Deidre vs the Power of Love

Part 2: The Lonely Extermination of Athena Six

Awhile after Dr. Stevenson left, and after Dr. White's visits were rarely more often than once or twice in a month, Athena began to notice the iron cage. It grew very slowly between the earth and the sky, deep shadow bars tinting narrow strips of the world. The first ones she saw were in the sky, on a day where she could feel the sun inside her room. She felt the slim bands connect to each other overhead.

You can get caught up with part 1 on Ao3!

The tips of her fingers stung and itched and felt painfully hot, and Athena couldn't sleep. Joey had given her an ice pack, and Mark gave her some cream than made her fingers feel better but only for a moment.

She didn't want to leave the bed anymore. Her hands felt so raw, and she had headaches all the time, even with the dancing lights. She rolled over and pulled the blankets with her, trying to ignore the iron cage and drive out the steady song of the thread she made for Dr. Stevenson.

Every day she looked at the bars of the iron cage far into the sky and tried to undo her own knots in the dimensionless line that stretched in between two points in total disregard for the earth and sky. Dr. White's machine grew in complexity at every touch, and sometimes Athena thought it was consuming her to grow. Extra radiators for cooling, two more of the wheel-shapes making it more tricycle than motorcycle. New intakes. The blinding line, her thread, it gave itself endlessly to the hunger of the machine in her grip.

The tables and children's toys in one of the princess pink rooms were all pushed to the sides to make best use of the small space. Alice was trying to get herself off the wall while Joey shoved a mop handle at her. He moved fast for a big guy, and he'd given her several bruises to remind her of that fallacy. "Big guys move pretty fast," he'd said, she laughed, and he grabbed her in a headlock and held it until she promised not to make stupid assumptions in a fight.

No one was trying to rebuild anything very tall just yet. The number of towers and skyscrapers knocked over in the '79 Burn haunted the empty horizon. Alice stood on a modest five storey warehouse converted to apartments up top and a biker-bar on the ground floor. It was high enough to get a light breeze touching the shaved sides of her head and whipping her raggedy bleached hair, and to put her on eye level with the man growing out of the asphalt of the raised highway across from the warehouse.

Help my phone keeps showing me hot trans people who are outta my league.

All I have to rely on is my wit and intellect, I am doomed.

It’s Pride Month Eve, so leave out some milk for Freddie Mercury and his cats.

They’re looking at each other, comparing cats:

And Vincent Price was also bi so, y'know, let’s hear it for the bi pride catboys.

This post keeps being inflicted on me.

If you go to the doctor putting no effort into your appearance and looking as sick as you feel, they’ll be like “Hmm…this person is a mess. Possibly indicative of a mental health issue or drug-seeking behavior. No reason to take anything they say seriously.”

If you show up to your doctor’s appointment well groomed and well dressed, they’ll be like “They’re saying they feel very poorly but they look good and have the energy to style themself well so I’m not going to take anything they say seriously.”

So you have to guess what a respectable sick person looks like and arrive looking like that. And don’t even think of dressing alternatively.

I went to the hospital once for chest pains (ended up being pains from severe back issues that are still escalating to this day, separate story) and off the bat wasn't being taken seriously, my partner and I began to quietly (and anxiously, and sadly) assume that it was because I had piercings and green hair etc. Once I was in a room they began insisting on drug testing to rule out that I wasn't having a "bad time" on something - no judgement on others, but I'm sober from everything. Needless to say we were getting really flustered.

While we were sitting in there waiting, I noticed something else that could have been contributing - the only thing I was carrying with me that day was a new wallet that I had purchased for all of the cute cottagecore-y wildflowers and mushrooms on it, not realizing until that very moment that the pattern had huge weed leaves on it.

We eventually had a new doctor during a shift change, and things got better from there, but it's wild how judgemental the people responsible for making potentially life-altering medical decisions for strangers can be.

I am so sorry. The war on drugs has done irreparable damage to the medical professional basic empathy and respect for patients and if they peg you out as being any sort of drug user, even smoking marijuana in a decriminalized state, they will get tunnel vision and refuse to look further into any medical concerns you voice. It doesn’t matter if you do use drugs or not, they hate to admit they’re wrong and will not apologize. The utterly inhumane things I’ve seen nurses say about ‘addicts’ online have made me lose faith in humanity.

Porco Rosso (1992) dir. Hayao Miyazaki

kabru is so fucking funny. he’s out here playing 15 dimensional manipulation mind chess with a guy whose hobby is barking like a dog

And he's losing.

The funniest part is he's watching himself lose. The point at which he first meets Laios face to face is the point where, in the chess metaphor, he realizes that his opponent is eating the chess pieces. And instead of getting angry or accusing Laios of playing the game wrong he just keeps playing out of sheer curiosity. Laios doesn't even know he's playing chess but he's eating the pieces anyway and Kabru is now trying to figure out what the hell kind of game Laios is even playing where eating pieces is a viable strategy. He's not going to win 15 dimensional chess against this man so he might as well start handing the pieces over and seeing where this goes. Laios doesn't know where this is headed either but by god they're going to find out eventually and Kabru is going to be present to witness it

Due to budgetary constraints we do not have the resources for any Ship of Theseus bullshit and we have chosen death over continuity.

To be fair I think copies exist, but it tickles me that someone encountered the grandfather's axe paradox and said 'nay we ein't doing that philosophy shite wid t'arrison clock today'.

[image reads: "The clock has stopped. Last year we allowed the Harrison Clock to stop because we knew that we could not keep it constantly running without replacing original parts. To do this would mean it would gradually cease to be original. It would no longer be the Harrison Clock."]

This sign is a work of art.

Bedhead snek

Like to charge and reblog to cast Chinese scientists destroying the Insulin industry

Here’s a link with more details! They got an insulin dependent patient medication free in just 11 weeks using a cell transplant! It’s still very early and needs a lot more testing to see if they can replicate the results, but having success in a human is very promising!

Someday in a Trek novel I'll be writing the line about a situation like this. McCoy will shrug and say, "Well, we can handle this a couple of ways. We'll either turn their pancreas back on, or print them a new one." And it won't be SF at all. :)

...He should then add, "So what'll we do after lunch?"

I wasn’t expecting that

*sticks boobs in your face for attention*