there’s a thing I think about sometimes when I’m writing that I call ‘the rabies condition’
by which I mean: there are no contraindications to getting the rabies vaccine for post-exposure prophylaxis.
every other vaccine usually has a few contraindications like ‘don’t take this if you’re allergic to it’ or ‘if you’re pregnant discuss the risks and benefits with your doctor’ or ‘don’t give to children below age 6′ or something, but not the rabies vaccine. if you’ve been exposed to rabies, there is literally no medical reason that can justify not getting the rabies vaccine--you can be deadly allergic to literally every single ingredient and the correct decision is still to administer the vaccine, because if you don’t, you’re 100% guaranteed to die of rabies. even the life-threatening allergies are a step up in survival rate (especially since anaphylaxis is something that can be managed, even if there are risks associated with it)
which is to say, the rabies condition: if a character has been ‘exposed to rabies’, aka, in some impending absolute worst-case scenario, like the apocalypse or some death curse or the destruction of their entire city via demons or whatever, then that character has to take action and the consequences and risks no longer matter, because literally any other outcome would be better, and 1% chance of survival is still better than 0%. that doesn’t make those actions necessarily good, the same way that injecting yourself with something you know you’re deadly allergic not a good thing to do, but it’s still better than dying horrifically of rabies. desperate times and desperate measures etc
and then, after your character’s prevented some horrible thing by doing some almost equally bad thing, they should absolutely experience the consequences of those choices.
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you need a library card
Almost everyone I know doesn't have a library card, and some of them read less than they want to because they can't afford to buy the books they want???? GUYS BIG SOLUTION TIME
BOOKS! Audiobooks! DVDS! Movie/series/documentary streaming services! Ebooks! Video games! Magazines!
Air conditioning! Wifi! Heat! Meeting rooms to reserve! Copy machines! Printers! Quiet safe place!
FOR FREE! FOR FREE! NO COST! FOR FREE!!!
Let's face is inflation is killing us, and you may have had to sacrifice buying books for fun, keeping the heat at a comfortable temp, cancel a few subscriptions. Enter your library card
"I don't have time to go a library" me neither I use the audiobook and ebook app daily and check out digital books and get them on my phone immediately
"I want to support the author" If you like it then you buy it! You don't have to pay up front for something you might not like ten pages in! Buy a book you know you love even if you don't plan to reread it to support the author!
"I don't want to wait for a book" Fair enough then don't, check out the books you can wait for
This world has home, where you pay to be, and very very few places outside of the home that you don't have to pay to be. If you're losing your head and need to get out for a few hours, you have to pay to exist almost anywhere you want to go. Not libraries.
I've gone to libraries weekly, almost daily at times, my whole life and they have never once asked anything of me. They give.
This world takes and takes and takes and libraries give and give and give and you deserve to be given lovely things.
It is not hard to get a library card, for most people. In most places I've lived you need some form of evidence you live in the area the library serves, and I've brought in a piece of mail, a student ID or an electric bill and been good to go. Many libraries also work with people who don't have documentation like this to get one anyway.
Get a library card even if you don't think you'll use it. Because one day there will be a book you really want that your local bookstore doesn't have, but who has it? THE LIBRARY! GO GET IT!
This is a USA centric post, and also goes out to my non-American cousins who taught me that libraries are a beautiful gift and not a given, and we should take advantage of it more often than we do
Get a library card, love yourself
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i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.
He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.
And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.
And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.
Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.
Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."
There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.
It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.
Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.
At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.
"Do you like to do anything?"
Nothing. Just silence.
Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.
Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.
Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.
And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.
He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.
Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.
So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.
"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"
"Don't."
He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.
Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"
"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."
It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"
The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."
Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."
And they fall back into silence.
Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."
He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.
(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)
At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.
Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.
("Tucker told me once--")
("Tucker?")
("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")
(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)
(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)
It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."
The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."
The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.
When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.
Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.
"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."
When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.
Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.
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one of the things I think a lot of goyim esp western based don’t clock about Jews is that a lot of the places we lived before mass immigration to the US&west and the creation of the state of Israel not only often pretty violently killed or expelled us, but were and are sights of continual warfare and dislocation that was and continued to be fucked up by external and internal conflict, by the direct actions of the British ottoman French American and Russian imperialisms….. Jews only became a “western” people through the acts of violent dislocations from our homelands we’d often lived in for hundreds and thousands of years.
We lived in Afghanistan. We lived in Yemen. We lived in Iraq. We lived in Serbia. We lived in Bosnia & Herzegovina. We lived in Belarus. We lived in Ethiopia. We lived in Algeria. We lived in Morocco. We lived in Syria. We lived in Iran. We lived in Kurdistan. And we lived in Ukraine. We often have complicated histories with these places, varying extents to which we identified with them or with the nationalisms that drew their borders, but we lived there, and in so many ways, from our language to stories to food, we carry them with us and are hurt by the loss of their memory in our lives, pushed into the diaspora of the diaspora. None of this justifies the often profoundly violent antisemitisms we found there, nor should it allow for simple rounds of flag waving - our communities were almost always older than the modern states, and many institutionalized Jewishness as something irreconcilable from the modern National Citizen. But we lived there. Inextricably we are a part of their history, just as they are a part of us.
Any simplistic takes about how Israeli jews should just LEAVE AND GO HOME without understanding the contexts of why that isn’t possible not only whitewashes histories of violent antisemitism but also the CURRENT ongoing realities in many of the countries we lived in, and it comes off not only as callous to Jews but to the people who continue to live there, after our links were severed. Any antizionism that doesn’t seriously reckon with these histories is incomplete. “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” The American goy asks. I think of my friends and community. To Odessa? Or to Baghdad? To Aleppo? Or to Herat? YOU TELL ME.
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