Ruined Queen

not only that, but we've lost the diversity of the really ugly (but compelling, relatable, and human) flaws because we get stuck on very typical stuff like, idk, honor or bravery. it's more rare to see self-confidence leaning into conceit, ambition leaning into selfishness, passion leaning into obsession, great intellect leaning into arrogant folly, righteousness leaning into a reductive worldview, reserve leaning into resentment, pacifism leaning into passivity, loyalty leaning into self sacrifice....

(This is NOT a medical guide or anything of that sort, please know if you’re allergic and seek the proper help if so). 

What I hope is a helpful guide on how to approach this situation to improve your understanding and respect for stinging insects. I am a native pollinator ecologist and conservation biologist and have worked with bees and wasps for years. I have handled them without getting stung since I was a young child. There is, actually, a trick to it, you know, but that’s not the focus of this post.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET STUNG BY A BEE OR WASP:

Ask yourself these things.

What did I do that caused this insect to attack?

Stinging insects like bees and wasps sting only in defense of their own lives or, if they are a social species, to protect their colony. They will also sometimes sting to obtain food if they are predators (but that doesn’t apply here). Stinging and injecting venom is energy-costly, and approaching a threat increases their chance of getting injured, so they avoid it if possible. Were you approaching a nest, knowingly or unknowingly? Did you purposefully or accidentally pick up the insect with force? Did it get caught in your clothes or beneath your bare feet? Analyze the situation and avoid rash assumptions or reactions. In some species, killing one individual releases pheromones that signal others to attack the threat, so punishing the insect by killing it only increases your likelihood of getting stung again.

How must I have appeared to this insect that it felt threatened enough to defend itself?

Insects perceive the world very differently, both due to their sensory abilities and their scale. You are a large, smelly, oily mammal that by definition is pretty intimidating. Other mammals (and birds) in their habitat often eat them, their young, and in the case of social species, their stored resources. A towering, upright-walking mammal, blundering about and making loud noises puts an insect on edge, as they may be expecting to be attacked. A sting can be used to alert an animal, ‘Hey, I’m down here, don’t step on me! Seriously!’. The few species that live in hives have evolved altruistic behaviors to protect their siblings, young, and queen. They are more likely to be aggressive, and even sacrifice themselves, as that is their first line of defense against an animal that they think is going to try and rip open their nest (or dig it up) to get at the conveniently-packed protein bites inside. When it is possible to just fly away to escape a threat, they will do so. When you encounter a bee or wasp on a flower, foraging, they will just leave if they feel threatened, unless you pursue them. But when near the nest, they are more likely to take precautions and drive away the threat before it gets close enough to hurt the young. When an insect gets caught in your clothes, they are confused and scared and can panic. They become pressed against your skin and cannot see a way out, and feel as if their life is in danger. Then, they may sting. 

How can I be more observant and respectful in the future to avoid this again?

Make yourself aware of your actions that led to being stung. Realize that, hard a pill as it may be to swallow, the reason you got stung is you, not the insect. You did something that frightened it, and we have no way of telling insects that we mean them no harm. To not get stung in the future, you need to make yourself more aware of your surroundings, and how imposing you look to a small creature. Try and anticipate nest locations; nests of paper wasps and yellowjackets are often in trees or under awnings and are usually very visible. Some are in the ground and are marked by a hole from which individuals can be seen entering or hovering around. Bumblebees live in rodent burrows and holes beneath trees. Next, learn the body language of a bee/wasp. They actually tell us pretty clearly when they are tense, agitated, or scared. Most times, wasps at a nest will give you a fair distance warning at which point, if you continue approaching, they will start flying out to investigate you. If perched, they will turn and look at you, tensing up, sometimes rearing on their legs. When a lot of them at a nest do this at once, that’s your cue that they perceive you as a threat, and would rather you move along, please. If you do raise their ire, run away. You can outrun them, and there’s no harm done to either party. Just, be respectful of their personal space, and realize that if they are pushed to the point of stinging, you have made them feel like their life, or the lives of their kin, are in actual danger. It is easy to not pay attention to the body language of insects, since they are small and usually not at the forefront of people’s minds. But they do try and communicate best they can, because almost all animals prefer to avoid conflict.

What is the name of the insect that stung me?

