Stuff and Nonsense

Someone sounded like they were having a bad day on Twitter showed up in my mentions and was wishing for another chapter. I can’t do that, but I can do this, so: snippet from Chapter 26.

When you’re ready, you will turn to look upon it waiting for you on the shore, believing you powerless before it, and you will pick up your sword

*****

Castiel assists Chess, Kurt, and Lois with the transfer of the patients to the third floor, where the largest of the rooms that Nate helped repair has been prepared for their care.  Ichabod’s resources are limited, but everything that could be done was done, and fortunately, they’d been able to scavenge a great deal from the remains of the town’s former hospital, including equipment that until this week had been in storage.

Despite the powerful sedatives that were used to induce sleep, all three are restless, only marginally aware of their caretakers, just enough to fight them, their full attention on whatever it is that haunts their minds. 

After the patients’ new restraints are secured, Dolores and Sree check the patients a final time while Valli introduces him to Sasha, a young African-American woman from among the refugees who was in her junior year in college for a nursing degree when Kansas was zoned.  Just as importantly, she’s familiar with what they’re doing; her mother was a registered nurse who specialized in this type of long-term care and she volunteered at her mother’s hospital throughout her teens and did an internship there after her sophomore year due to her exemplary academic performance.

“She’s been with Lewis at the YMCA,” Valli says as he takes Sasha’s confidently extended hand, relieved when she shakes firmly with a smile that only flickers with nothing more ominous than surprise (and also doesn’t jerk away, very encouraging).  "If you want to tell her how great Ichabod is–you know, during regular times–do that; we’re trying to keep her.“  Seeing Dolores beckon, Valli excuses herself. Sasha laughs, smoothing down her immaculate scrubs, dark hair expertly pinned under a surgical cap like the rest of the medical staff.  "It’s nice to finally meet you, Castiel,” she says, and he can hear the light edge of a very familiar Southern drawl barely flattened by linguistic exile in the Midwest.  "I’ve heard a lot about you.“ "It was only one Hellhound,” he says, and her mouth twitches  "You’re originally from Georgia?“ 

Her smile widens. "How’d you guess?  My accent?” He nods.  "Most people in the Midwest can’t tell the difference. Been to Georgia recently?“ "I lived there for almost two years,” he answers, matching her drawl from memory, and she laughs in delight. “South of Atlanta.” “Athens,” she says, checking on the medical staff as they finish final preparations.  "Kansas State offered me a better scholarship than UG, so here I am.“

He nods; it might have also saved her life.  Atlanta had been a surprise (at least, to those not gifted with clairvoyance); Croatoan was identified in sixteen hospitals almost simultaneously and by then, it was already too late.  Using Alicia’s experience as a timeline, there’s a very good chance that her hospital was test run for Croat infection and probably identified the inherent weakness of infecting people (infants) who wouldn’t leave the hospital for at least twenty four hours (or forty-eight if they had excellent insurance).  It also probably told them exactly how long it would take for local and Federal response to the situation and exactly how it would be handled; that would be very useful information indeed.

"I have to admit,” she says lightly, “staying and finishing my nursing degree here–unofficially–is tempting.” Reading for tone, Castiel suspects her current town of residence is not to her taste.  "Ichabod is very pleasant,“ he agrees, remembering his responsibilities.  "But if you are at all fond of killing monsters as well as medicine, Chitaqua would also be an excellent choice.  We will be recruiting for a new class once Amanda is done with this one–” “Are you trying to steal the girl I’m trying to steal?” Dolores demands with a scowl that doesn’t reach her eyes, and Sasha starts to giggle.  "At least wait until I finish her education, how about that?“ "I suppose that’s fair,” he admits. “Are you ready?”

“Just about. Sasha, do me a favor and double check us; I want your approval before we start.” “Got it,” she says with a nod to Castiel, and with Valli in attendance, verifies the IVs as well as the patients.  Dolores, he sees, has a stapled stack of papers, the front page a checklist.

“Dummy’s guide to long term care,” Dolores explains. “She couldn’t write up an entire manual, but she got us pointed in the right direction; she’ll be in charge here. I gave her a crash-course on the drugs we’re using, but her internship was a godsend; the hospital actually did two of these, and her mentor not only worked both, but let her scrub in and lectured before and after. She has all her notes at her place, plus books; I already promised to send a battalion to take her to get them when this is over.”

“I’ll take her myself if possible,” Castiel offers. “I’ll consider this a request to Chitaqua; I don’t think Dean will object.  Will there be any problems with the town?  If she’s their only medical professional–”

“She’s not,” Dolores interrupts, and something in her voice reminds him of the tone in Sasha’s.  "Practicing there, anyway.“ "Okay, we’re a-go,” Sasha says.

