily, pulling Will up onto his feet but as soon as he stood, he crumbled back onto the floor.  

“Shit okay, never mind.” Will groaned, eyes screwed shut as he caught his breath, arm protecting his abdomen. “Leave me for now, you gotta carry Y/N, there’s no way she can walk.”  

“Dude, neither can you or are you also blind now?” Jay scoffed; his eyes wide in bewilderment at his older brother's insistence. “Kevin’s down the hall, he can help.”  

You and Will hummed in reply, neither of you having the energy to properly reply. You felt bad because you barely did anything while Will did all he could and more despite being incapacitated.  

“Seeing your ugly mugs makes me want to cry.” Jay said, a smile appearing on his scabbed lips as he looked down at the two of you. There were no lies in his words, relief flooded his body at the simply seeing his siblings even if they were injured beyond human capabilities but being separated for so long, it did things to men.  

“Come on Halstead’s, let’s get you outta here.” Kevin said, suddenly appearing from out of nowhere, making you and Will jump in fright. It would’ve been funny had your responses not been a result of the trauma you just experienced.  

Jay scooped you into his arms, expletives spilling from your lips from your body being jostled around. His whispered apologies and tried comforting you, trying his best to quell your pain with just his words but it could only do so much. Behind you was Kevin holding Will around his waist, the pair being much slower as Will struggled mightily on his feet, but Kevin was a godsend, being the most patient and kind person as he supported Will.  

The bright afternoon sun blinded you as your finally entered the outside world, being met with fresh air, natural lighting and the company of people who had pure intentions of helping. You briefly saw members of intelligence surrounding you, acting as a shield as they guided Jay towards the ambulance waiting.  

The familiar faces of your favourite paramedics soon came into view causing a smile to break out on yours. As soon as you approached the ambo, Jay gently lay you on the awaiting stretcher and stood back, letting the professionals do their job while keeping watch.  

“Oh Y/N.” Sylvie said sombrely, gingerly pushing your hair back before connecting to a bunch of wires that you couldn’t remember what their purposes were. “We’ve got you, you’re going to be just fine, okay?” 

The question was rhetorical, but you still nodded drowsily in reply. You were aware of the two pairs of hands working on you, Violet and Sylvie were very likely panicking on the inside from the state you were in, but their concern took over. They could panic later once you were properly treated.  

From the corner of your eyes, you could see a new group gathering around the ambo and you could hear voices rising, getting louder the closer they got to 61. If you had it in you, you would’ve looked for the source, but Sylvie reassured you that everything was being handled.  

Violets hands suddenly disappeared as she suddenly exited the ambo, rushing with things in her hands. It took a while for you to understand why, your brain all muddled up, but it only now registered that Will was behind you with Kevin.  

“Will.” You mumbled, your voice scratching as your panic increased. “Will-” 

“Violet's with him.” Sylvie said, her undertone giving it away that she wasn’t confident deep down. “Another ambos on the way for him, don’t worry.” Yet, despite her own words, Sylvie didn’t believe in them. She saw Will for a brief millisecond when he appeared, the ruckus catching her attention, but he somehow looked worse than you under the blaring sun.  

Before you could insist on being told what was happening to him, the ambulance doors were suddenly being slammed shut as Violet drove with all lights and sirens.  

*****

Maggie couldn’t believe her eyes.  

It had been two days since the Halstead’s disappeared. Everyone was informed on day one about their disappearance and it was news that everyone found difficulty in swallowing.  

Everyone had been on edge for the 48 hours. While on shift, multiple people from intelligence and 51 made an appearance into the ED and their solemn faces were all identical. The tension was high, and it only got worse when Jay was randomly dumped outside of Med.  

Around an hour ago, Kim called in saying that Will and Y/N had finally been found and that they should be prepared for the worst. And so, Maggie did what she does best.  

61 Was the first to arrive with police escort, Hailey and Adam drove in front with Kim behind with Jay. They almost formed a protective circle as Sylvie exited along with Violet who helped pulling out the stretcher.

Laying eyes on you for the first time made the charge nurse sick. No matter how long she’d been working in the emergency department, nothing could ever make her get used to this.  

Sylvie relayed shakily what she knew about your condition, Crocket and Natalie listening intently with April’s assistance as they got to work as soon as they entered a trauma bay. Maggie stood with Ethan and Connor by her side, watching as chaos descended in the bay. The three of them were waiting for Will.  