This is something most people may not think of. It is imperative you think of the insect that hurt you as a real, living being with value and importance. Try and find out what species it was that stung you. There are thousands of species of bees and wasps, but only a few account for the majority of stings - paper wasps, yellowjackets (of which bald-faced hornets are a type), honeybees, and some bumblebees or other wasps. You can see that these are all social species. Solitary bees and wasps, which are the majority, rarely sting people and tend to be much more calm. Most wasps cannot even sting. Also realize that only females sting; males do not even have a stinger. Read up on the species and learn about its ecological role. What flowers does it pollinate? Does it hunt crickets or caterpillars? Is it widespread, or found only in your area? The more you learn, the more you form a more informed and realistic picture of this creature. It is no longer just the scary bug that stung you. You can easily observe these insects foraging with very little risk of being stung or even noticed. Some even let you gently touch them, whereas when on the nest this would be perceived as a threat. Understand their world and their role as part of a larger natural community. Allow yourself to be a respectful and curious part of it.

“When women are over-represented in the workforce, it tends be in industries of assistance – cleaning, nursing, secretarial work and, now, the world of virtual assistants. Research by Unesco has shown that using default female voices in AI – as Microsoft has done with Cortana, Amazon with Alexa, Google with Google Assistant and Apple with Siri – is furthering the belief that women exist merely to help men to get on with more important things.

There is no real reason for AI technologies to be gendered at all, but we are at the mercy of tech companies “staffed by overwhelmingly male engineering teams”, fixated on living out a Captain Kirk fantasy and delegating to the subservient, silky-voiced computers of Star Trek. These systems are unapologetically built by men, for men. They can even struggle to understand the “breathy” voices of women as software is often developed with male voice samples. 

When we think of robots – leading uprisings, carrying out efficient murders, accompanying human companions on coming-of-age adventures – they are almost always coded as male. Think Terminator, Star Wars, RoboCop, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Big Hero 6 and most sci-fi films of the 1980s. Their rarely portrayed feminised counterparts are love interests (Her), victims (Ex Machina) or sexualised to the point of lunacy (the “fembots” in Austin Powers, who shoot bullets from their nipples). 

Voices with power tend to be male: take the murderous Hal 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Auto, a spaceship’s autopilot and main antagonist in Wall-E. Robots aren’t leading us on intergalactic sieges in real life, so it’s no surprise that it’s a woman’s voice politely requesting patience on the automated menu at the bank. It is telling, too, that while society has no problem with a disembodied female voice doing our bidding, many people struggle with one telling them what to do. In 2015, Tesco replaced the “bossy” woman’s voice at self-service checkouts, with a “friendlier, more helpful” male one. 

The new research also highlights how virtual assistants are programmed to respond to harassment with the deflecting, tight-grinned replies last heard from a Mad Men receptionist. If you call Siri a slut, she will respond: “I’d blush if I could.” Amazon’s Alexa will say: “Thanks for the feedback.” Ask Siri: “Will you talk dirty to me?” and she will tease: “The carpet needs vacuuming”. A writer for Microsoft’s Cortana software recently said that “a good chunk of the volume of early-on inquiries” were about Cortana’s sex life, proving you don’t even have to have a body for men to find a way to comment on it. The robot uprising we are preempting may be a gynoid-led #MeToo.

HERE is the submission form.

Background Art by Elizabeth Illustrates

i love hot people covered in blood as much as the next but calling every character you like a bossbabe girlboss lil meow meow malewife has really negatively affected people’s abilities to view them objectively. 

a good character has a proper motivation, want, & need ; 

this should be the case for almost all of your characters. however, i do understand that there are exceptions, such as stagnant characters.  

a good character is understandable & interesting ; 

your characters do not have to be likable. liking them as a character also does not mean that you like them as a person. good characters do not have to be good people, they don’t even have to be decent. the roles of protagonist and antagonist in themselves are passive and do not equate to good vs evil. 

i feel like so many people are afraid of having an unlikable protagonist for fear of being seen as a bad person or justifying their actions. it’s not. writing about knights doesn’t mean you want to joust someone to the death, writing about dystopian governments doesn’t mean you condone them. 

trust your audience ; 

this post is really only meant for a small portion of people who consume media in a way where characters become caricatures. if your character is an assassin, have them assassinate people. don’t try to shoehorn in ill-fitting traits and arcs in an attempt to “negate” their darker traits. 

and if your narrator is unreliable, trust your readers to figure that out. unless you legitimately don’t see why people hate holden caulfield ig. 

at the end of the day, your characters need to fit their descriptions, and the narrative should support that. don’t accidentally weaken your enemies to lovers romance fam. love you and good luck. 

