My favorite part about 1931 Dracula is that there are armadillos running around Dracula’s castle.
Look at this it’s like they couldn’t find any rats so they just were like “eh close enough no one will notice”. But I noticed. I noticed.
“WE NAILED IT BOYS”
Apparently in the 20s and 30s, armadillos weren’t very commonly known, so moviemakers would use them wherever they needed some creepy, ‘demonic’ animal running around. So there were a lot of armadillos in early filmmaking, and it was often people’s only source of reference for armadillos.
Fast forward twenty years to when the father of the biology professor who told me this is driving out from the east coast to see his son in California. Crossing the southwest at night.
An armadillo runs across the road.
He comes to a screeching halt and the Thing Of Evil, which he never knew was actually a real animal, trots the rest of the way across the road and vanishes into the desert.
All right, so, those of you who’ve been around long enough may or may not recall that my practice when I hit a round number of followers is to post some original writing (see: Methods of Inheritance and Sabbatical). And I’m coming up on 400, so I’ll be doing that again! But! I have…a lot of original fiction. A lot of original fiction. So I’m going to offer a list of options, and you lot can tell me which one you’d like to see! To vote, you can reply to this post or reblog it, or send me a message, although I’d prefer the ask box over a private message just because it’ll be easier to collate the answers that way. For the novels, obviously, you’d be getting an excerpt, probably 2-5 pages. Any short stories, though, you’d get all of.
Polaris:the revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel (as yet incomplete). Like. There’s more detail, obviously. But that’s pretty much what we’re dealing with there. There are a bunch of LGBT characters and a few superpowers and a revolution, thus: revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel. Tag is here if you want more detail.
Falls the Shadow: my best beloved novel about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, led by Sam, the Horseman of Death and Antichrist. This one’s complete, but it is H E F T Y at 250K words. I’m editing it down. Tag is here, but no one asks me about it, so there’s not much there. First of a trilogy.
Battalion: the novel where angels happened and fucked everything up, and humans have been fucking them over in response for about 70 years (incomplete). Yep. That’s here, and there is exactly one post.
Stories From the Second War:a triad of short stories technically set in the FtS universe, about Heaven’s war against the Nephilim. Um…they’re dark. The Nephilim are monstrous. But I think they might be some of my favorite writing I’ve done. They are Tell All the Truth (But Tell It Slant) and To Fight Aloud, Is Very Brave (Uniforms of Snow), both from the perspective of the leader of the Nephilim, and The Stillness in the Air (Between Heaves of Storm), from the perspective of her hunting partner. I’d put all three on here as a set, because I think they work best that way.
Deorum (Of Gods): a short story I wrote for that writing class I hated. Jack, the main character, lives in a city populated partly by mortals and partly by the gods of the world’s pantheons–Idunn owns a coffee shop, Apollo teaches art at an elementary school, Ninkasi runs a bar, and dark things live in the woods. Jack attracts more gods than he’s strictly comfortable with, and they all seem to know him remarkably well…. I don’t know if it’s my best work in terms of quality, but I definitely think it’s up there as the most fun. This is about forty pages, so I’d have to post it piecemeal.
So…yeah. Anyone have a preference?
OKAY KIDS.
I have reached 400 followers, but I have a tie, which means that this is SUDDEN DEATH.
Polaris (AKA “revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers”) and Deorum (AKA “Please let Jack sleep”) are tied for the top voted piece. Please vote for your preference, summaries are above.
The votes are in! I will begin posting Deorum today.
All right, so, those of you who’ve been around long enough may or may not recall that my practice when I hit a round number of followers is to post some original writing (see: Methods of Inheritance and Sabbatical). And I’m coming up on 400, so I’ll be doing that again! But! I have…a lot of original fiction. A lot of original fiction. So I’m going to offer a list of options, and you lot can tell me which one you’d like to see! To vote, you can reply to this post or reblog it, or send me a message, although I’d prefer the ask box over a private message just because it’ll be easier to collate the answers that way. For the novels, obviously, you’d be getting an excerpt, probably 2-5 pages. Any short stories, though, you’d get all of.
Polaris:the revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel (as yet incomplete). Like. There’s more detail, obviously. But that’s pretty much what we’re dealing with there. There are a bunch of LGBT characters and a few superpowers and a revolution, thus: revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers novel. Tag is here if you want more detail.
Falls the Shadow: my best beloved novel about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, led by Sam, the Horseman of Death and Antichrist. This one’s complete, but it is H E F T Y at 250K words. I’m editing it down. Tag is here, but no one asks me about it, so there’s not much there. First of a trilogy.
Battalion: the novel where angels happened and fucked everything up, and humans have been fucking them over in response for about 70 years (incomplete). Yep. That’s here, and there is exactly one post.