“Jay, how about we finally get a good look at you, huh?” Ethan said, remembering what happened yesterday as he caught sight of the green-eyed detective at the back of the group who refused to look away from his baby sister.  

But the man in question looked like he’d seen a ghost.  

“Will’s not going to make it.” Jay stated, his voice strong and firm as he spoke. He looked away from where you were being treated and looked at everyone almost robotically. “Will’s not making it.”  

Before anyone could say anything, the bay doors were opened and everyone flooded out, pushing the gurney towards the elevator. Crocket stayed back from the rest, slowly walking backwards as he explained, “We’re taking her into surgery, but all things considered, she’s looking okay.” 

And with that, the surgeon was speeding off to basically save your life.  

“How about we look at you Jay? You promised me, remember?” Ethan asked rhetorically, guiding the stoic man towards a different, cleaner trauma bay so that he could properly treat him, giving him everything he desperately needed yesterday.  

“I don’t have Will.” Jay retorted but followed the doctor anyways.  

Maggie and Connor watched the two men enter another bay before all they could hear was the sounds of the bustling yet peaceful ED. They didn’t know what to make of Jay’s words, but the man seemed hopeless and on the verge of breaking down. He looked awfully similar to the time when his dad died.  

They turned to the paramedics and the three members of intelligence but the look on their faces told them everything they needed to know.  

*****

Jay finally broke down when he was left alone, your sleeping body being the only thing present in the room with him.  

Crocket fully led Jay through every procedure that they did, explaining what they did during the surgery and what exactly your injuries were. Usually, that was Will’s job, but Jay tried not to think about that when the surgeon gently spoke to him.  

You had several broken ribs, some even fractured, and it’d been very very close to puncturing your lungs - it was apparently surprising you didn’t have a pneumothorax. You had quite the concussion, multiple lacerations that were both superficial and that needed surgical fixing. There also had been some damage to your spleen that was repaired, a fractured left hand and an out of place bone in your foot. 

Overall, everyone had been expecting much worse, but they did explain to Jay that recovering would be the worst part of all of this. They weren’t sure about neurological damage nor how bad your vocal damage was. Once you woke up, there was plenty of testing to be done.  

Seeing you alive and breathing, even while connected to a bunch of tubes and wires, Jay felt relief but oh so overwhelmed at the same time. So much happened in the last two days and now that he finally was left alone with his thoughts and feelings, the sounds of beeping machines and you sleeping painlessly, everything came crashing down on him.  

It properly dawned on him that the three of you had been kidnapped, you’d been hurt and hurt time after time. He was left to fight and get you back home and he’d been so close. For a while, Jay thought everything was done and he did it but then, but then Will happened.  

Jay harshly wiped away the tears on his cheek, his eyes catching sight of his bandaged knuckles and the IV in his left hand that he was itching to remove but then a voice sounding like Will warned him against doing so.  

Ethan did an x-ray on him, stitching his bullet wound and thoroughly wrapping it. He plucked several butterfly stripes and many cotton swabs to get rid of any and all blood stains. All in all, Jay would be off work for a few weeks, maybe some physio depending on how his leg felt but he was in pretty decent shape given the circumstances.

Jay bitterly laughed, shaking his head at the thought that he was expecting to have a full recovering with barely any long-lasting damage. He hated to admit it aloud, but this was going to stay with him forever, there was no way he was ever going to get rid of your gut-wrenching screams, they were forever engraved into his mind.  

And well, if Jay didn’t see Will at least arrive at Med, then nothing was ever going to be the same again.  

And so, what if Jay cried himself to sleep in the chair at his sister's bedside, at perhaps his only sibling's side.  

Jay drowned out his thoughts as he sobbed, hand curling around his mouth to muffle his cries as not to alert anyone of his emotional state. But, when Maggie walks in later to find the two younger Halstead’s gone to the world, she pretends not to see the tear tracks staining Jay’s cheeks.  

Series Masterlist:

@mads-weasley @sowrongitslottie @elite4cekalyma @senjoritanana @hufflepuff-blackwidow @mrspeacem1nusone @kmc1989 @goth-cowgirl-03 @daggersquadphantom @photographerkaiya0306 @jamie0515 @samanthavitale @iamasimpingh0e @lanea-1 @swidkid

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

A Rite Of Passage: Part One

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~2.3k

Summary: A case brings you to a small town in Texas that is close to Mexico's border. Someone is killing people who illegally cross the border, and he's a lot closer than you think.