- children and teens who cant get home until a later time have a safe, warm, well lit, populated area to socialize, charge devices, rest, etc

- children and teens have a safe place to go to stay away from danger

if you want this, you need to be at your local community government meetings. you need to be talking to your representatives.  you need to be out there Lobbying.

Just a few weeks ago, my library, me, my coworkers, we had to write letters, send emails, make phone calls, speak at council meetings, just to beg our aldermen to give us our usual funding. Which they didn’t even give to us last year.  Losing last year’s funding forced us to cut staff, hours, and all of our databases.  If we’d lost this year’s funding? two positions would have been gone and we would have likely had to close on Saturdays.  On Saturdays.  The day of the week most of y’all working M-F jobs actually have time to go to the fucking library.

And do you want to know how much money we were asking? We were asking for an increase of approximately 13 cents a person.

13.

Fucking.

Cents.

ACROSS AN ENTIRE YEAR.

No one seems to understand how libraries are funded.  It’s not just Free Stuff.  It’s your tax dollars being paid back into your community.  It’s crowdfunding.  The highest cost anyone in my community pays for the library a year is approximately $250.  Divide that up.  That’s just $4 a week.  That’s less than a coffee.  It’s the equivalent of purchasing about 10 hardcover books a year.  For that price, you could have access to every book that has ever been written, a place to go that’s not a bar, programs for kids, teens, and adults, educated staff that can help you find the answers to your questions, and so much more.

You want these late-night libraries?  You want all this stuff?  Start fighting for it.  Start showing up.  Start making phone calls.  It’s not going to come out of thin air.  Start fighting to erase the idea that taxes = evil.  Start fighting to spread the understanding that taxes are what help us build a better society.

Make sure the people who represent you know that you want this.  That this is where you want your tax dollars to go.  That this is what you want them to support.  That you are willing to see your tax bill go up a few more dollars for this.

Because otherwise?  None of this is going to happen.  Libraries are going to keep cutting their opening hours.  Keep cutting staff.  Keep cutting programs and databases and collections.

Listen. Society is very into sex - we can all agree on that, right? And even a very sheltered kid will be exposed to a certain amount of that. You cannot consent to seeing sexual content if it is surrounding you and socially normalized. If it makes you uncomfortable there’s not much you can do about that. It slowly turns from an aversion into a trigger through repeated unwanted exposure. That’s why I call it a sexual trauma.

As you enter adulthood or late adolescence it becomes even more normalized and at the forefront. People casually talk about your trigger. Your trigger is in every movie and show. People casually ask you about your experiences with your trigger.

was thinking of a few posts a while back about fantasy reproductive biology and was Inspired by recent Wikipedia rabbit holes, so

Elves are technically all female, and reproduce by self-fertilization. Elves are long-lived enough that they do not quickly accrue harmful mutations and deleterious effects from this. However, they have another mechanism to mitigate the harmful effects of self-fertilization: they regularly engage in horizontal gene transfer with the endosymbiotic algae that live in their skin! These algae act as a reservoir for genetic diversity. Some elves also have similar exchanges with the parasitic plants that grow on their heads…yeah no, those are not flower crowns.

Dark elves do not have the recourse of algae, and are instead similarly symbiotic with fungi.

Goblins are like fungi: they don’t have differentiated gametes, and thus no real biological basis to call them “male” and “female.” When goblins reproduce, two goblins will come together and merge, splitting into four “sibling” goblins that are combinations of the parents’ genes! The siblings also retain some of their parents’ memories, meaning goblin history is literally passed down biologically!

The exception to this is goblins that live deep underground, adapted to blindly navigate in the darkest caves. It’s pretty hard for goblins to find other unrelated goblins to create offspring with, so instead, some goblins, termed “King” or “Queen” goblins (though as I said, goblins don’t have differentiated gametes like that), will grow to an abnormally large size and roam about seeking mates. When a King/Queen goblin merges with another goblin, it does not split into offspring, but instead absorbs the other goblin, a little like a female anglerfish does to her mates. After a long time, King/Queen goblins begin living a stationary life, producing new goblins from amalgamated genetic material by budding. The goblin hordes will take care of the King/Queen goblin until the horde grows too large, at which point some goblins will migrate to new territory, beginning the cycle anew.

