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excalculus · 22 days

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I saw some mentions of rabies going around again and have no clue what's set it off this time, but given recent scientific developments I want to revisit the idea of curing symptomatic rabies.

First things first: there is still no practical way to do this. The famous Milwaukee Protocol fails far more frequently than it succeeds, and even the successes are not making it out in anything like a normal state. It's been argued that it should no longer be considered a valid treatment [1] due to these issues; any continued use is because there's literally nothing else on the table.

However. There are now two separate studies showing it's possible to cure rabies in mice after the onset of symptoms. The lengths you have to go to in order to pull this off are drastic, to put it mildly, and couldn't really be adapted to humans even if you wanted to. But proof of concept is now on the board.

long post under the cut, warnings for animal experimentation and animal death. full bibliography at the end and first mention of each source links to paper.

Quick recap - rabies is a viral disease of mammals usually transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal. From a contaminated bite wound, it propagates slowly for anywhere from days to months until it reaches the central nervous system (CNS). Post-exposure vaccination can head it off during this phase, but once it reaches the CNS and neurological symptoms appear it's game over. There will typically be a prodromal phase where the animal doesn't act right - out at the wrong time of day, disoriented, abnormally friendly, etc. This will then progress to the furious (stereotypical "mad dog" disease) and/or paralytic phases, with death eventually caused by either seizures or paralysis of the muscles needed for breathing.

That's the course we're familiar with in larger animals. Mice, though, are fragile little creatures with fast metabolisms.

In the first study's rabies infection model, lab mice show rabies virus in the spinal cord by day 4 after infection and in the brain by day 5. Weight loss and slower movement start by day 7, paralysis starting from the hind limbs from day 8 on, and if not euthanized first they're dead by day 10-13. [2]

This study (fittingly conducted at the Institut Pasteur) had two human monoclonal antibodies, and wanted to see if there was any possibility they could be used to cure rabies after what we think of as the point of no return.

Injecting the antibodies into muscle saved some mice if done at days 2 or 4, and none if done later, even at high doses of 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of each. Conclusion: targeting the virus out in the rest of the body is no use if it's already replicating in the CNS.

Getting a drug past the blood-brain barrier is, to use a highly technical term, really fucking hard. It's the sort of problem that even the best-funded labs and biggest companies in the world routinely fail at. And that's for small molecule drugs, which are puny compared to antibodies.

But this isn't drug development for a clinical trial. This is a very, very early proof-of-concept attempt, which means you're willing to ignore practicality to see if this idea is even remotely workable. So you can do things like brute force the issue by cutting through the skull to implant a microinfusion pump, which lets you deliver the antibodies directly into the normally-protected space around the brain. Combine this with the normal injections, and you can treat both the CNS and the rest of the body at the same time. Here's a survival graph of treated mice. X axis is days, Y axis is percentage of mice in that group still alive.

Figure 2A from reference 2, accessed February 2024

The fact that the blue, green, and purple lines did anything other than sink horribly to zero is unheard of. When the combination treatment was started at day 6, 100% of the mice survived. Started at day 7 (prodromal phase), 5 out of 9 mice recovered and survived. Started at day 8 (solidly symptomatic, paralysis already starting to set in), 5 of 15 mice recovered and survived. And when they say "survived", they kept these mice all the way to day 100 to make sure. Some of them had permanent minor paralysis but largely they were back to being normal mice doing normal mouse things. So, success, but by pretty extreme means.

Enter the second paper [3]. This was a different approach using a single human monoclonal antibody against Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV - closely related to rabies, similar symptoms in humans) to try for a cure without needing to deliver treatments directly into the CNS. They also made a luminescent version of ABLV that let them directly image viral activity, so they could see both where the virus was replicating and how much there was in a live mouse.

Figure 1 from reference 3, accessed February 2024

Mice infected with ABLV start showing symptoms around day 8. You can see in the figure that at day 3 there's viral replication in the foot at the site of infection, which has shifted into the spine and brain by day 10. So what happens if you give one of these doomed mice one single injection of the antibody into the body?

Done at day 3, the virus doesn't make it to the brain until day 14, and while disease does set in after that around 30% of the mice survive. Days 5 and 7 are much more interesting. Those mice still develop symptoms at day 8, but the imaging shows the amount of virus in their spines and brains never gets anywhere near the levels seen in untreated controls, and within days it starts to decrease. Around 80% of day 5 and 100% of day 7 mice survive.

Okay, sure, you can stop another lyssavirus, but technically you did start treatment before symptoms appeared. What about symptomatic rabies?