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill

Season Five Masterlist

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there are any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them.

x

"A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry; once he's satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together." - Chuck Jones

"Hey, where's Hotch?" Emily asks when she walks into the briefing room.

"Budget meeting."

"Maybe he'll give us a raise," Derek jokes.

"They're cutting, not raising. I just hope they don't take the coffee."

"I'd quit," Spencer says.

"Oh, yeah. That'll save 'em like fifty bucks a week."

"Hotch will meet us on the plane," JJ says when she walks in.

"Where are we going?"

"Last night, three decapitated heads were found in front of a sheriff's station in the small border town of Terlingua, Texas."

She passes out the file on the victims which includes pictures of their crime scenes.

"Three victims at once?"

"Actually, they appear to be in different stages of decomposition."

"The ME confirmed that one of the heads is a day or so old. The other two appear to have died a few months ago, but the wound edges suggest that they were decapitated recently," JJ explains.

"There is dirt in their mouth, ears, and nose. At some point, these two heads were buried and then dug up."

"Okay, so why the sudden need to display them?" Emily asks.

"The need may not be so sudden. In Mexico, in 2009 alone, ten heads were in coolers and the people belonging to these heads were killed just hours before they were found. It's the result of a battle between feuding drug cartels."

"The DEA isn't interested?" you ask.

You'd think the Drug Enforcement Association would want a crack at this.

"They asked us to take a look at it. Considering the different decomposition, this might not even be about drugs."

"Alright, what do we have?"

"Well, the victims are two males and one female so there isn't a gender preference. Staging the heads in front of a sheriff's station is aggressive. All three victims are Hispanic and unidentified. Terlingua has a large illegal population. It's made IDing the victims that much harder."

"He might be trying to make some type of political statement. Volunteer border patrols do a lot of personal policing down there. Groups like the Minutemen prize law and order above everything else, and those patrols serve their political agenda. Murder would be bad for their image," Spencer explains.

"Staging the heads in front of a police station suggests that the unsub might be local. He'd have to have knowledge about how to do something like that without being seen. So, what we have is hundreds of miles of unincorporated desert and an endless supply of anonymous victims crossing the border every day."

"It's a serial killer's perfect storm," you sigh.

As JJ said, Hotch met you at the plane when he was done with his meeting.

"Explain this to me. The unsub hunts along the US-Mexico border. How big is that area?"

"Over five thousand square miles of desert," Spencer answers at the same time as you do.

The entire team stares at you two and you look away with heated cheeks.

"He could have gone undetected for years," Hotch says eventually.

"Why announce himself now?"

"What do we know about crime in Terlingua?" Rossi asks.

"It's a stop-over town. Immigrants stay only twenty-four hours before moving on, but that also makes them narco-trafficking hubs. Outside of immigration violations, most of the arrests are drug-related."

"That, my pretties, is an understatement." You look to your left and see Penelope's face on the screen. "Anyone familiar with the Lugo Cartel out of Baja, California? Their greatest hits include multiple brutal murders along with importing and distributing nearly two tons of cocaine and copious amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2009. Now, if we get in our BAU time machine, flash forward to now, a super cheap, highly addictive, and totally impure form of black tar heroin just showed up on the streets of Terlingua, and the DEA thinks the Lugo Cartel is directly responsible."

"They're expanding their operation which is often announced by a wave of violence. The Lugo Cartel killed two DEA agents last year. We're going to need to watch our backs. To Cartels, the Feds are fair game. There's even usually a bounty, so we're going to bring in the toys," Derek talks about the big weapons.

"Be careful with those. I don't need broken MP-5s on our budget," Hotch says.

"Guys, here's the thing. I don't think I technically have authorization to carry a weapon like that," Spencer says.

"You don't," Derek and Hotch say at the same time.

You reach over and put your hand on his arm. You want to grab his hand but he still has a gross ick when it comes to germs. Yes, he held your hand when you were going through it with prison but that was because he decided to. You don't want him to feel like his choice is being taken away when it comes to germs. Instead, you touch something much safer like his arm.

"You know, we're going to have a victim pool that is extremely hesitant to talk to us."

"Prentiss, you and Morgan start with the migrant community, see what inroads you can make. Stress that we're only there to catch a killer. Rossi, Y/N, and Reid, the ME is waiting to show you the heads."