Orcs are all born male. The biggest, strongest orc (or sometimes pair of orcs) in an orc band will become female, much like a clown fish, and will be protected by the rest of the band, spared the risks of an Orc warrior’s dangerous fighting lifestyle, so her genes will get passed on the most, and subsequent generations of Orcs will be strong. Orcs do not, however, share human concepts of gender, and many Orc warriors that spend time in human society decide they feel more affiliated with what humans think of as “women” anyway.

Dwarves, like some reptiles, develop based on the temperature of the caves they are raised in. Dwarves in cooler caves grow up to be male; dwarves in warmer caves grow up to be female. Female dwarves are associated with the fire of the forges and the power of creation. Dwarves are not, however, sexually dimorphic, and asking whether a dwarf is “really” male or female is deeply personal and offensive, since an individual’s ability to become pregnant is invariably none of the asker’s business. It is common for dwarves to reject any affiliation with gender entirely, but those that care for that sort of thing have some very elaborate and colorful genders.

Your Vaccinated Immune System Is Ready for Breakthroughs

Getting COVID-19 when you’re vaccinated isn’t the same as getting COVID-19 when you’re unvaccinated.

A new dichotomy has begun dogging the pandemic discourse. With the rise of the über-transmissible Delta variant, experts are saying you’re either going to get vaccinated, or going to get the coronavirus.

For some people—a decent number of us, actually—it’s going to be both.

Coronavirus infections are happening among vaccinated people. They’re going to keep happening as long as the virus is with us, and we’re nowhere close to beating it. When a virus has so thoroughly infiltrated the human population, post-vaccination infections become an arithmetic inevitability. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, being vaccinated does not mean being done with SARS-CoV-2.

Post-vaccination infections, or breakthroughs, might occasionally turn symptomatic, but they aren’t shameful or aberrant. They also aren’t proof that the shots are failing. These cases are, on average, gentler and less symptomatic; faster-resolving, with less virus lingering—and, it appears, less likely to pass the pathogen on. The immunity offered by vaccines works in iterations and gradations, not absolutes. It does not make a person completely impervious to infection. It also does not evaporate when a few microbes breach a body’s barriers. A breakthrough, despite what it might seem, does not cause our defenses to crumble or even break; it does not erase the protection that’s already been built. Rather than setting up fragile and penetrable shields, vaccines reinforce the defenses we already have, so that we can encounter the virus safely and potentially build further upon that protection.

To understand the anatomy of a breakthrough case, it’s helpful to think of the human body as a castle. Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, compares immunization to reinforcing such a stronghold against assault.

Without vaccination, the castle’s defenders have no idea an attack is coming. They might have stationed a few aggressive guard dogs outside, but these mutts aren’t terribly discerning: They’re the system’s innate defenders, fast-acting and brutal, but short-lived and woefully imprecise. They’ll sink their teeth into anything they don’t recognize, and are easily duped by stealthier invaders. If only quarrelsome canines stand between the virus and the castle’s treasures, that’s a pretty flimsy first line of defense. But it’s essentially the situation that many uninoculated people are in. Other fighters, who operate with more precision and punch—the body’s adaptive cells—will eventually be roused. Without prior warning, though, they’ll come out in full force only after a weeks-long delay, by which time the virus may have run roughshod over everything it can. At that point, the fight may, quite literally, be at a fever pitch, fueling worsening symptoms.

Vaccination completely rewrites the beginning, middle, and end of this story. COVID-19 shots act as confidential informants, who pass around intel on the pathogen within the castle walls. With that info, defensive cells can patrol the building’s borders, keeping an eye out for a now-familiar foe. When the virus attempts to force its way in, it will hit “backup layer after backup layer” of defense, Bhattacharya said.