The rodent-adapted rabies strain CVS-11 starts causing symptoms as early as day 3 after infection, and untreated mice die between days 8 and 11. The same single dose of antibody saved 67% of mice treated on day 5 and 50% of mice treated on day 7. Without making the luminescent version of the virus there's no real-time imaging of the infection, but you can still track symptoms.

Figure 2 from reference 3, accessed February 2024. CVS-11 is the name of the rodent rabies strain and F11 is the name of the antibody.

Disease score is a combination of several metrics including things like whether the mice are behaving normally and whether they show signs of paralysis. In untreated mice it goes up and up, and then they die. If one of those lines starts coming back down and continues past day 10 or so, that's a mouse that recovered. The success rate isn't as good as against ABLV, but again, this is a rabies strain specifically adapted to rodents and treatment wasn't started until it was well-established in the CNS.

So how on earth is this happening? The antibody neutralizes both ABLV and rabies really well in a test tube, but we've already established that there's no way a huge lumbering antibody is making it past the blood-brain barrier without serious help. Something about the immune response is clearly making it in there though. And it turns out that if you start trying this cure in mice missing various parts of their immune systems, mice without CD4+ T cells don't survive even with the treatment. By contrast mice without CD8+ T cells take longer to work through the infection, but they eventually manage it and are immune to reinfection afterwards.

To grossly oversimplify the immune system here, CD4+ are mature helper T cells, which work mostly by activating other immune cells like macrophages (white blood cells) and CD8+ T cells (killer T cells) against a threat.

Normally, T cells are also kept out by the blood-brain barrier, but we know that in certain specific cases including viral infection they can pass it to migrate into the brain. In the brains of the infected mice for which antibody treatment either wasn't given or didn't work, you can find a roughly even mix of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells along with a whole lot of viral RNA. But in the brains of those successfully fighting off the infection, there's less viral RNA and the cells are almost exclusively CD4+. So the antibody doesn't work by neutralizing the virus directly - something about it is activating the animal's own immune system in a way that gives it a fighting chance.

Again, neither of these proof of concept treatments is really workable yet as a real world cure. The first one is almost hilariously overkill and still has a pretty good chance of failure. The second is less invasive but careful sequencing still shows both low-level viral replication and signs of immune response in the brains of the survivors even at day 139, so it may not be truly clearing the virus so much as trading a death sentence for life with a low-level chronic infection. But now we know that 1. curing rabies after symptoms begin is at least theoretically possible, and 2. we have some clues as to mechanisms to investigate further.

Not today. Not tomorrow. But maybe not never, either.

References:

Zeiler, F. A., & Jackson, A. C. (2016). Critical appraisal of the Milwaukee protocol for rabies: this failed approach should be abandoned. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 43(1), 44-51.

de Melo, G. D., Sonthonnax, F., Lepousez, G., Jouvion, G., Minola, A., Zatta, F., ... & Bourhy, H. (2020). A combination of two human monoclonal antibodies cures symptomatic rabies. EMBO molecular medicine, 12(11), e12628.

Mastraccio, K. E., Huaman, C., Coggins, S. A. A., Clouse, C., Rader, M., Yan, L., ... & Schaefer, B. C. (2023). mAb therapy controls CNS‐resident lyssavirus infection via a CD4 T cell‐dependent mechanism. EMBO Molecular Medicine, 15(10), e16394.

#rabies #biology #long post #animal death #medicine #original content

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adrienaline-rushed-art · 2 years

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CN: "Aw, thanks Ladybug, I'll feel at peace when someone finds this on my lifeless body."

LB: " >:( ...I'll kill you dead myself, then" This comic has been echoing in the chambers of my skull since the moment I finished watching Destruction and I finally drew it. The scene of Ladybug handing Chat Noir the "halfwit" note had me dying and then I realized... he really spent who knows how long with that thing in his bell. Alternatives for the note: "precious baby boy baby", "good kitty", "ladybug's favorite", "ladybug's treasure", "blorbo", "perfect", "amazing", "wonderful", "phenomenal", "extraordinary"... need I go on?

#miraculous ladybug #ml fanart #ml comic #ml spoilers #ml s5 spoilers #ml destruction #chat noir #adrien agreste #ladybug #marinette dupain-cheng #ladynoir #ml lovesquare #cass arts

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nixthelapin · 2 months

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A Jekyll&Hyde type akuma whose power is to bring out a hidden or repressed part of your personality (but like, making two of you instead of switching in one body), and when Chat gets hit suddenly there’s both “normal” Chat (I’ll get to that in a sec) and Cat Walker/Patte de Velours at the same time.