"Maybe they can tell us something," you say.

The entire department only consists of five people including the sheriff. When Hotch and JJ got to the station, eight men were posted outside of it. The fact that they had eight despite there only being five officers inside shows that they outnumber them, asserting their dominance. Deputy Ronald Boyd isn't too worried about it only because those eight men are just a handful of men who work for Omar Morales, the head of the narco-trafficking ring. They picked him up this morning outside of town where he was heading to the airport.

Deputy Boyd would have talked to him only Sheriff Eva Ruiz wouldn't let her men talk to him. Hotch is worried about the men outside but she plans on ignoring them thinking they'll get hot and tired and go away on their own. The reason why she won't let her men talk to Omar is because she doesn't agree that they arrested the right man. The heads at the police station, in her opinion, are a message that demands for her to butt out. Just in the six months she's been Sheriff, there are more than twenty missing immigrants; that's more than three a month or one victim a week.

There hasn't been an official investigation because no one wants to be the snitch. However, she believes that someone has been killing for a lot longer than they let on. The Lugo Cartel kills to send a message, it's how they communicate but Eva seems to think otherwise.

You walk into the ME's office where there are heads in jars so that they can be preserved. You touch the side of the glass and allow the energy to paint you a picture. Fear. Desperation. The victims are running through the open desert as someone wearing a mask is chasing them on a quad made for the terrain. The victims are terrified for their lives but the unsub doesn't show any mercy.

"You know, contrary to popular belief, decapitation is not that easy," Spencer says, bringing you back.

"You don't often hear popular and decapitation In the same sentence," Rossi says.

"You'd need to strike on the weakest point of the spine. It's normally between the C3 and C7 vertebrae. There are multiple strikes but they don't show any hesitation."

"I realize you didn't have much to work with here but outside of the obvious, was there anything unusual about these victims?" Rossi asks the Me.

"The second victim appeared to have been blind, if not completely, then he had cataracts bad enough that it was difficult for him to get around."

"What about the other two?" you ask.

"No."

"I only had their teeth to go by but the most recent victim is older as well as the first one, the woman. It'll take some time to get an accurate age but I'm confident that they were older.'

"We're looking for something that we call a signature. Something that all the victims shared like a physical mark or something postmortem."

"I don't know if this is what you mean," she grabs the reports on them, "but they all had sand residue in their noses and throats."

"Could that be from being buried?" Spencer asks.

"Possibly, but the trachea and the nasal passage were kind of torn up. If I had the lungs here, I'd guess that they were full of sand as well like they breathed in the sand enough to lacerate the passages."

"They were running," you say. "The unsub chased them on quads through the desert. Trust me when I say he didn't show any mercy."

Hotch is able to talk to Omar who isn't too happy to talk to a Fed. Omar is cocky and arrogant only because he knows he or his crew didn't do these murders. If Omar had, he'd gut the victim from crotch to chin then leave the intestines open for the animals to eat. He'd send his hand to his wife, his eyes to his mother, and his tongue to his kids with a note saying their Daddy had died wetting himself. Omar doesn't believe that these murders are a message, none that he recognizes.

Hotch asks him about what he thought of the recent murders only because Omar likes to be a man in control. He has an army standing guard outside the station who will protect him because Omar has somehow convinced them that they need him, and Hotch expects to believe Omar doesn't know what's going on in his town? What Hotch is looking for, according to Omar, is Santa Muerte, the Saint of Death.

The Saint of Death is a drug dealer's version of a doctor's Raphael the Archangel or a cop's Saint Jude--someone they pray to. Omar has learned that someone loses track of the ways they can die when they cross the desert from Mexico. Sometimes, it's easier to blame a superstitious figure than someone real. Santa Muerte has been coming up more and more with the illegals Eva sends back, the coyotes she arrests, and the drug traffickers around town. All of them are afraid.

Evan once handled a homicide where her only witness was a four-year-old girl. She told Eva that her mom and dad were killed by a dragon. It turned out that the bad guy wore a green rainsuit with a pointy hood. To the little girl, it looked like a dragon. So, when hundreds of people are talking about the same monster, it's a sure bet that something is going on. They don't know what to call it so they settle on Santa Muerte.