“Cas, check the restraints one more time,” Dolores says.  "Sasha, I want you and Valli to observe administration; I’ll be doing it when I can, but I want both of you available in a pinch. Come over here so you can see what we’re working with.“ Castiel verifies the restraints; their struggles are already more determined.  As Dolores goes to Beretta, needle in hand, Castiel looks into the drugged, frightened eyes.  Instinctively, he reaches for one clenched fist, wrapping it in his own hand, trying to warm the cold fingers, offer comfort. Their awareness is so fragmented, he’s not sure they know anything but whatever horror chases them through their minds. Even if they could understand, he can’t even promise this will be better.

Abruptly, her glazed eyes clear and the chilly fingers move; loosening his grip, he feels her fingers fumble briefly before he realizes what she wants and gently, carefully, laces them between his own, squeezing. 

"Do you understand me?” he whispers.

She licks dry, chapped lips, and he sees a barely there nod.  For this moment, she can think, and he realizes he has no idea what to tell her, how to ease her terror.

“I am Castiel,” he tells her.  "You are being manipulated by a geas–a kind of compulsion.“ He searches her face. "Does it chase you still?” Her eyes widen, and she nods again, her grip tightening brutally around his fingers, grinding bone against bone; he doesn’t care.

“We are trying to make it stop.” How is it, that when he finally understands the value of comfort, he can’t give it?  If he were an angel, he could– *Please. Give me something for them; whatever will give them peace, I’ll take it.  Whatever will help them, I will say it.** 

“You are going to go to sleep now,” he starts helplessly, then stops.  "The next time you see it, you will run.“ 

"Whoa,” he hears Sasha say, and turning his head, he sees Bushmaster and Beard have stopped struggling, looking at him with the same frightened but aware eyes.

“When you see it, you will run,” he repeats.  "You won’t stop or look back, not once.  Do you understand me?“ They stares at him unblinkingly.

"Before you will be a cliff that overlooks an ocean so vast you cannot see its banks,” he continues, forming the outline of rough cliffs, a crescent of white-gold sand lapped by gentle waves.  "Within the ocean is a storm; don’t be afraid, for it will protect you.“ He meets each of their eyes, the image of glass-clear water darkening to deep, churning blue, sky swirling in charcoal and silver shot with lightning.  "When you reach the banks, you will go into the water; there you will be safe. It cannot follow you; it has no power there. You can rest.”

Through his mind runs a river painted robin’s egg blue, shallow and peaceful and a monstrous lie; what it offers is not and will never be peace.  "When you are rested, look upon the shores; you will see what chases you waiting there.  It cannot reach you there.” He can see the shore, the shimmering golden-brown perfection marred by an oily darkness, formless and haunting.  It chases you; it never, ever stops. “And if you choose, you can fight it.”

It stares at them all from the shores in its thousands of forms, relentless and mindless and cruel, chasing its victims in the inescapable confines of their very minds; you can run and hide and beg and plead, and it will still find you; sometimes, sometimes you can almost forget, and then it chases you again . It will never, ever stop.

What I fear I neither flee before nor beg for mercy; I kill.

"You can fight it,” he repeats into a curious silence.  "And you can win.“ Their attention is a weight all its own, massive, hanging over the entire room; he can no longer feel his fingers in Beretta’s tight grip.

"You will not face it unarmed, not this time,” he continues.  "Reach beneath the water; there, you will find a sword, and you will know it as you know yourself, for it is yours.  When you’re ready, you will turn to look upon it waiting for you on the shore, believing you powerless before it, and you will pick up your sword.“

For a moment, nothing happens, then first Bushmaster, then Beretta and Beard all nod, eyes wide and fixed.

"When you step on the shore, the battle will begin,” he whispers. “You will not run from it, not this time;  you will face it, and you will fight it, and you will *win**.” He squeezes Beretta’s hand and holds the eyes of the other two.  "Now close your eyes.  You must rest before battle.“

"Now, hurry,” he hears Dolores say as if from a great distance, vaguely aware of them moving around him, but it’s only when Dolores touches his shoulder that it occurs to him he should not be in their way.  Standing up, he’s startled by his own stagger, the world swaying before his eyes; almost immediately, Dolores is beside him, leading him to another chair. Shaking himself, he straightens and sees Dolores crouching before him, head cocked curiously.

https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1524224285082066953?t=AW-7wEu820f0TP0xImVRMg&s=19

Just me crying in the bathroom so I don't wake my partners with this, fuck.