Stories From the Second War:a triad of short stories technically set in the FtS universe, about Heaven’s war against the Nephilim. Um…they’re dark. The Nephilim are monstrous. But I think they might be some of my favorite writing I’ve done. They are Tell All the Truth (But Tell It Slant) and To Fight Aloud, Is Very Brave (Uniforms of Snow), both from the perspective of the leader of the Nephilim, and The Stillness in the Air (Between Heaves of Storm), from the perspective of her hunting partner. I’d put all three on here as a set, because I think they work best that way.
Deorum (Of Gods): a short story I wrote for that writing class I hated. Jack, the main character, lives in a city populated partly by mortals and partly by the gods of the world’s pantheons–Idunn owns a coffee shop, Apollo teaches art at an elementary school, Ninkasi runs a bar, and dark things live in the woods. Jack attracts more gods than he’s strictly comfortable with, and they all seem to know him remarkably well…. I don’t know if it’s my best work in terms of quality, but I definitely think it’s up there as the most fun. This is about forty pages, so I’d have to post it piecemeal.
So…yeah. Anyone have a preference?
OKAY KIDS.
I have reached 400 followers, but I have a tie, which means that this is SUDDEN DEATH.
Polaris (AKA “revolutionary girlfriends with superpowers”) and Deorum (AKA “Please let Jack sleep”) are tied for the top voted piece. Please vote for your preference, summaries are above.
ourjamesvata asked: Hey. Sorry to bother you, I see your post about healthcare in POC and women. I'm a med student and I struggle to find resources about that (specially in my language -french-). My school book dont say anything about that. Do you have any tips ? Thanks
Mmmmkay, I don’t really have time right this second to do an appropriately thorough scouring of the internet to find some books or resources for you–which I will do when I’m not writing a thesis, because I should have some resources to reference–and I’m not supremely comfortable giving out how-to-medicine advice, but I will tell you a couple things that have helped me.
The only thing that really works: ask someone. Just do it. Find a doctor or an EMT or whoever is on hand who you trust to answer you, and ask them outright. It works best if you have a justified starting point, something like “Okay, so if that’s how I check for cyanosis on a fair-skinned person, how would I check for cyanosis on a person with dark skin?” (You check the inside of the lip, by the way.) Or “How should this intake procedure be different if my patient is trans?” Or “Should I ask any additional questions about vaccinations/previous illness if my patient is a traveler or immigrant?” Or “What if my patient has a pre-existing disability?” Or “Does this chest examination need to be conducted differently if my patient is a large-chested woman?”
Be polite while you’re doing the asking. More often than not, it’s a problem the other person has noticed too, and it’s not that individual’s fault that humanity has spent 2000+ years screwing itself over on this subject. Also, these questions make people uncomfortable, and being rude will decrease your odds of getting an answer.
Listen to non-doctors in the affected populations. If a woman you know has a laundry list of complaints about not being listened to by a doctor, assume she’s not being histrionic. If you know a black guy who says he was fucked over by the EMTs after he was sideswiped by a car or fell from a ladder or spiked a 105 F fever (40.5 C), he doesn’t need an MD to know he wasn’t treated as well as he should have been. If you know a trans woman who was repeatedly referred to as ‘he’ in the hospital, take note. Decide not to be that kind of doctor, and then pay attention to how you act.
Listen to the nurses around you. First of all, that’s a good general rule, the nurses probably know more than you and nurses are treated terribly by a lot of doctors. Behind every successful doctor is a whole host of nurses who probably haven’t been thanked.
But moreover, nurses spend a lot of time with the patients, and they’re the ones who field complaints about the doctors. They’ll know who gets fucked over and who doesn’t, and they know all the secrets to the medical trade.
Be attentive to your patient (unfortunately this is the ‘learn on the job’ part of the answer). If a woman expresses discomfort with the normal proceedings of an examination, listen to her. If a patient prefers name and pronouns not matching those on their legal documentation, adhere to their request. Be aware that there are some conditions which are more common in people of specific ethnicities–for example, black women have a higher incidence of breast cancer and a lower statistical chance of having it caught by a doctor than a white woman.
Ultimately, I’d say decide what kind of doctor you want to be. If you’re already asking this question, that’s a good start, and telling about how you’ll act as a doctor. Be self-aware of how you act with patients of various genders, ethnicities, etc. In a perfect world, it would be the responsibility of the medical school to teach that behavior and ensure that all the students were able to treat people other than the cis white able-bodied male ‘standard patient.’ This is not a perfect world, and that means it’s on you.
I…feel like this was pretty unhelpful and round-about, but I hope it at least gave you a starting place? I think you’re doing great because it occurred to you to ask this question, keep it up.