With a town like this, you're not surprised that by the next morning, another murder has surfaced. This time, there is a head on a post right outside the Sheriff's house. The team heads over there along with some of her own men. You get there before her men do and you approach the head that hasn't been moved. You slide some gloves on and touch the side of his face delicately. This man was trying to cross the border last night with his family. He fell to the ground after not being able to continue either because he couldn't physically or he was sick. It doesn't matter. He was the only one left behind so the unsub targeted him until he killed him.

"I told you we should have kept that bastard locked up."

Eva let Omar go because there was nothing she could charge him with. The officers only had assumptions that he was involved with no evidence. You turn to look at Deputy Boyd and freeze in your steps. He walks past you without so much as a glance in your direction but he doesn't need you. The energy surrounding the head is the same as Deputy Boyd's. He either killed the man or he knew about it to move it to Eva's house. Your first instinct is to shout to the rooftops that Boyd is the unsub but you have to think about this through Hotch's eyes. He'll want evidence so you keep your mouth shut for now.

"I'm telling you for the last time, Boyd, go back on patrol," Eva says.

Boyd rolls his eyes but does as he's told.

"There isn't any decomposition. It's a new victim," Spencer says.

"He's becoming more focused on you, Sheriff. May I have a word?" Hotch asks. He and Eva step off to the side but you can still hear them. "It's clear that this is personal."

"It always was."

"How's that?"

"Look, I have no idea how many of these people have gone missing over the years, but one thing is clear. I'm the only one who seems to give a damn. That's as personal as it gets for me."

"We're here because we care."

"All I've got is a bunch of stories and superstitions. What if it isn't even happening?"

"Sheriff, I can't tell you how long this has been going on but something's definitely happening now. From the way the unsub is acting, it's obvious that you've touched a nerve. Whoever he is, I think you've probably talked to him."

Damn right, she has. He's right under her nose and she doesn't even know. You don't want to talk to her about this now because you don't want to freak her out when you don't have to.

"I've talked to anyone who will listen—drug dealers, immigrants, and even business owners."

"Well, one of them is your Santa Muerte and he's feeling the pressure. When we get back to the station, I want to go over every single interview you've done."

"How? Who are we even looking for?"

"We have a profile to give you and your deputies."

"Hotch, a word?" you butt in. He steps away from the Sheriff and joins your side. "I know I need evidence but you want to know what I saw when Deputy Boyd showed up? His energy matches the one on his head. I didn't see anything else but that can only mean one of two things—he's the one who killed him or he knew about it."

"Pay attention to his behavior during the profile. After, get your evidence."

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[opencommunion]

urgent action to stop hospital massacres

@ ibnalmajdal and @ walaavoila on ig posted the below statement and call to action: "Join us in holding complicit international institutions accountable, send this appeal and apply pressure to any relevant parties involved in these crimes. We call on you to email, send letters, call them out on social media, and support legal actions that hold them accountable."

Stop the Hospital Massacres: Hospitals Are Not Military Targets

12 November 2023

In the last 48 hours, dozens of distress calls have been sent by medical teams, and by displaced civilians who are sheltering in hospitals and schools which are being subjected to the Israeli occupation aerial and artillery bombardment and gunfire. Residents of Gaza, along with medical aid and relief teams, could not have fathomed the day when they would plead not to be killed, and patients in hospitals are targeted without any response. Yet this is what has happened, as the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international organizations have chosen to ignore pleas for relief and evacuation, despite their legal responsibility to protect and aid the victims of war and conflict. 

These organizations turned a blind eye to Israeli tanks besieging hospitals and relentless airstrikes raining fire on innocent civilians seeking refuge in those buildings. Their statements did not dare to name the Israeli occupation army as the source of the attacks, attributing the brutal attacks to unknown sources and using passive language. This scene encapsulates the complicity, if not partnership, of international organizations with Israel in its daily war crimes in Gaza. 

In a deliberate and announced war crime, Israeli airstrikes targeted hospitals and their surroundings, specifically the Al-Shifa Medical Complex (the largest hospital in the region), which the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed has been completely inoperable. In Al-Shifa Hospital, two infants died after power was cut off from the neonatal and intensive care units. Medical teams are now fighting, using primitive methods, to sustain the lives of over 650 wounded and patients, including 39 infants, at risk of death due to the continuous shortages of power and fuel needed to operate backup generators. 

Simultaneously, the Red Crescent announced that only seven of eighteen ambulances are operational in Gaza City and the north, but they are at risk of ceasing operation in the coming hours due to fuel shortages. The Red Crescent has also announced that Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza is out of service due to fuel depletion and power cuts. 