(Cue Ladybug freaking out upon learning they’re the same person)

“Normal” Chat looks the same, but is just a bit more intense (since this is Adrien’s way of “letting loose” to not be how he is as a civilian, he’s not too different, but because of the split he does lose some usual traits). I.e. *heavily* flirting with LB, going at it with the puns, more agressive and impulsive with the akuma, doesnt like following orders (especially with the remaining feelings of anger towards the partnership being put further into question as LB prefers CW), heart on his sleeve

Cat Walker is also not super different to the episode he was in, but is also more intense thanks to the akuma: all business- no nonsense, doesn’t laugh at jokes (even in a “I’ll laugh if you want” way, like in Kuroneko), cordial to LB, follows LB’s orders to a T (to the point of not making his own decisions in battle), calm and collected (almost emotionless, even with that plastered smile)

CN starts to hate CW as the fight goes on, because LB seems to prefer him (and she’s understandably getting annoyed with CN’s impulsivity). CN gets territorial, saying that he’s LB’s partner. CW: “then why did she replace you with me?” (Man, look at all the self hatred in Adrien’s psyche!)

So CN runs off and leaves them alone to fight the akuma. This ticks LB off even more, but she has an akuma to deal with- and she has CW- so she lets him go.

As the fight goes on, some of the same issues from Kuroneko occur, so she also gets frustrated with CW too.

Since he’s acting more extreme than normal (more like someone awaiting orders than a partner due to the Jekyll&Hyde thing), it causes more problems (like him waiting for her decisions leaving openings where he could’ve done something proactive)

She actually blows up at him, asking why he didn’t do anything (“I was waiting for you to tell me the plan!”), and she says he should be able to think on his own, he doesn’t need her to tell him everything, but- “I thought I was just being what you wanted.”

(He’s shocked and genuinely hurt- though it’s still pretty quiet emotion, subdued and apologetic)

And that’s when it clicks for her what becoming CW was back in Kuroneko. He was molding himself for her. And this version of CW is even more of that. She realizes just how much CN suppresses, not just for her, but for everyone- why else would this be a major aspect of his personality?

(Also, Patte de Velours? Velvet Paw? That’s basically saying he’s been declawed. Yikes.)

She makes CN get his butt back to the fight (or she finds him- he may have been doing something while away like talking with someone, maybe Alya or Nino, or Luka). CN and CW argue more, with insults. Then she goes on a whole rant/lecture to them about how important they both are, both to her and to each other, how they are one person, and their traits are both important, but each extreme is not great. Ex: instinct/impulse and service/obedience (the key is self control, so that your emotions aren’t controlling you, but neither is another person). He is allowed to be both! Neither personality is bad, and hating one is just hating himself- he can’t just reject a fundamental part of himself.

She makes them agree to work together to defeat the akuma. It’s awkward at first, but they get a rhythm by seeing where each one is needed in the plan (LB does still do that, but how they follow is more fluid now). Two cataclysms now! Yay! (Maybe they used their powers already and have to de transform, and they see themselves as Adrien- the same one, not different, and it gets through their skulls. Idk I’m spitballing).

They have a quick talk between the two about accepting each other, it won’t be easy, I’m nervous, we’ll be okay (“yeah, I think we will :)”), etc.

Ends with them combining back with the ladybug cure. Surprise! His outfit is combined too! (Honestly, I just want the ponytail with the fluffy hair)

LB and CN have a talk after recharging about everything. CN apologizes for lying about CW and explains why and how he did it. LB didn’t realize how much he hid. She never meant for him to change or hate parts of himself. He thought she didn’t like the CN parts of him, but LB promises that isn’t true. She admits she did get… annoyed, but never hate! She loves both sides of him. Besides, CW didn’t work out that first time, remember? (Though she very much leaves out her intense crushing being the deciding factor there)

CN admits he feels more, well, not whole, exactly, he’s actually still pretty uncertain about what all this means for “who he is,” but… he can at least say he feels less like he has to perform all the time. He loves being Chat Noir, but he is exaggerating a bit when he transforms, in part to be not like his civilian life. He tells her he’s not like that as a civilian, but he’s also not like Cat Walker. But he’s not really sure who “he” is yet. (What I’m getting at is Oblivio!Adrien- dorky, but not over the top, in love, trusts his lady to make the plan, but is still proactive, etc.)

LB says that’s okay, he doesn’t have to figure it out right away. But she’ll be there to help him figure it out.