Prepped by a vaccine, immune reinforcements will be marshaled to the fore much faster—within days of an invasion, sometimes much less. Adaptive cells called B cells, which produce antibodies, and T cells, which kill virus-infected cells, will have had time to study the pathogen’s features, and sharpen their weapons against it. While the guard dogs are pouncing, archers trained to recognize the virus will be shooting it down; the few microbes that make their way deeper inside will be gutted by sword-wielding assassins lurking in the shadows. “Each stage it has to get past takes a bigger chunk out” of the virus, Bhattacharya said. Even if a couple particles eke past every hurdle, their ranks are fewer, weaker, and less damaging.

In the best-case scenario, the virus might even be instantly sniped at by immune cells and antibodies, still amped up from the vaccine’s recent visit, preventing any infection from being established at all. But expecting this of our shots every time isn’t reasonable (and, in fact, wasn’t the goal set for any COVID-19 vaccine). Some people’s immune cells might have slow reflexes and keep their weapons holstered for too long; that will be especially true among the elderly and immunocompromised—their fighters will still rally, just to a lesser extent.

Changes on the virus side could tip the scales as well. Like invaders in disguise, wily variants might evade detection by certain antibodies. Even readily recognizable versions of the coronavirus can overwhelm the immune system’s early cavalcade if they raid the premises in high-enough numbers—via, for instance, an intense and prolonged exposure event.

With so many factors at play, it’s not hard to see how a few viral particles might still hit their mark. But a body under siege isn’t going to throw its hands up in defeat. “People tend to think of this as yes or no—if I got vaccinated, I should not get any symptoms; I should be completely protected,” Laura Su, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “But there’s way more nuance than that.” Even as the virus is raising a ruckus, immune cells and molecules will be attempting to hold their ground, regain their edge, and knock the pathogen back down. Those late-arriving efforts might not halt an infection entirely, but they will still curb the pathogen’s opportunities to move throughout the body, cause symptoms, and spread to someone else. The inhospitality of the vaccinated body to SARS-CoV-2 is what’s given many researchers hope that long COVID, too, will be rarer among the immunized, though that connection is still being explored.

Breakthroughs, especially symptomatic ones, are still uncommon, as a proportion of immunized people. But by sheer number, “the more people get vaccinated, the more you will see these breakthrough infections,” Juliet Morrison, a virologist at UC Riverside, said. (Don’t forget that a small fraction of millions of people is still a lot of people—and in communities where a majority of people are vaccinated, most of the positive tests could be for shot recipients.) Reports of these cases shouldn’t be alarming, especially when we drill down on what’s happening qualitatively. A castle raid is worse if its inhabitants are slaughtered and all its jewels stolen; with vaccines in place, those cases are rare—many of them are getting replaced with lighter thefts, wherein the virus has time only to land a couple of punches before it’s booted out the door. Sure, vaccines would be “better” if they erected impenetrable force fields around every fortress. They don’t, though. Nothing does. And our shots shouldn’t be faulted for failing to live up to an impossible standard—one that obscures what they are able to accomplish. A breached stronghold is not necessarily a defeated stronghold; any castle that arms itself in advance will be in a better position than it was before.

There’s a potential silver lining to breakthroughs as well. By definition, these infections occur in immune systems that already recognize the virus and can learn from it again. Each subsequent encounter with SARS-CoV-2 might effectively remind the body that the pathogen’s threat still looms, coaxing cells into reinvigorating their defenses and sharpening their coronavirus-detecting skills, and prolonging the duration of protection. Some of that familiarity might ebb with certain variants. But in broad strokes, a post-inoculation infection can be “like a booster for the vaccine,” Su, of the University of Pennsylvania, said. It’s not unlike keeping veteran fighters on retainer: After the dust has settled, the battle’s survivors will be on a sharper lookout for the next assault. That’s certainly no reason to seek out infection. But should such a mishap occur, there’s a good chance that “continuously training immune cells can be a really good thing,” Nicole Baumgarth, an immunologist at UC Davis, said. (Vaccination, by the way, might mobilize stronger protection than natural infection, and it’s less dangerous to boot.)

We can’t control how SARS-CoV-2 evolves. But how disease manifests depends on both host and pathogen; vaccination hands a lot of the control over that narrative back to us. Understanding breakthroughs requires some intimacy with immunology, but also familiarity with the realities of a virus that will be with us long-term, one that we will probably all encounter at some point. The choice isn’t about getting vaccinated or getting infected. It’s about bolstering our defenses so that we are ready to fight an infection from the best position possible—with our defensive wits about us, and well-armored bodies in tow.