Before entering, ensure that someone not entering knows you are going in, and when you expect to be out
Before entering, determine the cause of your mission- your mission objective. Bookcase? Couch? Oven? Meatballs? Figure it out
Upon entering, locate The Path
Do not disengage from The Path until you have reached your mission destination. Many have been lost forever to the wilds of IKEA by not obeying this. Very few are ever located again by the sparse store employees.
Upon reaching your mission destination, you may disengage from The Path ONLY when accompanied by your partner (physical contact should be maintained- ie, holding hands, holding shirt sleeve, both holding an end of a rope, etc)
When you disengage from The Path to acquire the data for your mission objective (ie, the item number for the bookcase, couch, meatballs, etc), it becomes your partner’s responsibility to maintain visual contact with The Path. Much like weeping angel statues, The Path will move if not actively being watched. This will strand you and your partner in the wilds of IKEA, so ensure you choose a partner wisely.
Upon acquiring the mission objective data (ie the item number), navigate back to The Path. You may disengage physical contact with your partner once you have safely returned to The Path
Do not leave The Path again. It will naturally end at the warehouse/stock section. This is a long, huge hall with many branches.
At the entrance of the warehouse section, acquire a cart if necessary. Using your item coordinates, locate your mission objective. Do not leave the main hallway except for the branch where your item is located. Like The Path, the wilds of IKEA sometimes sneak up on travelers that wander the warehouse section
Once your item has been loaded, head to the check out section. Do not touch anything in the boxes along the way. They appear to be full of candles or stuffed animals or useful kitchenware; it is a ruse. They are carnivorous.
After checking out, exit to the loading area. Load your item, and leave.
Do not look in your rearview mirror as you leave. It shouldn’t pursue you if you don’t look back.
I think my favorite panic-fueled response to a petitioner was when someone came up to me in Union Square and said “Hi, would you care to sign our petition for LGBT rights?” and I just blurted out “I’m already gay” and the person, taken aback, said “Well, that’s… nice.” and I said “It really is. Goodbye.” and just walked into the closest store to escape.
one time I was on my way to a final and this clipboard person was aggressively trying to stand in my way and saying “excuse me sir, can you take just one minute?” and I was like “I’m sorry I’m on my way to a final” and they said “just takes a minute to save a mountain” and I panicked because clearly the truth of why I had to go wasn’t working so I just said the first thing that came to mind which was “Sorry I hate mountains”
This is maybe my favorite response to this post, holy shit.
Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles,
tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they
don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight
them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit
space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they’re as likely
as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the
process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and
accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually
happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.
So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.
Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don’t realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They’re just like “yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience”.
THE ONLY REASON SCOTTY IS CHIEF ENGINEER INSTEAD OF SOMEONE FROM A SPECIES WITH A HIGHER TECHNOLOGICAL APTITUDE IS BECAUSE EVERYONE FROM THOSE SPECIES TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE’S ENGINE ROOM AND RAN AWAY SCREAMING
vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core
humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast
vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast
humans: hahaha yeah
humans: it did tho
vsa: IT EXPLODED
humans: it exploded twice as fast
I love this. Especially because of how well it plays with my headcanon that the Federation does so much better against the Borg than anyone else because beating the Borg with military tactics is nigh-impossible, but beating them with wacky superscience shenanigans works as long as they’re unique wacky superscience shenanigans.
Yeah, I love this.
Reminds me of the thing I wrote a while back about Humans in high fantasy realms - they’re basically Team Fuck It Hold My Beer I Got This.
Impulsive, passionate to a fault, the social structures they build to try and regulate this hotheadedness ironically creates even greater levels of sheer bull-headedness. Even their “cooler” heads take action in months or weeks.
All their great heroes of the past were impossibly rash by galactic standards. Humans Just Go With It, which is their great flaw but also their greatest strength.
klingons: okay we don’t get it
vulcan science academy: get what
klingons: you vulcans are a bunch of stuffy prisses but you’re also tougher, stronger, and smarter than humans in every single way
klingons: why do you let them run your federation
vulcan science academy: look
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores they don’t do experiments on one and save the other for if the first one blows up
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores, they will ask for a third one, immediately plug all three into each other, punch a hole into an alternate universe where humans subscribe to an even more destructive ideological system, fight everyone in it because they’re offended by that, steal their warp cores, plug those together, punch their way back here, then try to turn a nearby sun into a torus because that was what their initial scientific experiment was for and they didn’t want to waste a trip.
vulcan science academy: they did that last week. we have the write-up right here. it’s getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how.
vulcan science academy: this is why we let them do whatever the hell they want.