END

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the-demonus-aunt · 1 year

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More.

CN Lucifer x reader. Fluff. Bit of angst. No major trigger warnings.

He stared at his own name, a rumble in his stomach and a distinct pressure deep in the back of his skull signaling yet another headache. He'd been staring for a while, sick of the way the lines of his handwriting curved and flattened out, curved and flattened out.

If he had to sign one more paper, open one more file, he'd throw it all away and walk to the other end of the Devildom.

At least, that's what Lucifer dreamt about as he sighed and finally continued his work.

Lucifer Morningstar. Stamp. Lucifer Morningstar. Stamp. Lucifer Morningstar. Stamp.

It was the easiest part of his day and yet the most tedious. It left room for thinking. Contemplating. Yearning.

Room for the idea of more than a life bound to a desk, his quill his best friend, coffee his most important partner.

Because while Lucifer was known for his work ethic, praised for his accomplishments, admired for his discipline - millennia of work were not what he had always pictured for himself.

Sure. He couldn't really help it. Between his Pride, his oath to the Prince and the havoc his brothers wrought - what choice did he have?

But sometimes, in moments of quiet like this, he wondered what it would be like. To have some free time. To not have the highlight of his day be the glass of demonus and a few mellow tunes from a cursed record right before bed.

Speaking of quiet... Why was the HOL so still? The only sound to be heard the crackling of fire - and the knock on his door.

"You may come in." A knot of anxiety formed in his stomach: Would it be Mammon bringing in more dept? Or Satan bringing in more guilt? Might it be Barbatos with another stack of paperwork?

The knot was quickly untied by little bats, fluttering about within him, as you stuck your head into his study.

"They're all in their rooms, studying...or pretending to", you proclaimed, knowing very well he was expecting bad news.

"I thought you could use a break."

Your soft smile was all Lucifer needed to snap out of his misery. At least for now.

"Do you want to go into town with me? There's this flea market that should be open for another few hours."

He looked down at the last two documents that required his signature. Maybe there could be more. Maybe just a bit.

At least, he could see a flimmer of it in your eyes, as you beckoned him to join you.

#obey me #obey me!#obey me shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me! shall we date?#obey me headcanons #obey me brothers #lucifer obey me #obey me fluff #om lucifer fluff #lucifer fluff #om lucifer x reader #lucifer x reader #om lucifer #lucifer om #obey me lucifer imagine #obey me imagines

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thecreaturecodex · 1 year

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Octorilla

Image © Emperor's Choice Games, by William Watt.

[Commissioned by @crazytrain48. The octorilla is an Arduin monster with a long, but strange, history. An illustration first appears in the second volume of the Arduin Trilogy, Welcome to Skull Tower, and that book includes them on encounter tables. But there aren't stats for them (at least, I think. I only have a compilation of the Arduin Trilogy rather than each book separately). The first time I could find statistics is in the Arduin Eternal edition, which coincided with a very nice miniature from Emperor's Choice Games.

Note also that the octorilla only has six limbs. The name is clearly a portmanteau of "octopus" and "gorilla", ala the term "owlbear", rather than a description of their limbs.]

Octorilla CR 9 CN Magical Beast This creature resembles a humanoid ape, except that it has a beak instead of a mouth, and four slimy tentacles in place of its forearms.

Octorillas are yet another form of hybrid creature created by transmuters in an attempt to create useful servitors and warriors. By combining the clever problem solving of octopuses with the social structure of gorillas, the original creator of the octorilla was hoping that the resultant chimera would be a useful fighter and willing to follow orders. This had mixed results. Octorillas are smarter than, say, an owlbear, but they are independently minded and they are usually resentful of creatures that try to impose their will on them. Although some octorillas are still in captivity serving as moat monsters or palace guards, most of them are free living and free willed.

An octorilla is a fairly simple combatant—they wade into melee and grab prey with their slimy, suckered tentacles. If they don’t have a prey item grabbed, they can use their tentacles to swat arrows and bolts out of the sky. Their tentacles ooze a sticky slime that is mildly acidic. This helps octorillas break food down into small enough pieces in order to consume easily (like their octopus ancestors, their gut passes through the brain, limiting the size of what they can swallow). Octorillas are immune to toxins and resistant to corrosives, which allows them to live in a wide variety of environments, including polluted swamps, radioactive wastelands, or other challenging areas. They require plenty of water, but can survive in both salt and freshwater. Octorillas lair in areas with three dimensional structures to climb on, such as sea caves, coral reefs or tree-filled swamps.