In another crime, the Rantisi Hospital and the Nasser Children’s Hospital in Gaza were forcibly evacuated under Israeli orders, putting the lives of sick children at risk of death after being forcibly transferred, through unknown arrangements by Red Cross employees in collaboration with the Israeli occupation army, to a place where proper medical care is unavailable. We emphasize that evacuating hospitals is not an option to save those inside but a new crime against patients and Gaza residents. 

On several occasions, the Red Cross’s false assurances of safe evacuation operations exposed displaced Palestinians to Israeli shelling and gunfire, resulting in numerous injuries and killings. The Red Cross remained silent about the deadly impact of their false assurances, and continued to encourage displaced Palestinians to evacuate despite their knowledge that it was not safe to do so. 

In clear complicity with Israel’s war crimes, international organizations working in Gaza responded to pleas for help from tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians by stating that they cannot operate in areas deemed “military operational zones.” This forced many residents of the western part of Gaza to leave without protection, making them vulnerable to Israeli targeting. Those who remained in their homes were subjected to horrifying attacks by Israeli occupation soldiers, resulting in casualties and injuries still in need of urgent medical attention.

Immediate and necessary action is needed to save thousands of hospital patients, wounded individuals, newborns, and other trapped civilians that emergency medical and rescue teams cannot reach. In this regard, we demand: 1. Lift the siege on hospitals by Israeli forces immediately and unconditionally. Concerned international organizations must apply pressure threatening to expel the Israeli regime and its representatives from any effective international health bodies. 

2. Supply fuel to besieged hospitals, a legal responsibility falling on the International Committee of the Red Cross and other UN bodies, and they cannot absolve themselves of this responsibility.

3. Immediate accountability from Red Cross officials in their offices within “Israel” for their silence, negligence, and cover-up of the occupation’s crimes for 36 days, especially in their complicity in covering up the crimes against children in the Rantisi and Nasser children’s hospitals. 

4. The Red Cross should announce its intention to evacuate the trapped individuals in the middle and west of Gaza City from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM on Monday 13 November. Since it ignored its duties to provide essential materials for hospital operation, this implies leaving patients and wounded to die until tomorrow. 

5. We firmly demand accountability from the Red Cross for its false assurances of safe evacuations and its role in concealing the crimes of the occupation. We demand that international institutions affiliated with the United Nations and other impartial medical organizations directly oversee evacuation operations. 

6. We demand that international institutions cease their cooperation with Israeli occupation plans to destroy hospitals, to halt their operations, and to leave the wounded without treatment.

We demand these institutions fulfill their duty to guarantee the freedom and protection of hospitals, medical staff and patients, ambulance crews, rescue workers and the arrival of supplies so that hospitals in Gaza City can continue their work in saving the wounded.

7. We warn that international organizations that have not yet issued a joint statement regarding the systematic targeting of hospitals will be officially and directly considered complicit in the war crimes committed in Gaza by Israeli occupation forces. We call for pursuing legal action against them in all possible legal frameworks. 

8. We urge medical teams worldwide, especially Palestinian and Arab teams, to immediately initiate solidarity protest actions with their colleagues in the Gaza Strip and with patients and the wounded against these crimes that constitute a historic threat to the concept of medical work and its necessary immunity under any circumstances. 

[bestfictionalplant]

Round 2 Group 6

Propaganda and spoilers under cut

Jumpkin:

It's a little guy :D More seriously, it's a monster. All monsters in Cassette Beasts can be "recorded" so you can turn into them! "A Jumpkin is a special monster created by smearing the goo from another monster, Jellyton, on a normal pumpkin. It's pretty much the only monster with this kind of capture method. Jumpkins are just funny little guys that, as their name implies, jump around! They have such zest for life. A jumpkin tape can be ""remastered"" into two other monsters, Beanstalker and Draculeaf."