So to sum up: CT and DC have passed laws making it illegal to extradite someone to another state if they are being charged in that other state for crimes pertaining to abortion or trans health care, and makes it legal to sue and get your money back if you are targeted by a TX-style "bounty" law. DC also includes "crimes" of consensual adult sex, gay and interracial marriage and cohabitation and providing or using contraception.

This is, as the thread explains, basically legal interstate warfare. CT and DC's laws bar compliance with such laws.

This is, on one hand, kind of terrifying, because this is where we are now. It's going to get worse long before it gets better.

On the other hand... holy shit, someone fucking did something.

After setting up a rudimentary website for CARP, the satirical, but still real company was offered a $15 million package of medical debt for $60,000.

Oliver explained that the debt was out of statute, which means it is the kind of debt that a collector can only continue to collect, but not sue the debtor for.

RIP Medical Debt is a charity (and therefore takes donations). They buy the rights to medical debt and then forgive them. So far they’ve forgiven over 1B in medical debt.

Let me simply present you with another possibility: what if he identifies as straight but he is actually curious and/or questioning and these so called jokes are his way of coping with/exploring his identity?

Another: what if he is not actually straight by definition, with all those 'loaded' moments with male costars and what not, being in a poly long-term relationship with a queer woman, and the whole long list that we've talked about to death, but has never been welcome/acknowledged by queer people close to him? What if he feels not queer 'enough' to actually use a label?

And another: what if he actually identifies as queer and was comfortable with that room thinking of him as bi but not for the whole world to do the same and all the consequences it might have for him and a lot of other people?

If you have never been forced to hide your identity, been insecure and subject to gatekeeping, and if you've never been unsure about what label defines you, then good for you.

Just consider the possibilities I mentioned above.

If any of those are true - and let me tell you each is more plausible than 'Misha's been acting queer on purpose while he was 100% straight to make personal gain', because what the actual fuck this is Misha you've known for 14 years - the last thing we want to do is to shut him out and write him off, exclude him from a space he doesn't have to wear his flag on his sleeve to be welcome to.

I saw this on twitter and putting it here.

Yes hi my GISH team made the GHOF yet again because they're all stupid talented and amazing and I love them with all my heart & soul.

Item #14: Tie-dye something that definitely, absolutely, should not be tie-dyed (you can use homemade vegetable dyes, if you like).

A friend of mine told me yesterday that he didn’t realise how much Ukraine meant to him until now. I posted yesterday about the time we spent there, and we’re all getting super pre-occupied about the invasion. As I said in that post, I can’t get our waitress out of my head. I can sort of remember what she looked like now. She had an undercut. I think maybe her hair might have been blue? But - I will never know if she lives through this, and it’s driving me very slightly mad.

So naturally, my husband spent all day yesterday obsessively researching everything he could about it with the help of his journalist friends, as a way to help me process it.

This post is me putting it all in order, as a way to try and process my own emotional response as much as anything else (I freely admit there is an element of self-indulgence here). Please don’t take me as the spokesperson for Ukraine right now, nor as a solid reliable news source. But, I haven’t seen this stuff except in bits and pieces on Tumblr, so here we go.

(This is also not about why the invasion has happened. This post is solely about what has happened, and how the invasion is going.)

So, Putin and the rest of the world believed that this invasion would take 1-4 days. The plan was to push through fast, take Kyiv, and force Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, to surrender. Given Russia’s military might, it really looked likely.

Here is the conclusion of all that’s happened so far:

Ukraine is absolutely nailing this??? Actually???

They managed to defend every single city overnight, including Kyiv. They started rolling out and using these WW2-style anti-tank thingies that look a bit like angry gabbions, look, here’s a picture of one being delivered:

A bunch of spare iron girders turned into a hefty octopus of Russian misery, basically.

But it’s not just tanks they’re taking down, oh no. Ukraine successfully shot down a transport plane 20km from Kyiv. That is, I shit you not, the single biggest hit to the Russian military since the Second Chechen War. Volunteers from Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Azerbaijan and Israel are all entering Ukraine to help fight and bolster the anti-Russian forces, which is probably illustrative of how Eurovision voting is going to run for the next decade. Most countries have banned Russian planes from their air space. To help stop the Russian advance, Ukraine has made and installed new road signs, like this one:

I can only say a handful of sentences in Ukrainian, Tumblrs, but as I understand it, from top to bottom, it says:

“Fuck off”

“Fuck off again”

“Fuck off Russia”

Meanwhile, it turns out the Russian military might we feared is… possibly not quite as advertised?

They’re underfunded and badly trained. Ukraine captured 200 soldiers in one go, and most of them were confused 19 year olds with no training. The equipment is shite. The tanks keep running out of fuel. Russian soldiers keep abandoning their tanks and handing them over to the Ukrainian army. Putin’s plan was to take Kyiv fast and move on, and he didn’t have a plan B - hence these kids, playing soldier. Here is an image of a Russian tank receiving roadside assistance from Russia’s finest, an old Lada.  