Octorillas remain solitary for most of their lives. When the urge to mate takes them, multiple females will gather at a place with still water, and a male will mate with each of them. This harem will care for their eggs together, with the male assisting by provisioning food when females cannot hunt for themselves. Once the eggs hatch, the mating clutch disperses, but octorillas can recognize their own young and sometimes assist the larvae by bringing them prey. Juvenile octorillas are fully aquatic for their first year or so of life and amphibious thereafter.

Octorillas can be taught to understand a spoken language, and even to speak a few words roughly, but communicate amongst each other without one.

Octorilla CR 9 XP 6,400 CN Large magical beast (aquatic) Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, Perception +11, tremorsense 30 ft. Defense AC 23, touch 10, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +13 natural) hp 123 (13d8+52) Fort +12, Ref +9, Will +9 Immune paralysis, poison; Resist acid 10 Defensive Abilities opportunistic deflection Offense Speed 30 ft., climb 20 ft., swim 40 ft. Melee bite +18 (1d8+6), 4 tentacles +16 (1d6+3 plus 1 acid and grab) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. Special Attacks constrict (tentacles, 2d6+9 plus 4 acid), slime Statistics Str 23, Dex 12, Con 19, Int 4, Wis 16, Cha 9 Base Atk +13; CMB +20 (+28 grapple); CMD 31 Feats Blind Fight,Combat Reflexes, Improved Initiative,Iron Will,Lunge,Multiattack, Skill Focus (Survival) Skills Climb +18, Perception +11, Survival +12, Swim +18 SQ amphibious Ecology Environment warm and temperate swamps Organization solitary or clutch (2-6) Treasure incidental Special Abilities Opportunistic Deflection (Ex) An octorilla can use its tentacles to deflect projectiles as if it had the Deflect Arrows feat. It has to have its tentacles free in order to use this ability, and must use an attack of opportunity in order to deflect a projectile. Slime (Ex) An octorilla’s tentacles secrete a sticky slime that grants them a +8 racial bonus on grapple checks instead of the usual +4 granted by the grab monster ability. A creature struck by a tentacle attack takes 1 point of acid damage.

#octorilla #chimera #pathfinder 1e #D&D #arduin #commissions

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meikuree · 9 months

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previous reblog made me look up my compilation of quotes/passages that struck me when I read The God of Small Things, which I’d previously posted only on dreamwidth. below the cut, for enjoyment and curiosity (cn for mentions of gore and sexual harassment):

The nights are clear, but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation. But by early June the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with. The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn moss green. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers burst through laterite banks and spill across flooded roads. Boats ply in the bazaars. And small fish appear in the puddles that fill the PWD potholes on the highways.

Yet Estha’s silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn’t an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season.

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory; dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue.

---

Other days he walked down the road. Past the new, freshly baked, iced, Gulf-money houses built by nurses, masons, wire-benders and bank clerks, who worked hard and unhappily in faraway places. Past the resentful older houses [...] Each a tottering fiefdom with an epic of its own.

---- It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined. Over the years, as the memory of Sophie Mol (the seeker of small wisdoms: Where do old birds go to die? Why don’t dead ones fall like stones from the sky? The harbinger of harsh reality: You’re both whole wogs and I’m a half one. The guru of gore: I’ve seen a man in an accident with his eyeball twinging on the end of a nerve, like a yo-yo) slowly faded, the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive. It was always there. Like a fruit in season.

--- She waged war on the weather. She tried to grow edelweiss and Chinese guava.

--- Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house-the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture- must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for.

--- His cremation was attended by all the boxers in Bengal. A congregation of mourners with lantern jaws and broken noses.

----

Ammu loved her children (of course), but their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn’t really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them-just as an education, a protection.

---

When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs, Ammu felt the woman that looked back at her was someone else. A foolish jeweled bride. Her silk sunset-colored sari shot with gold. Rings on every finger. White dots of sandalwood paste over her arched eyebrows. Looking at herself like this, Ammu’s soft mouth would twist into a small, bitter smile at the memory-not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed so absurd. So futile.

other shorter lines I put in admittedly for much more superficial reasons like “hey! a pretty sentence!” (too short on time to put borders between different passages, sorry)