Karzahni:

in the time before time, when the evil mayor impersonator makuta was planning his plan to get the little robot meat guys in their little memory-erasing containers and before he'd impersonated the mayor (i think; don't quote me; i am Not Good at the timeline) he was like "hey i should make a plant that will force these four-foot fuckers towards the big sports and politics stadium under threat of murder so i can easily get my bastard robot cops to force them into the amnesia balls" and then he made karzahni. who was too smart and cool and powerful. so he did not get deployed. he is named after the legendary Lego Hell and Lego Satan where Bad And Naughty Disabled Robots Go For "Repairs" And Never Return. it's expensive to copyright names. they had to double up on occasion. or triple up. or quadruple up. anyway so evil mayor impersonator who is also ANOTHER Lego Satan but that's besides the point, creates this plant. but the plant is too smart. so he puts it somewhere and forgets about it and makes the morbuzakh NEW PARAGRAPH anyway so basically most creatures in this universe are immortal bar murder and fucked-up circumstances. no old age, basically. but this plant has one, because Bionicle Satan (Not Karzahni) makes his shit with limited lifespans so they can't wait for ten thousand years gathering their power and then kill-murder him to death. six big robot meat superheroes fight a fucking big monster in a tunnel. the cool smart one who used to be a teacher gets poisoned. but because karzahni (plant) is so fucking cool it can make an antidote. and it holds the antidote hostage in exchange for Cool Oil, which is oil from the apocalypse planet where the robot meat guys' creators are from, but they fracked too hard and split the planet into three pieces so that's a bit fucked-up and yet besides the point. anyway they get the magic juice and give it to karzahni (plant). previously in the story (but later in the timeline; this is a TWO-YEAR FLASHBACK EPISODE BABY) some other robot meat superheroes took a dunk in this cool fucking water and got mega-boosted powers. super-superheroes. but that's because god exists and has predetermined what can happen in each individual's life. those guys got Good Results From Applied Goo. karzahni (plant) does not. it just fucking. dies. it is then chopped up to make some lorries float so they can take the amnesiac sphere guys up to a cool new island they found, because their old island got FUCKING WRECKED NEW PARAGRAPH anyway a cutting of karzahni survived (known as karzahni ii) with all the memories and shit of the real one and just sort of goes. FINE. i will join you, Lego Satan (not karzahni but the evil mayor impersonator) in gaslighting this mentally ill man into thinking he's short and his life is a lie in order to get the time travel device he made out of some magic fucking frisbees. karzahni took on the role of the morbuzakh. then the guy's like "this is bullshit" and gets thrown off a cliff but Karzahni II catches him and goes "hey. everything's alright. i tortured and killed a guy and he said you're doing good and everything is gonna be okay" and then the evil mayor impersonator (who by this point has not been impersonating the mayor for like. at least a week?) kills it. again. for real this time

[11queensupreme11]

I saw the comment about Percy's teething and I loved it

humanity is being destroyed in biblical tsuname style, the world is in chaos

humans are desperately performing rituals and giving offerings to the sea gods, regardless of their religion, in hopes of calming these floods

perhaps the valkyries and some gods (after having their egos softened by the offerings) will ask (no one is crazy or suicidal to demand something from Poseidon) the reason for his fury and if they can do something to calm him down and convince him to stop the tsunamis that are devastating humans

maybe there is an agreement in which the gods cannot kill humanity without there being a consensus, so Poseidon alone could not kill humans with tsunamis without there being a council in a meeting that takes place every 1000 years (remembering that the percy baby au happens a few years before ragnarok)

All the gods, especially the seafarers, are tense at the meeting not knowing how to approach the subject until they realize a crucial fact:

Poseidon is not holding the trident correctly,Poseidon would never hold his trident in such an undignified way, why would he act so imperfectly? initially they thought it was because he also had Baby Percy on his lap but they soon realized that this didn't make sense, that's when they realized that the position of the trident allowed Percy to nibble on it comfortably in the middle of the handle

still not taking their eyes off baby percy (because she is absolutely adorable) they watch her bite the staff at the same time they feel a tsunami forming

Just imagine the face the gods would make when they realized that all the destruction and death humans are going through is the result of a baby's teething pains

some gods would be scared of Percy becoming a poseidon 2.0, some would find the situation ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS but some gods like Buddha, the valkyries and the human fighters would probably be hysterical knowing that all these tsunamis are being caused by a baby that I haven't even had yet crawl

Trying to take Percy's trident away is impossible, trying to discipline him would only attract the fury of the Norse and Greek pantheon (and possibly all the other gods conquered by her cuteness) so there is only one alternative:

find something Percy likes to chew on more than his father's trident

just imagine Poseidon sitting with Percy on his lap and in front of them is a crowd of thousands of humans and perhaps gods offering different objects as an alternative choice of teether for Percy

They place the teether on an altar and pray for the offering to calm the teeth tyrants in Baby Percy's birth, the items are first tested to see if they are dangerous and then are evaluated to see if they are fit for a princess