No one expected Zelenskyy to survive the night; but he did. America offered him asylum in the White House.

But he said no. 

Zelenskyy remains in Kyiv, with his people.

And Putin, in his desperation to be adored, has turned Zelenskyy into a global icon and hero.

Here is something you may not know about Volodymyr Zelenskyy - he used to be a standup comedian. Was he any good? No idea - but what he IS good at is producing funny short videos he can put on Twitter and that, which are absolutely fantastic for Ukrainian morale. And morale is vital in an invasion like this, and Ukraine are smashing it out of the park there.

They are utilising the internet to its fullest extent. In addition to Zelenskyy’s videos, they’ve made sure that the final words of the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island are known and now echoed around the world: “Russian warship, go fuck yourselves.” A video has gone viral of Ukrainians mocking a group of Russian soldiers whose tank had broken down and who didn’t know the way to Kyiv anyway, presumably because of all the new road signs. They have created a website that lists every single Russian death they can identify, partly so Russian mothers can have closure (thus also painting themselves as the defenders of decency and humanity), and partly for the enormous morale boost of the world knowing, categorically, that they’ve already killed 3700 Russian soldiers (over 100 of which were from that transport plane.)  Not one word has leaked of Ukrainian casualties. I’m sure they’re devastating, but for morale purposes, they’re being kept quiet until the dust settles. Ukrainians have started setting up fake Tindr profiles to catfish Russian soldiers for intel, and they’re all 19 and lost, so it’s working. Plus, they’re using Grindr to actually track where the soldiers are, because it turns out Putin was not entirely correct about there being no gays in Russia.

So, Russia wants to cut their internet access. Can the Ukrainian Minister for Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, shame a billionaire into providing aid?

This is crucial, remember. Atrocities happen best in the dark, and the world is watching - because of the internet. Morale is vital to maintain. Can they convince Elon Musk to help?

Yep.

Ukraine now has the fastest internet service in the world. The fastest, most stable internet service in human history, in fact. Russia cannot now disable it. The world watches.

Which is just as well, because then Anonymous decided to get involved, and have leaked the website database of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Lol. Also this happens:

And then the Russian propaganda channels started broadcasting the truth of what is happening in Ukraine. Double lol.

So what is the political response?

Well, in addition to closing airspace to Russian planes, loads of countries are sending weapons to Ukraine. Those that can’t are offering asylum. They’re also offering asylum to any Russian soldiers who surrender or defect, which is startlingly good tactics, and there are rumours of around 5000 Russian soldiers who have done just that. Germany, of course, has long had a block on lethal weapons transfer; but Germany recognise this shit for what it is. They’ve lifted the block, thus allowing the Netherlands to send weapons. Efforts are now underway to fast-track Ukraine into the EU. I presume they will consider the lack of pint glasses with crowns on to be a worthwhile price to pay.

So what about Russia’s supporters?

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenka helped Russia with this invasion. Now, this has happened:

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was actually elected president, but some wild nonsense kept her out of power. She’s now running a government in exile. I have literally no idea what this means or will mean! But my god. She has a spine of steel, and this is not a good time to be happening for Putin. 

And it’s really, really not, because then intel on a meeting of Putin and assembled Oligarchs LEAKS (hello Anonymous, probably). The highlights:

This war is costing Russia $15bn a day

He expected it to take ONE TO FOUR DAYS TO WIN

It’s been two days and he is losing very badly, currently

They will run out of rockets by day 4, maybe sooner

After that they will be down to rifles and ammo

It will take 3-4 months to make more significant weapons, except they need raw materials, and the countries that can provide them… have cut supply lines

If the war lasts 10 days, Russia will have completely run out of money and weapons

It’s only day 2, and Russian soldiers are knocking the doors of random Ukrainian homes begging for food and water because they’ve already run out

So, out of desperation, Putin turns to his greatest, closest and most trusted ally for help: Kazakhstan. 

And Kazakhstan

SAYS NO

And then Ukraine shoots down a second Russian plane.

Anyway, I’m going to finish off with a final point. Morale is vital in this situation, so here is the message from the Ukrainian government at the minute, to everyone watching around the world:

Be VERY SUSPICIOUS of any negative news about Ukraine. Russia uses misinformation and propaganda. They will want to damage Ukrainian morale.

Use your social media to spread news of Ukrainian victories. 

Don’t give oxygen to negative stories. Especially since they might not be true.

That’s genuinely something we can do to help. Every victory of Ukraine, blast it far and wide. So on that note, I’ll leave you with this:

ua.gov.pl