Pappachi’s Moth was held responsible for his black moods and sudden bouts of temper. Its pernicious ghost-gray, furry and with unusually dense dorsal tufts-haunted every house that he ever lived in. It tormented him and his children and his children’s children. They were a family of Anglophiles. Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps-because their footprints had been swept away. When he was in this sort of mood, Chacko used his Reading Aloud voice. His room had a church-feeling. He didn’t care whether anyone was listening to him or not. And if they were, he didn’t care whether or not they had understood what he was saying. Ammu called them his Oxford Moods. Ammu said it was all hogwash. Just a case of a spoiled princeling playing Comrade. Comrade! An Oxford avatar of the old zamindar mentality-a landlord forcing his attentions on women who depended on him for their livelihood. Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones-a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother’s marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered. She had wanted a smooth performance. A prize for her children in the Indo-British Behavior Competition. Shadows followed them. Silver jets in a blue church sky, like moths in a beam of light. They were presents for a seven-year-old; Rahel was nearly eleven. It was as though Ammu believed that if she refused to acknowledge the passage of time, if she willed it to stand still in the lives of her twins, it would. As though sheer willpower was enough to suspend her children’s childhoods until she could afford to have them living with her. Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, caught off guard. Sloughed off like an old snakeskin. In its absence it left an aura, a palpable shimmering that was as plain to see as the water in a river or the sun in the sky. As plain to feel as the heat on a hot day, or the rug of a fish on a taut line. So obvious that no one noticed. A pair of actors trapped in a recondite play with no hint of plot or narrative. Stumbling through their parts, nursing someone else’s sorrow. Grieving someone else’s grief. [...] inside, map-breath’d ancestors with tough toe-nails whispered to the lizards on the wall. That History used the back verandah to negotiate its terms and collect its dues. […] on the day History picked to square its books, Estha would keep the receipt for the dues that Velutha paid. The glint of Ammu’s needle. The color of a ribbon. The weave of the cross-stitch counterpane. A door slowly breaking. Isolated things that didn’t mean anything. As though the intelligence that decodes life’s hidden patterns-that connects reflections to images, glints to light, weaves to fabrics, needles to thread, walls to rooms, love to fear to anger to remorse-was suddenly lost. He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart. [...] Something to do with Death’s authority. Its terrible stillness. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly adult. They looked out at the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine.

#personally? i liked the shade thrown at the oxford graduate uncle and the rhodes scholarship #and the last bit about men who had been abandoned by childhood #but also everything else #the god of small things #books #arundhati roy #meikuree talks

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whump-captain · 8 months

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inspired by this post bc i couldn't get it out of my head all day.

---

CN: gunshot wound, passing out, bridal carry, possession (pre-existing)

---

The motion made Ethan's head spin. Lucy's arms were like ropes around him and the heavy landing of her steps made him jolt. His left arm was around her neck and he held on to her as desperately as he did to consciousness.

Already his heaving breaths did not feel voluntary. A foreign will inflated his lungs by force, then squeezed his ribcage to contract them again. Every time, the wound in his side shifted, the flesh ripped further and the pain claimed more of his vision. His whimpers came muffled when he hid his face in Lucy's shoulder. Fainting would bring relief. But he already felt the other consciousness pushing in, eager to take over when he gave up. It whispered to him its marvel at how the bullet merged with their flesh. It wanted to feel more.

There was no cruelty in how it wrapped itself around Ethan's thoughts and melted them all into numbness. Still, he shook all over as he felt his body become someone else's, piece by bloodied piece.

In response, Lucy held him tighter. Her footsteps were wavering, she'd slowed from a run to barely a stride. The more strength seeped out of Ethan's body, the heavier he became in her arms. The bleeding had stopped but her shirt was already stiff with crimson. It made her cold to the bone.

The grip of Ethan's hand on her shoulder was painful, too strong to be human. The tears that trickled down his face were taking on a golden tint. His breathing grew shallow.

Glittering black spilled into his mind and smothered the pain like the last fighting ember of a flame. Even the fear was taken from him. He twisted his hand, his real one, into Lucy's shirt, trying to cling to her warmth.

"Don't leave me alone," he pleaded with the last of his voice.

Lucy locked her jaw tight and her gaze forward.

"I'm here," she muttered.

Only in the corner of her vision did she see his eyes roll back into his skull. Then his whole body went slack.

She dropped to one knee. He weighed far more than someone of his build should have. Lucy's arms trembled with strain as she hoisted his body up and closer to her. She thought of padded gym floors and steel-cold barbells as she pushed herself up to her feet again. Slow, shuffling steps carried her forward.

She just had to keep moving. It didn't matter how. She'd get him to safety on her knees if that was what it took.