If they pass the test, they are placed in front of Percy, who will be distracted by them and put them in his mouth, but like the other offers, the item is spat out and rejected and Percy bites the trident again, which generates another tidal wave in somewhere in the world

i don't think any baby has ever been as worshipped and prayed to like baby!percy has and that alone, should be enough to tell everyone how powerful she is 😌

i also love how literally no one has the guts to try and discipline percy not just because of poseidon, but because of THE OTHER GODS TOO 😭

(also, poseidon probably has those baby-proof soft covers that parents put on sharp table corners and shit, except poseidon has them on the tips of his trident so his baby doesn't accidentally cut herself 🥺)

[nattarthetimedragon]

Post Reformation Dark Hunter

Forgotten (ze/hir)

Forgotten is a member of Keetongu's species, hailed from same Island. Ze was Tahtorak tamer for hir people and used hir Rhotuka spinner to trap the rampaging beasts in energy nets. One day a long ago a team of Toa and a small group of archivists from Metru-Nui came to the icy island in search of exotic Rahi for the Onu-Metru Archives, and enlisted the aid of Forgotten to trap a Tahtorak. The hunt went bad and the Tahtorak they were hunting broke out of the energy net due to a blunder of one of inexperienced members of the Toa team, that resulted in the death of the in question Toa and two of the archivists. Wanting to cut there loses but not return empty handed, the Toa team captured Forgotten and brought hir back to the archives. There ze renamed for thousands of years in a stasis tube. Remaining trapped, sleeping with in it through the great cataclysm only to be awoken when the moon crashed in the back of the GSR's head. Ze found hirself in a foreign land filled with screaming Matoran and warriors fighting the remnants of the Rahkshi. Assuming that the Rahkshi were fellow escaping specimens from the archive. Ze armed hirself with a spear from an archive display and joined in the fight against the Toa and Matoran in the archives until running in to Keetongu, who was horrified by the sight of slain Toa and Matoran by the hands of one of his people. Keetongu confronted him with both great happiness to know that he was not truly the last of his kind and great sorrow for this is how they met once again. They stayed for a some time, talking as the battle raged in outer parts of the city to talk.

Keetongu explained the death of the rest of there kind and how he had become a healer for the lost and mutated. Forgotten asked why none of them ever came to look for hir before the death of there species, Keetongu explained that the attack was shortly after his old friend's capture. Explaining that he did not even know that Forgotten was missing and assumed that ze was still out on a hunt when the attack happened. All of this enraged Forgotten, ze had been imprisoned by the Matoran for thousands of years as a dear friend of hir that ze called a brother, healed and aided them in battle, his captors. They too fought through the city, ending only when the Toa Hagah assisted Keetongu subdue his former brother. Forgotten was released from their hold shortly after to wander the new world of Spherus Magna in hopes that its beauty will help hir find peace. It did not. Forgotten would take jobs for Agori and Glatorian to hunt beasts and Toa alike. Hir activity soon caught the eye of the Dark Hunters who offered hir a place within there ranks, which ze gladly accepted finding a new home and family with hir fellow outcasts. Ze especially became close with hir fellow Dark Hunters with a hatred for Toa and Matoran.

Powers: Like any member of hir species, Forgotten can produce any anti-venom or antidote as long as ze is familiar with the relevant toxin which ze often studies the the venom of this world to exspand hirs knowledge. Unlike the rest of hir species, Forgotten has healing powers comparable to a mask of healing. Forgottoen often uses the power to act and a medic for the Dark Hunters when not away on missions. Forgotten possesses tremendous strength, rivaling that of a Makuta. Forgotten is extremely durable as well, able to survive a fall the top of Tall montins.

Forgotten has a built in extra large energy net Rhotuka spinner launcher capable of capturing a Tahtorak for a short time, but for larger more aggressive Tahtorak it may take more then one spinner. The Spear of Pain that Forgotten acquired from the Onu-Metru Archive can temporarily paralyze it's target with pain when the target is hit by a by the spears energy but some targets with a high pain tolerance can push through the pain and keep going. When hit by the spear when through the target and it get embedded in the target. The target will experience pain to there limit of what they can take with out dying from the pain, most lose consciousness. Anyone trying to touch it will experiecne the same level of pain, Forgotten can only do so by channeling hirs healing powers to neutralize the pain from the spear.

Status: Alive