#whump #whump writing #whump oc #whump blog #whump community #fainting #passing out #gunshot wound #possession #possession whump #captain's stuff #captain's ocs #kintsugi #yeah im calling this comfort bc it's about as comfort as i go lmao #how did he get shot? don't worry about it

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penisliker-moved · 1 year

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its me a doctor and well connor im orescripbing pickaxe to the ehad. i have 50000 doctorates

#if i get rid of my skull i have no head to feel toothpain in lifehacks #AAAAA ALOL IT HURTS SO FUCJING BAD HELP ME!!!!!#I CANT EVEN FUCKING DO ANYTHING i took a dose of painkiller si just have to wait #and i wanna play games to distract myself but my head hurts too much and looking at a screen makes it worse #so i just have to sit in th dark but then the only thing i cn think abt is how bamy ttooth fuckig hurts #bc its like. my normal looking at a screen headache #and then the like. pain branching out from my tooth #its like. this radiating pain from the tooth and it hurts so much im abt to start crying

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faeriekit · 1 year

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Yo I love Quite Respite. What headcannons do you gots for Cass? P.S. I hope you do wonderfully well

Ask games: 10 headcanons about a character, go!

Y'all have got to remember too that I haven't read/watched/seen any actual DC stuff since Teen Titans stopped airing on CN. Wait no, I'm lying, I have the DVD so I watched it more recently- The point I'm making is that a lot of the fine details escape me so if this is secretly canon or way off the mark shdhdisjsbd sorry

Animals make more sense than people. They're easier for Cass to hang out with too.

As a result, Cass and Damian will do bonding activities that have to do with pets/animals. They might not speak the whole time.

Cass is probably capable of speaking way more than she does, but speech is impractical and unwieldy and sucks. She said what she said. More would be unnecessary.

I gave Cass a boyfriend in Quiet Respite, but I think she could and would date a girl if they got to a similar point. Bi Cass for the win.

Cass knows All The Secrets. She tells No One. Not because of loyalty- well, not just because of loyalty- but also because it's funny :)

SOMETIMES, though. Sometimes. If it's truly that funny. She will tell Alfred.

Cass is way more comfortable doing solo work, but tends to avoid it whenever possible, because it's super lonely. Having someone chatter, fidget, walk beside her is reassuring.

Stuffed animal queen. People keep giving them to her. She cherishes all of them. Once a year, if she doesn't get overstimulated or, you know, the world is ending, she'll do a single day of Wayne Family Charity Work™️ that would be the in-universe equivalent to Toys for Tots

She kicked ass ONCE at a public venue, in her real people face, and the sibling who was supposed to be her emotional support escort died laughing. Did she get in trouble? Yes. Worth it? Double yes.

"Kicking ass and taking names"? Nope. She doesn't know anyone's name unless they're a sibling. So many people get so many nicknames. Partially it's just easier in sign language but ALSO it's just more convenient inside her skull. What makes sense makes sense. Deal with it.

Thank you, I hope so too!! And thank you for playing!! 🎲

#ask game #faer nonsense #dcu crossover

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10bendog · 3 months

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I've been working on how the island of Townsville is gonna look in Sea 'n City (my Cartoon Network crossover AU) (same one I used for CN Akumas).

This is a work in progress elevation map of the main island and the smaller one to the north-west.

So, this is primarily the FusionFall map and you can tell pretty easily. I mean, it's was kinda already peak world design, so of course I'mma use it as a base for my version of Townsville. I have moved some things around, changed some stuff and added some more, but overall this is supposed to feel like the FusionFall world.

The Darklands are basically one to one, except Fuse is gone now in canon, so all his infection is cleared up.

The Suburbs are also mostly unchanged, apart from being higher up than Downtown. Also, the Sector V area is now above the Cul-de-Sac because I like it better this way.

The Wilds are decently different. Mount. Blackhead and the Magic Tree are moved, Leaky Lake is much larger, as it should be and the canyon is also quite a bit longer. The Pimpleback mountains are more show accurate. I added a bunch of stuff like more rivers, a large dam, a jungle plateau, volcanic hot springs to the north, a snowy mountain-range to south and a narrow path along said mountain-range that connects the Nowhere neighborhood to (what I've so creatively named) Downtown 2.

But before I get to that, I gotta mention OG Downtown, which has been elongated for convenience to make a longer beachfront, add extra stuff in the new space when I eventually get to drawing up the streets and buildings, and also add enough space for a mandatory airport to the west. Some areas from FusionFall will be reworked like City Hall and Townsville Center will become the streets from the CN City bumpers, Marquee Row - into the park from the Summer 2005 bumpers, Townsville Park - into the the large park from Ben 10, the unused skull island from the game - into a very tall offshore prison, etc. Also, the large cliff to the south has some houses at the base of it and Jasmine Lee lives a little further to the peak, similar to the cartoon.

A channel separates Downtown and Downtown 2, but there'll be a large bridge that connects them when I eventually add the streets. This is supposed to mimic certain depictions of Bellwood, Orchid Bay, Endsville and whatever the city Sector V lives in is called. Downtown 2 itself is a lot less fleshed out in my head atm, mostly because it's not from FusionFall, so there's no base to work from. There are 2 things I kept in mind when making it: 1 - Half of the location from The Big Picture Show are here (the waterfall, the swamp, the cliff and Mondo A-Go Go), and 2 - PPG's Tiny Tokyo is also here.

That's about my notes on this for now. Hope it makes sense.

IDK when I'll continue working on this map. Sea 'n City is a very "in the back" project for me. It's here for the long run, basically.

I guess it really depends on when motivation and inspiration whack me over the head to draw up the streets 'n stuff, but for now I have other projects at the forefront to attend to.

P.S. If you happen to be rereading CN Akumas, idk if this map will make more sense or less. I came up with the airport location and the island prison before I started writing CN Akumas, but I added the jungle plateau, the hot springs and the whole of Downtown 2 after I finished that story, so they aren't featured there at all.

#fusionfall #my art #cartoon network #sea n city #world building

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dungeonmastertyrant · 4 months

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Cleric (Trickery domain)

Cleric Spells

Cleric level 1: Charm Person and Disguise Self

Cleric level 3: Mirror Image and Pass Without Trace

Cleric level 5: Blink and Dispel Magic

Cleric level 7: Dimension Door and Polymorph

Cleric level 9: Dominate Person and Modify Memory

Blessing of the Trickster: Starting when you choose this domain at 1st level you can use your action to touch a creature other than yourself to give it advantage on Stealth checks. This blessing lasts for 1 hour or until you use this feature again.

Channel Divinity: Invoke Duplicity: Starting at 2nd level you can use your Channel Divinity to create an illusory duplicate of yourself. As an action you create a perfect illusion of yourself that lasts for 1 minute or until you lose your concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell). The illusion appears in an unoccupied space that you can see within 30 feet of you. As a bonus action on your turn you can move the illusion up to 30 feet to a space you can see but it must remain within 120 feet of you. For the duration you can cast spells as though you were in the illusion's space but you must use your own senses. Additionally when both you and your illusion are within 5 feet of a creature that can see your illusion, you have advantage on attack rolls against that creature given how distracting the illusion is to the target.

Channel Divinity: Cloak of Shadows: Starting at 6th level you can use your Channel Divinity to vanish. As an action you become invisible until the end of your next turn. You can become visible if you attack or cast a spell.

Divine strike: At 8th level you gain the ability to infuse your weapon strikes with poison (a gift from your deity). Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack you can cause the attack to deal an extra 1d8 poison damage to the target. When you reach 14th level the extra damage increases to 2d8.

Improved Duplicity: At 17th level you can create up to 4 duplicates of yourself instead of 1 when you use Invoke Duplicity. As a bonus action on your turn you can move any number of them up to 30 feet to a maximum range of 120 feet.

Gods in this domain their alignment and their symbol:

Beshaba CE Black antlers, Cyric CE White jawless skull on black or purple sunburst, Leira CN Point-down triangle containing a swirl of mist, Mask CN Black mask, Shar NE Black disk encircled with a border, Tymora CG face up coin, Waukeen N Upright coin with Waukeen's profile facing left, Fharlanghn NG Circle crossed by a curved horizon line, Olidammara CN Laughing mask, Ralishaz CN 3 bone fate-casting sticks, Tharizdun CE Dark spiral or inverted ziggurat, Shinare N Griffon's wing, Hiddukel CE Broken merchant's scales, Olladra NG Domino, The Traveler CN 4 crossed rune-inscribed bones, Cults of the dragon below NE varies, Garl Glittergold LG gold nugget, Lolth (Lolth is also the villain of the dnd adventure out of the abyss sorry not sorry) CE Spider, Tiamat LE Dragon head with 5 claw marks, The Daghdha CG Bubbling cauldron or shield, Hecate CE Setting moon, Hera CN Fan of peacock feathers, Hermes CG Caduces (winged staff and serpents), Tyche N Red pentagram, Apep NE Flaming snake, Bes CN Image of the misshapen deity, Set CE Coiled cobra, Hermod CN Winged scroll, Loki CE Flame.

Source: Players Handbook

#dnd class #cleric

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